Well, looking over the the Potential Cost Savings the district published in the paper, let's see,
Eliminate the Tutors for we can pay for that through alternate funding, eliminating that expense from the General Fund, I'd expand the federal funds as they suggested, Services contract, Library aides (they can use the students to fullfil this item), playground and lunchroom aides (administrative staff or teachers can fill in here), one administrator position (probably have more than the state minimum anyhow), TERMINATE publics relations contract (should also dump the marketing firm they contracted to on retainer), eliminate the 10 certified staff positions, suspend the field trips, establish the participation fees, increase the pay to play, join the school pool electrictiy program (should do this one anyway if the levy passes or fails, don't know why we haven't done that one already) and you will save $976,000.00.
We really don't have to consider a levy till fall 2010. Giving the economy time to rebound and hopefully we can now afford a levy that isn't continuous and one that doesn't have such a high mils.
We cannot condone a levy of 9.5 and expect the community to survive. The logical thing to have done was control the spending to begin with for this economy stress was beginning back at the end of 2007 (and actually it was beginning before that for the people who watched the financial news, they all knew this was coming, foreclosures on homes was the key indicator there along with the rising unemployment), bank failings beginning last year also contributed to this.
Contolled spending from Jan 2009 to July 2009 was the key here. Spending 1.4 million over the forecasted revenue really put a damper on things.
How do we know this will not occur with the additional $4 million the levy will generate. The 2007 levy was to produce 3.6 million a year.
Two years later we need an additional $4 million and they state in the Record Courier 85% will be used for Salaries and Benefits. That's around $3,409,350.00 million for payroll and leaving $601,650 for other expenses.
$3,409,650 and I thought we were only short $900,000? What salaries are they going to spend the $2,509,350 on? Where is that coming from or going to?
Can the Treasurer, Administration or someone from the board explain it on this post for all to see?
Well?
Martin Fleming