I encourage all citizens of Streetsboro to confront the School Board and Administration with this question.
Looking back, I am beginning to realize how we have fallen into this predicament.
Our last Treasurer, Mr. Puster, forecast Revenues of $20,363,181.00 for the 2008-2009 school year. We took in a total of $21,171,547. That is $808,366.00 more than what was forecast.
It was also projected that our expenses would total $20,948,762. Again, we spent $21,724,845.00. That is $776,083 more than what was projected.
Our last Treasurer estimated our growth at 6% for the 2008-2009 school year and the actual growth experienced in the Total Revenues was 10%. Of course, there are a few anomalies that contributed to this such as back taxes being collected but the property tax was only $242,377 more and the TPP was $609,909 more than anticipated. This would have made a nice carryover IF the district would have spent money within what the projected forecast predicted.
Why is it then that we ran out of money?
It appears the interim Treasurer let the district spend money as they wished. This put us into the dilemma we're in now. The Board and the Administration just started spending without clear and accurate results from this spending from our interim Treasurer. Our district literally put the cart before the horse or counted their chickens before they hatched so to speak.
Mr. Puster turned his resignation in the beginning of September saying he was leaving on January 1, 2009. Why didn't the Board move quickly to find a replacement rather than an interim Treasurer? Since we had an interim Treasurer, why didn't the Board and Administration pay closer attention and curb their spending until we could more reliable facts on our financial situation?
On another note, I was at the Board meeting this last Thursday, September 10, 2009 and I am sorry but I didn't hear the Board say they would let 20 teachers go. I heard the Treasurer say there are at least 20 Teachers who have over thirty years in the district and are eligible to retire. He said there may be as many as 27 of these teachers.
If these teachers truly want to help the children in this district, then they should retire. If just 20 of them retire, we would experience a savings of at least 1.8 million. If we hire new teachers at the basic rate for new teachers, even with paying into their STRS and Health benefits, we would be looking at around $800,000 of a cost to the district. We would be $1 million to the good.
This new levy would insure the money would be to pay the teachers.
The last levy was to carry us for at least three years and it would have if they didn't run amuck spending money. If we had a Treasurer in place before Mr. Puster left, this wouldn't have happened.
From what I can tell, Mr. Puster was right on the money with his projections and the Board and Administration paid no attention and went over. We even have a Board member with a BA in accounting and it appears he didn't see this coming. Wasn't it obvious to any of these people that we were spending more than we should have?
The district even claimed that we had a carry over of around $734,000 at the end of 2008-2009. Couple the $734,000 carryover with the $808,366 additional revenue we did take in and we should have been $1.5 million in the black at the end of the 2008-2009 school year. That is if they had stayed within the numbers Mr. Puster forecast.
Now the district is coming to us for a bail out that the community itself cannot give and should not give. This Board and the Administration are the ones who put us here and they need to come up with an idea that will bail us out without putting the burden on the tax payers.
It is time to make drastic decisions and Busing should not be any part of this decision. They took your busing away the last time and if they try it again this time, I believe this whole community should ask for some resignations of the Board members.
Why should the community and children suffer over the miscalculations, misconceptions and ignorance of what has happened to our district financially? We shouldn't.
Vote NO on this levy for we should not tolerate what our Board and Administration has done to us. They hired more than we can afford believing that a levy will pull them out. It is too soon for the levy and they need to change it from being a continuous levy to a short term emergency levy. The one they devise should take into consideration that they will insure teachers retire at the end of 30 years and not create a burden on our district and our economy.
Martin Fleming