MAPS: More red ink than expected
MAPS: More red ink than expected
By MIRIAM MOELLER, Journal Staff Writer
MARQUETTE — An initial 2006-2007 budget adopted by the Marquette school board Monday includes total revenues of $27.8 million and total expenditures of $29 million. This leaves the district with a much higher deficit — $1.2 million — than initially expected.
To offset the deficit, funds will be taken from the district’s general fund, leaving it with a $3.8 million balance, with an additional $3 million in a contingency or “rainy-day” fund.
The budget includes reductions in educational aide expenditures, the reduction of two teachers by attrition, reduction in transportation costs, custodial work force, technology costs, professional development and travel, and other changes.
These numbers also include a proposed increase by state legislators of $225 in per-pupil funding. However, this increase is offset by the projected loss of 98 students next year, according to the district’s assistant superintendent for finance, Tim Yeadon.
Yeadon projected that in 2008-2009 the district will exhaust its general fund balance. The district will still have $3 million in its contingency fund, which Yeadon said is reserved for emergencies.
“Eventually we’re going to run out of money,” board member Kellie Ann Holmstrom said.
Yeadon added that if the district runs out of fund balances, their will be no other choice than to make drastic cuts, “unless something changes drastically.”
Superintendent Jon Hartwig said that the decrease in student population and rising costs in a variety of areas such as health care benefits contribute to the imbalance in revenues and expenditures.
The board also closed out the 2005-2006 budget with $28.3 million in total revenues and $28.9 in total expenditures. The deficit of $648, 000 is about half of what was expected. The money to offset the deficit was taken from the general fund balance.
“We had additional revenues and also had fewer expenditures,” Yeadon said.
Hartwig said that the lower deficit in the 2005-2006 budget was one of the main reasons why the board was able to make educational aide expenditure cuts only half as deep as initially proposed.
“By the end of the year, when we’re better off in revenues and better off in expenditures, then that provides more room for the board to consider things. So that was, in my mind, the range of reasons behind promoting a better picture in terms of aide reductions,” Hartwig said. “I think it really helped it.
“I value public input that we have had in the last four meetings, but budgets are very frequently based on numbers and we have to see where our budget numbers are,” Hartwig said.
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