At Wednesday’s (9/14) meeting the Board reviewed the 2011-12 budget that will be presented for approval at the District's Annual Meeting (Oct. 5th). Although the numbers aren’t final until the September enrollment counts and the certification of state aid in October, the estimated general fund expenditures for the year will be $33,753,104. Due to factors including a $650 reduction in the per pupil revenue limit and a $1.4M reduction in state aids, the budget started with a deficit of approximately $2.75M (about 8%) relative to "cost to continue".
The operating fund deficit was closed in three ways:
1)About $900K in cuts that were approved by the board last spring, these include the consolidation of Maywood and Winnequah Elementary schools as well as staff reductions: your student may have noticed larger class sizes, particularly in the high school.
2) Use of $850K in federal ARRA (stimulus bill) funds. The $850K is equal to the cost of about 15 teachers that the district can continue to employ. The ARRA funds have to be used this year and next, we chose to use the entire amount this year.
3) Just over $1M reduction in compensation for the teachers and staff. A teacher will see a reduction in take home pay equal to 12.8% of the health care costs plus half the WRS pension contribution.
Total local property tax collections for general fund revenues are limited by the revenue cap and should be down slightly, but less than 2%.
Showing posts with label property taxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label property taxes. Show all posts
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Annual Meeting tomorrow.
This year's Budget Hearing and Annual Meeting will be held tomorrow (Wednesday the 6th) at 7:00pm in the High School Auditorium. The annual meeting is a statutory requirement where the electors of the district (that means you) approve the tax levy for the year and provide various other authorizations that allow the district to do business. Note that this isn't a meeting of the School Board, but of the electors of the district.
The budget documents can be found here. The compete 60 page district report is not yet available on the website.
Total general fund revenue the district can raise is determined by the State's revenue caps, which are explained here. - Basically the revenue cap takes what the district spent last year per student, adds a little bit and then multiplies it by the number of students using a three year rolling average. (Additional "categorical aids" are available for specific purposes, such as special education.) The district is allowed to raise that much money for general operations. The State then takes another complicated formula and determines how much general fund aid it will provide the district. The district can then levy the difference between the revenue cap and the state funding on the local property tax. Additional amounts are levied for voter approved referenda, in our case building projects.
Because Monona Grove has a high ratio of total assessed property valuation per student the percentage of state aid is relatively low.
This year's estimated revenue limit is $31,963,133 for the general fund. State aid will pay $11,871,795, leaving a general fund levy of $20,091,338. Additional community service fund and referendum approved debt bring the total proposed levy to $24,893,975 - which equals a levy of $12.91 per thousand of assessed property value.
Total expenditures will increase by 2.44% in this budget, but the levy mill rate will increase by 6.7% due to the changes in the aid and revenue sources. (Last year the levy actually decreased 2%).
The budget documents can be found here. The compete 60 page district report is not yet available on the website.
Total general fund revenue the district can raise is determined by the State's revenue caps, which are explained here. - Basically the revenue cap takes what the district spent last year per student, adds a little bit and then multiplies it by the number of students using a three year rolling average. (Additional "categorical aids" are available for specific purposes, such as special education.) The district is allowed to raise that much money for general operations. The State then takes another complicated formula and determines how much general fund aid it will provide the district. The district can then levy the difference between the revenue cap and the state funding on the local property tax. Additional amounts are levied for voter approved referenda, in our case building projects.
Because Monona Grove has a high ratio of total assessed property valuation per student the percentage of state aid is relatively low.
This year's estimated revenue limit is $31,963,133 for the general fund. State aid will pay $11,871,795, leaving a general fund levy of $20,091,338. Additional community service fund and referendum approved debt bring the total proposed levy to $24,893,975 - which equals a levy of $12.91 per thousand of assessed property value.
Total expenditures will increase by 2.44% in this budget, but the levy mill rate will increase by 6.7% due to the changes in the aid and revenue sources. (Last year the levy actually decreased 2%).
Friday, January 29, 2010
The third rail...
Peter McKeever kicked things off last night with a thoughtful call to the board not to cut the budget. Peter is right that the future rests on the investment we make in educating the next generation, and that cut backs can be short sighted. This is particularly true in the situation where we are not talking about a one time reduction due to the economy, but an ongoing structural deficit that will year after year erode public education. Peter called for additional public investment and taxes to restore school budgets and asked the school board to take a leadership role in strengthening public education. I would add that according to http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/index.php, WI state and local spending on primary and secondary education has declined by 7% (as a percentage of GDP) since the year 2000.
