Warsaw School Board Sees 2012 Budget
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By David [email protected]
The proposed 2012 budget is $69,632,074, or $968,357 more than the 2011 adopted budget of $68,663,717.
At the regular Aug. 22 school board meeting, Chief Financial Officer Kevin Scott will request permission from the board to advertise the budget. The first publication of the legal notice will be Aug. 26, with the second publication Sept. 2.
A public hearing on the 2012 budget is scheduled for Sept. 7 at 7 p.m. at the administration office.
Official adoption of the budget is scheduled for 7 p.m. Sept. 19.
For the budget work session last night, board members had a 74-page packet of information for review. Scott said the session was the “11th hour” of the budget process. When he asks Monday to advertise the budget and move forward, that locks the figures in the budget.
“We always budget conservatively,” Scott said.
The Indiana Department of Local Government Finance will have the final say on the budget figures.
Of the seven funds in the budget, only the debt service fund is without a cap, Scott said. However, the circuit breakers, which cap property tax increases at 1 percent for homes, 2 percent for agriculture and 3 percent for commercial property, have an effect on the debt service fund. All taxing units in the district are impacted by any additional debt any taxing unit in the district takes on.
“If we are going to work on facilities and take on additional debt,” Scott said, “then we would have to take on a referendum. If approved by the community, that falls outside of the debt limit.”
The proposed 2012 debt service is $8,683,274, which is a 4 percent drop from the adopted 2011 debt service of $9,040,560.
Scott said the debt service is proposed to go down because the borrowing on the original construction of the high school was paid off this year. Umbaugh & Associates, Warsaw School’s financial advisers, said if the intent was to keep the tax rate flat, the school corporation could do general obligation bonds of $2 million for improvements.
The general fund is the largest of the funds, with its proposed 2012 total being $44,991,034, a 2.6 percent increase over the adopted 2011 amount of $43,832,042.
The general fund comes from the state. Part of the funding is determined by student enrollment.
At Warsaw Schools, student enrollment has been flat the past two years. Due to programming changes such as the waiving of tuition for out-of-district attendees, free full-day kindergarten, new programs at the Gateway Education Center, the addition of Chinese at the high school and world languages at the middle school, Scott said they are assuming an increase of 100 students for the 2011-12 school year. State funding per student at WCS is $5,325.67 per student for 2012.
The proposed 2012 retirement debt is $543,931, an increase of 0.9 percent over 2011’s $539,312.
Capital projects is proposed to increase by 3.7 percent from $9,626,918 in 2011 to $9,980,510 in 2012.
Some of the big items under CPF, Scott said, include the Warsaw Area Career Center has been split out of the high school. Large items for the WACC include flooring replacement and signage as it works toward its own separate identity.
The Alternative Learning Center has relocated to the old Madison Elementary and renamed the Gateway Education Center.
Also planned are window replacement at Harrison and Eisenhower; varsity baseball press box and multi-purpose storage facility; general high school campus improvements totaling about $100,000; electrical upgrades at Lincoln; boys locker room upgrades at Edgewood; and fencing at Madison and Leesburg.
Transportation and bus replacement funds both will see an increase over 2011. Transportation for 2012 is proposed at $3,099,325, an increase of 6.6 percent over $2,907,385 in 2011. Bus replacement will increase 16.2 percent from $717,500 in 2011 to $834,000 in 2012.
The transportation operations fund is proposed to increase primarily because of fuel costs, Scott said. According to information in the board’s packet, “fuel costs are estimated to rise 19.6 percent, from an average per gallon cost of $3.50 to an average of $4.19.”
A lot of Warsaw students take the bus, Scott said, and that is expensive. The transportation department is planning for another bus route to meet the demand.
For bus replacement, Transportation Director Della Swain will be asking for six 66-passenger conventional buses to be replaced in 2012. In addition, in order to meet transportation needs and support extracurricular activities, Warsaw plans to petition the state for two additional 84-passenger buses for its fleet. Bus cost projects for the six conventional buses is $99,000 each, while the transit buses have a cost assumption of $120,000 each.
The last fund is the Rainy Day Fund, which is proposed to decrease by 25 percent from $2 million in the adopted 2011 budget to $1.5 million in the proposed 2012 budget.
Board member Kent Adams asked what the percent increase for the total proposed 2012 budget would be if the Rainy Day Fund was left as it was. Scott said it would increase from 1.4 percent to 2.1 percent.
Later, Adams said, for the budget the school corporation was really projecting over 18 months and it’s all really a guess.
