{"id":831,"date":"2010-09-23T00:50:36","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T04:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/?p=831"},"modified":"2010-09-23T20:51:53","modified_gmt":"2010-09-24T00:51:53","slug":"finance-committee-92210","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/finance-committee-92210\/","title":{"rendered":"Finance Committee 9\/22\/10"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black text is mostly objective, red text<\/span> is mostly subjective in nature.<\/em><\/p>\n

Every year at this time FinComm holds an organizational meeting. \u00c2\u00a0They’re generally short and light on content. \u00c2\u00a0This year was much more full as the first topic was the school budget overrun<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0I arrived about 5 minutes late, and it had already started. \u00c2\u00a0I noted that 4 school committee members were present, a few people I recognized, a few I didn’t, and even two people who appeared to be reporters. \u00c2\u00a0Reporters at a FinComm meeting! \u00c2\u00a0Wow!<\/span><\/p>\n

Superintendent Dr. Kathie Bodie was talking, already started as I arrived. \u00c2\u00a0She ran through some of the revenue target and expenditure misses that we were all mostly up to date on, including special ed. \u00c2\u00a0She talked about the difficulties of knowing “where you are” in the budget because of journal entries out of grant funds into the general fund. \u00c2\u00a0They started doing those in late May to understand where the budget was.<\/p>\n

She talked about the position control and better accounting methods that are going into place.<\/p>\n

She noted that some teachers get paid over just the school year, and some get paid the whole year, by their choice. \u00c2\u00a0To pay that July and August salary,\u00c2\u00a0you roll money over from the ending fiscal year to the new year. \u00c2\u00a0That rolled over money is\u00c2\u00a0rolled over and co-mingled with the new year (FY11 in this case) and summer school money. \u00c2\u00a0She said that they\u00c2\u00a0“knew we were going to be short rolling over.”<\/p>\n

They thought that with\u00c2\u00a0with belt tightening and projections improvements in FY11, that they\u00c2\u00a0could pay for that overage with fy11 money. \u00c2\u00a0The\u00c2\u00a0auditor said they can’t do that mechanism, and \u00c2\u00a0that leads to the need to the need for\u00c2\u00a0the special town meeting. \u00c2\u00a0“We tried to solve the problem, the mechanism wasn’t acceptable, and so we need the special town meeting.”<\/p>\n

School Committee Chair Curro spoke next and said “It was a big surprise to us as well as you.” \u00c2\u00a0He said\u00c2\u00a0we worked on fy11, took eye off fy10. \u00c2\u00a0He listed things being done including:\u00c2\u00a0process audit, organizational issues, system issues, self-reflection. \u00c2\u00a0Recommendations by October 29<\/p>\n

Finance Committee members then started asking questions.<\/p>\n

The first question was about the system, and why it had worked in the past and broke this year.<\/p>\n

I asked a series of pointy questions about when the problem was discovered. I wanted to know when it was clear there was a deficit, i.e. when they knew that they were using FY11 money to cover FY10. \u00c2\u00a0That was never discussed during our budget meetings, so the timing is important. \u00c2\u00a0Dr. Bodie said she knew that there was going to be “short rolling over” on June 11. But, that fact didn’t become public until August 26th. \u00c2\u00a0I expressed frustration. \u00c2\u00a0This is the part of the story that just can’t be explained away. \u00c2\u00a0There is just no reasonable explanation for why this information took so long to be shared. \u00c2\u00a0There are other parts of this problem, too, but few are as clear-cut. \u00c2\u00a0On June 11th, she should have started a fire drill. \u00c2\u00a0What she actually did was tell Al Tosti that things would be OK.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a question\/discussion about how we actually know in September how many 12 months teachers there are, but we don’t encumber the money until June. \u00c2\u00a0That has changed. \u00c2\u00a0Discussion of how the practice is to roll over the balance at the end of the year- regardless if it is too much, or in this case too small. Too much is a “good” thing – gives you extra money for the coming year. That extra money is then your buffer.<\/p>\n

There were a couple questions about if this Jobs Grant money could be legally used this way.<\/p>\n

There were several points about how the FY11 budget is very tight. If we have another $400,000 special ed problem, we don’t have a way to cover it. \u00c2\u00a0 If there are shortages, we need to know.<\/p>\n

There were discussions about special ed.<\/p>\n

We talked about the need for better communications.<\/p>\n

There were several questions about the FY10 budget. \u00c2\u00a0There is no meaningful accounting yet of FY10 budget v. actual. Ruth Lewis is working on it. CFO is working on state numbers which is another slice on it. The CFO noted that the last fy10 budget v actual was in October, but discontinued because it did only 80% of the budget. \u00c2\u00a0She went on to say \u00c2\u00a0“and that was remiss. I should have put something in place and I didn’t.” \u00c2\u00a0That was the first apology I’ve heard her say. \u00c2\u00a0It’s a big step, to me. \u00c2\u00a0Up until then, the dialog had all about what was hard and external factors that made it someone else’s fault.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a question about the school department’s FAQ<\/a> that it released saying that the schools needed to “reduce their reliance on funding beyond the Town appropriation.” \u00c2\u00a0We encouraged the school to get more grants, not less. \u00c2\u00a0That FAQ was a head scratcher, for sure, but there were so many other things going wrong that I didn’t focus on it. \u00c2\u00a0The FAQ essentially says, “stop doing grants, and get more money from taxpayers.” \u00c2\u00a0It’s not a well-thought notion.<\/span><\/p>\n

There were several more questions, but I’ve paraphrased them or linked them to ones above. \u00c2\u00a0My bottom line is this: they knew they were in trouble in the fall of ’09, but didn’t have the wherewithal to track the problem and mitigate the problem. \u00c2\u00a0Then, when the problem finally <\/strong>became more defined, they didn’t share the information in anything close to a timely fashion. \u00c2\u00a0It’s an extremely disappointing performance from the leaders of our school department.<\/span><\/p>\n

At that point the school people left (except Kathie Bodie, who stuck around) and most of the audience left, and the reporters left. \u00c2\u00a0Which is kinda funny, because they walked out just before we talked about the pending $48 million deficit in the next 5 years, which really is much much worse.<\/p>\n

Town Manager reviewed the pending 5-year outlook. \u00c2\u00a0I took notes, but I’m too tired to copy them here. \u00c2\u00a0See the FinComm booth on Saturday at Town Day, and we’ll give you a copy of the outlook. \u00c2\u00a0I’m working the booth from 1:30 to 3.<\/p>\n

We set the next meeting for November 1 and 3 in advance of the Special Town Meeting.<\/p>\n

We re-elected chair Al Tosti,\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0vice-chairs Foskett, Fanning, and Jones, and secretary Peter Howard.<\/p>\n

We have vacancies: pct 6, 11, 17.<\/p>\n

We prepared for Town Day.<\/p>\n

We talked briefly about Minuteman’s regional agreement.<\/p>\n

We adjourned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature. Every year at this time FinComm holds an organizational meeting. \u00c2\u00a0They’re generally short and light on content. \u00c2\u00a0This year was much more full as the first topic was the school budget overrun. \u00c2\u00a0I arrived about 5 minutes late, and it had already started. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arlington","category-finance-committee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}