The board moved to hearing the results of the annual financial audit, and received (as usual) a clean unqualified report from the auditors. We also heard from a reports concerning the new teacher project and the January head count (up 12 students since September). The board also decided to issue preliminary notice of non-renewal to several administrators. These are due to budgetary considerations and unrelated to any job performance issues, it also does not necessarily mean we will be terminating these staff members. In a related action the board approved one year (down from the standard two year contracts) for several other administrators, in order to keep these options available for next year. Again, none of these actions are performance related.
The board then had a brief discussion concerning the Nichols property. Although no consensus was apparent, IMHO the location is a valuable piece of real estate and the best interest of the district is that it should be on the tax rolls and working for the economic development of the community.
The board then approved a recommendation from the administration concerning the 4k-8 study report. I don't have the language, but essentially the motion stated that in consideration of the costs the district not pursue separate 4k-8 programs in each community. We talked about some of the other grade configuration committee's recommendations, there was particular focus on the issue of studying combining 6th grades in GDS. The consensus from the staff seems to be there may be significant cost and educational benefits to this move. Personally, I would be reluctant to approve this without a significant show of community support as the current configuration was approved in the 2006 referendum.
The board then reviewed the board and administrator surveys of the budget cut items. The surveys were designed to solicit judgments about the impact of each proposed budget cut relative to the board goals. A copy of the board version of the survey can be found by clicking here.
The compiled survey results can be found clicking here. There are three pages: administrator averages, board averages and a comparison of rankings.
In general I found no surprises in the results, with general agreement between the board and administration on nearly all items.
I don't have access to my original answers on the survey (when I clicked the "next" key it disappeared into cyberspace) I will reproduce my answers to the best of my ability and post them here tomorrow. Its the best I can do.
Craig then presented an initial proposal from the budget reduction list totalling $1.008M dollars. I will publish that list separately also. There was some discussion about a few items on the list, such as the teacher mentor program, and some items that aren't, such as the proposal for Maywood-Winnequah consolidation.
The board and the district are faced with some stark choices, and the current proposal falls heavily on our music, related arts and encore curriculum. The Maywood-Winnequah consolidation may give us the opportunity to significantly mitigate the impact of these cuts to staff and curriculum; I believe that we owe it to the community, students and the dedicated teachers responsible for these programs to take a hard look at this option.
The board moved to hearing the results of the annual financial audit, and received (as usual) a clean unqualified report from the auditors. We also heard from a reports concerning the new teacher project and the January head count (up 12 students since September). The board also decided to issue preliminary notice of non-renewal to several administrators. These are due to budgetary considerations and unrelated to any job performance issues, it also does not necessarily mean we will be terminating these staff members. In a related action the board approved one year (down from the standard two year contracts) for several other administrators, in order to keep these options available for next year. Again, none of these actions are performance related.
The board then had a brief discussion concerning the Nichols property. Although no consensus was apparent, IMHO the location is a valuable piece of real estate and the best interest of the district is that it should be on the tax rolls and working for the economic development of the community.
The board then approved a recommendation from the administration concerning the 4k-8 study report. I don't have the language, but essentially the motion stated that in consideration of the costs the district not pursue separate 4k-8 programs in each community. We talked about some of the other grade configuration committee's recommendations, there was particular focus on the issue of studying combining 6th grades in GDS. The consensus from the staff seems to be there may be significant cost and educational benefits to this move. Personally, I would be reluctant to approve this without a significant show of community support as the current configuration was approved in the 2006 referendum.
The board then reviewed the board and administrator surveys of the budget cut items. The surveys were designed to solicit judgments about the impact of each proposed budget cut relative to the board goals. A copy of the board version of the survey can be found by clicking here.
The compiled survey results can be found clicking here. There are three pages: administrator averages, board averages and a comparison of rankings.
In general I found no surprises in the results, with general agreement between the board and administration on nearly all items.
I don't have access to my original answers on the survey (when I clicked the "next" key it disappeared into cyberspace) I will reproduce my answers to the best of my ability and post them here tomorrow. Its the best I can do.
Craig then presented an initial proposal from the budget reduction list totalling $1.008M dollars. I will publish that list separately also. There was some discussion about a few items on the list, such as the teacher mentor program, and some items that aren't, such as the proposal for Maywood-Winnequah consolidation.
The board and the district are faced with some stark choices, and the current proposal falls heavily on our music, related arts and encore curriculum. The Maywood-Winnequah consolidation may give us the opportunity to significantly mitigate the impact of these cuts to staff and curriculum; I believe that we owe it to the community, students and the dedicated teachers responsible for these programs to take a hard look at this option.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Tax rates comparisons.
Sunday's State Journal reproduces this table for comparing property tax rates in Dane County:
http://danedocs.countyofdane.com/webdocs/pdf/treasure/tax_chart.pdf
I just found it interesting to see where our communities fall...
http://danedocs.countyofdane.com/webdocs/pdf/treasure/tax_chart.pdf
I just found it interesting to see where our communities fall...
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