School Board Beat: Cost Accounting 101; On Change of Financial Position; Or, It wasn't raining when Noah began building the ark.

(This is one of several posts covering the 7am Evansville School Board meeting on Tuesday, March 21st.)

Yesterday while on the way to Janesville, I saw a sign that said, "It wasn't raining when Noah began to build the ark." I have to admit I tend to watch for the chinese fortune cookies as well as billboard signs for direction. Anyway, the sign is relevant......

At the opening of the Evansville School Board meeting on Tuesday, a budget analysis was passed out detailing the expenditure Decreases last year: They totaled $180,123. They are listed as follows:

Administrators: -43,065.
Custodial Staff -34,232.
Special Ed trans -25,995.
Substitute costs -25,051.
Temp Borrowing -21,078.
District Office,CESA-14,071.
Maintenance -11,570.
Inaurance,Liability -5,011.

Total Decreases -180.123.

Even given these expenditure decreases, there was a net increase of expenses of 1,040,527. To cover some of this amount, $279,964 was taken from the "Fund Balance."

In essence, in taxpayer terms, this was taken from the saving account. Of the increaes of expenses, it is notable that utiilties alone increased by 22% or $236,771. So---the district did what they said they were going to do and took the hit of energy costs out of the savings. That is not news.

What is news is that one cannot continue that way. Even Noah had to look ahead and began to build the ARK before the rains came.

One of the building blocks for a good ark is knowing what things cost. The first portion of the meeting was spent reviewing how athletic events are budgeted and how the costs of overtime for maintenance and custodial are accounted for. This is important so one can determine what "fee" is right so one does not lose money(in a commercial business). The surprise was that the athletic department gets the revenue from events but the maintenance department pays the expenses, and it turns out an increasing amount of overtime.

This way of accounting is a little like having your older children live at home and keep their paychecks and have you pay all the expenses. Anyway, the bottom line of the discussion was that the true "cost" of an event is not easily seen in the accounting and the board asked that the expenses be matched with the revenue in the future--however no formal board resolution on this was passed so we will see.

In light of this, Art Phillips, asked that the whole matter of increasing the custodial and temporary grounds positions be delayed till the public could be at the meeting. He said that in light of the fact that the Review is not even published till Wednesday, the public was not properly informed of the meeting. He asked that the issue be tabled until the complete numbers could be retreived by Deb Olson. This was voted down.

Mr. Pierick went over the necessity of not taking one item of "saving" and moving it to another budget category. The days of that type of thinking are gone in his view. He offered a compromise proposal that would essentially hold spring and summer grounds costs even with last year. That passed on a 6-1 vote, with Art Phillips dissenting.

As usual, if you attended the meeting and wish to offer corrections or comments, feel free to do so on the comment line.

(Audio of portions of this meeting is coming.)