What formerly was a mostly routine annual formality has now become another matter to be closely scrutinized by a local citizens' group.

And at Tuesday's Warsaw Community Schools' hearing before the Department of Local Government Finance on the 2004 budget, several members of Concerned Citizens for Quality Education were present to ask questions.

The school corporation, as well as every other taxing unit, undergoes the hearing each year. The DLGF hearing officer collects information, asks questions and submits all the collected data to the DLGF commissioner, who then renders a decision.

In the school corporation's case, the budget is presented, any objections are heard, then the DLGF considers the situation and comes back later with the corporation's tax rate for the next year.

Usually it's a pretty routine event.

In fact, hearing officer George Helton said he has presided over 158 hearings every year for 10 years. In that time, he has had fewer than a dozen hearings in which citizens objected to a taxing unit's budget.

"Typically, we find that taxpayers are unconcerned or get their answers from conversations with the taxing unit," he said.

Rande Thorpe, chief financial officer for WCS, said Tuesday's hearing was the first in his career at WCS in which anyone spoke in opposition.

Tuesday, approximately a dozen taxpayers were at the hearing to show their opposition to the WCS budget, and Vallerie Rowland and Angela Fulton of CCQE made statements and presented information.

Rowland questioned the inclusion in the budget of new positions, at salaries of up to $70,000, and other positions, such as "mental health therapist," that appear to be duplicated in different areas of the budget.

She asked why some line items in the general fund, such as the business payroll, had increases of more than $3,000.

"If we're having to close elementaries, why are we giving some people raises?" she asked.

Rowland also mentioned that some funds were moved from one classification to another, and noted that travel expenses were listed at $400 for each elementary school except the three slated to be closed. Travel expenses for Atwood, Claypool and Silver Lake are listed at $800 apiece.

Fulton voiced her concerns about salaries in the school corporation. She had earlier asked for and received from superintendent Dr. David McGuire a list of administration salaries. But, she said, the salaries he listed and the amounts shown in the general fund budget are not the same.

For example, McGuire gave his salary as $99,053, but his salary is listed in the general fund as $109,500, Fulton said. The same was true for other administrative personnel, including the elementary and middle school principals.

The opposite is true for others, such as Tom Ray, principal of Washington Elementary, whose $80,914 salary (which includes 6,886 for coordinating summer school) was higher than the $74,185 included in the budget.

"My question," Fulton said, "is why the numbers do not match."

(All salaries of teachers and administrative personnel for public school corporations in Indiana are a matter of public record.)

Thorpe said the budget is not meant to be specific.

"A budget is just that - a budget, a guideline," he said. "It is not intended to be, nor was it ever intended to be, specific amounts."

The amounts in the 2004 budget are the maximum expected to be incurred during the 2004 calendar year, he said.

The 2004 budget would include potential raises "that may or may not occur in the second half of 2004," Thorpe said.

He also said many of the positions that appear to be new are for personnel from the North Central Indiana special education co-op, which was disbanded and the personnel absorbed by the five member school corporations. Since Warsaw was the largest of those corporations, WCS took the most employees.

Helton said his report on the hearing will be submitted to the DLGF commissioner. However, because of the property tax reassessment delays at the state level, the 2003 budgets have not yet been approved. The 2004 budget will be delayed until the 2003 budget is approved. Helton had no estimate of how long either would take.

And while this hearing may have been a first for Warsaw Community Schools, the CCQE members claim it won't be the last time they will scrutinize a budget and show up at the hearing to voice objections.

"Every year we'll pull up that budget and go through it," said Rowland. [[In-content Ad]]