“If the state doesn’t get its revenue, you’re not going to get it. But this is really the best guess,” Adams said.[[In-content Ad]]
The proposed 2012 budget is $69,632,074, or $968,357 more than the 2011 adopted budget of $68,663,717.
At the regular Aug. 22 school board meeting, Chief Financial Officer Kevin Scott will request permission from the board to advertise the budget. The first publication of the legal notice will be Aug. 26, with the second publication Sept. 2.
A public hearing on the 2012 budget is scheduled for Sept. 7 at 7 p.m. at the administration office.
Official adoption of the budget is scheduled for 7 p.m. Sept. 19.
For the budget work session last night, board members had a 74-page packet of information for review. Scott said the session was the “11th hour” of the budget process. When he asks Monday to advertise the budget and move forward, that locks the figures in the budget.
“We always budget conservatively,” Scott said.
The Indiana Department of Local Government Finance will have the final say on the budget figures.
Of the seven funds in the budget, only the debt service fund is without a cap, Scott said. However, the circuit breakers, which cap property tax increases at 1 percent for homes, 2 percent for agriculture and 3 percent for commercial property, have an effect on the debt service fund. All taxing units in the district are impacted by any additional debt any taxing unit in the district takes on.
“If we are going to work on facilities and take on additional debt,” Scott said, “then we would have to take on a referendum. If approved by the community, that falls outside of the debt limit.”
The proposed 2012 debt service is $8,683,274, which is a 4 percent drop from the adopted 2011 debt service of $9,040,560.
Scott said the debt service is proposed to go down because the borrowing on the original construction of the high school was paid off this year. Umbaugh & Associates, Warsaw School’s financial advisers, said if the intent was to keep the tax rate flat, the school corporation could do general obligation bonds of $2 million for improvements.
The general fund is the largest of the funds, with its proposed 2012 total being $44,991,034, a 2.6 percent increase over the adopted 2011 amount of $43,832,042.
The general fund comes from the state. Part of the funding is determined by student enrollment.
At Warsaw Schools, student enrollment has been flat the past two years. Due to programming changes such as the waiving of tuition for out-of-district attendees, free full-day kindergarten, new programs at the Gateway Education Center, the addition of Chinese at the high school and world languages at the middle school, Scott said they are assuming an increase of 100 students for the 2011-12 school year. State funding per student at WCS is $5,325.67 per student for 2012.
The proposed 2012 retirement debt is $543,931, an increase of 0.9 percent over 2011’s $539,312.
Capital projects is proposed to increase by 3.7 percent from $9,626,918 in 2011 to $9,980,510 in 2012.
Some of the big items under CPF, Scott said, include the Warsaw Area Career Center has been split out of the high school. Large items for the WACC include flooring replacement and signage as it works toward its own separate identity.
The Alternative Learning Center has relocated to the old Madison Elementary and renamed the Gateway Education Center.
Also planned are window replacement at Harrison and Eisenhower; varsity baseball press box and multi-purpose storage facility; general high school campus improvements totaling about $100,000; electrical upgrades at Lincoln; boys locker room upgrades at Edgewood; and fencing at Madison and Leesburg.
Transportation and bus replacement funds both will see an increase over 2011. Transportation for 2012 is proposed at $3,099,325, an increase of 6.6 percent over $2,907,385 in 2011. Bus replacement will increase 16.2 percent from $717,500 in 2011 to $834,000 in 2012.
The transportation operations fund is proposed to increase primarily because of fuel costs, Scott said. According to information in the board’s packet, “fuel costs are estimated to rise 19.6 percent, from an average per gallon cost of $3.50 to an average of $4.19.”
A lot of Warsaw students take the bus, Scott said, and that is expensive. The transportation department is planning for another bus route to meet the demand.
For bus replacement, Transportation Director Della Swain will be asking for six 66-passenger conventional buses to be replaced in 2012. In addition, in order to meet transportation needs and support extracurricular activities, Warsaw plans to petition the state for two additional 84-passenger buses for its fleet. Bus cost projects for the six conventional buses is $99,000 each, while the transit buses have a cost assumption of $120,000 each.
The last fund is the Rainy Day Fund, which is proposed to decrease by 25 percent from $2 million in the adopted 2011 budget to $1.5 million in the proposed 2012 budget.
Board member Kent Adams asked what the percent increase for the total proposed 2012 budget would be if the Rainy Day Fund was left as it was. Scott said it would increase from 1.4 percent to 2.1 percent.
Later, Adams said, for the budget the school corporation was really projecting over 18 months and it’s all really a guess.
“If the state doesn’t get its revenue, you’re not going to get it. But this is really the best guess,” Adams said.[[In-content Ad]]
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