001All right. I now call to order the special session for executive board meeting on April 11th, 2025. Roll call, please. Here I would like to read a statement from member Evelyn Tinsley. I Evelyn Tinsley would like to ly recuse myself from participating in the session regarding Mr. Murray. I've known Mr. Murray personally since 2010. Given these personal connections, I believe it would be best to step back from this discussion to avoid any perceived conflict of interest and to maintain the integrity of the board's process. I'm stepping away with the hope that truth, wisdom, and righteousness will guide the outcome of this situation. Thank you, governing board member Evelyn Tinsley. and we will file this for the record. Um, we want to now move to a moment of silent prayer or private reflection. Amen. will please
002stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Uh now I need an approval, a motion to approve agenda 2.1. I move to approve the agenda. Yes. We would like to thank you for joining us today. The reason for the special session is in regards to um the financial audit that this board had um requested and had done. And today we have Mr. Brisco with us um who actually performed our audit with Brisco Consulting Group and um he is going to be explaining the findings today that will um help determine or help everyone understand more of why we are here today and the reason for
003this um special session. So at this time we're going to turn this over to Mr. Brisco for his presentation. Good morning. But none of those positions were turned into that was particular. So let's start with my revenue concerns. Um there's Sorry. And of course the gold line is showing where to lower the actual amount and planning and effort. Again, revenue should be calculated uh accordingly to how it's supposed to be dispersed or when revenue starts to transpire. Um administration should communicate with the board and that's the be the concerns are not reporting higher than normal revenue the board administration certain positions and not being completely aware of certain funding or higher levels of funding that's available for your school district. Um, next lack of quarterly reports or midyear financial reviews. Um, I looked through your
004transparency for using the budget documents that return to me. Um, I didn't see any type of monthly uh variance reporting which would again identify how mechanisms are performing throughout the year. Having cyber reports available to board members and administrators, it gives the board and administrators the opportunity and to make adjustments in real time that ultimately impact uh student success. Uh next sorry there were so your funds grew eventually from 29 2019 to 2024 but this was due to uh product under spending. again um I I saw no subsequential intent documented in your financial audit associated with the particular years that I evaluated which was 2019 to 2024. Uh there were no journal notes. There was nothing turned into the for package through these years. We've got to uh search those to notify administration that these
005large amounts of funds would be turned over to fund balance. And I saw the purpose to those large amounts that were turned over to fund balance. Now, as we got into your general election, these are my top concerns. My top concerns were the type of price that I witnessed through the tickets that I collected right there from 2019 to 2020. It also included thousands of accounts that were uh not transparent that I would consider unethical and that I was considered not compant when it comes to your financial when it comes to financial standards and out of the 30,000 accounts that I reviewed there were over 15,000 accounts that were in jeopardy of this type of financial mispractice. And those mispractices included accounts, which means these are accounts that have budget overment throughout the year. And
006what was more concerning is that these accounts with no movement, had no or no monitoring or exception report included with the the accounts that fully funded throughout the year. That's where overs there's a threshold where the your business your business officers or your business department would disclose at a certain level of variance and certain budget code understood and again monthly reporting the administration and the board will have opportunity to make adjustments accordingly once information is provided. Unfortunately for the district this information was not And the next my next concerns were the accounts that had been transactions with no budget whatsoever. Again, in situations like this from your month to month, budgets are typically you have a system that's capable of tracking your expenses accordingly and I don't know 15,000 some amount of the funding that
007was associated with each questioning this practices. Now disclosure this not amount doesn't represent cash flow. So this is this is not necessarily money coming into the district nor money going out. This is a accumulation of the amount of money per as we can see the transactions are in the mail. Now the most concerning ones again are dormant accounts. Dormant accounts again are funds that either from administration or hidden from the board. Again, the board can have the opportunity to make a decision on where those funds will go throughout the year, which basically will financial and purchasing decisions for your district. I noticed when I were over 50,000 entries and typically for contact associated with an item and there were 2400 uh entries on your check registers that had either a zero or a negative and
008this hinders transparency and it usually leads to weak financial again. Again, there was significant understated very consistent from 2019 to 2024. This is an example on this particular excerpt of your 2022 budget which shows the effects of having an understanding by function. Like for example, million that the $6 million variance in instruction when you budget typically the budget is tied to learning objectives and instruction you know that is the area of any educational institution um so when people see transactions and such is a situation to where it wasn't the $6 million allocated towards Typically what this means is that programs seem to be currently funded for high administration was not because this funding was not assigned to those particular objectives but it was put back to funds and again there's no narrative to explain um
009these expectations And there's no uh explanation of the drivers of these particular variants by function. In conclusion, uh these findings although the method I discovered violated any statuto or legal policy. However, when it comes to financing, it is extremely unethical to communicate to not practice or recent money without having exceptions. An exception report again illustrates the reasons for accounts, the reason for spend the reason for having accounts with transactions. U my recommendation is to increase uh the integrity of your money report by having reported and by having attached that any uh money movement or non your financials for your district it's not just a financial document it is ethical document because what it tells the public is how you going to spend your activities that are here. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Brisco. And I do
010have a couple questions for um you just um for transparency with the people in the room today and those that will be destroys very misleading when it comes to your public stakeholders. Again, it cripples the district in being able to make informed financial decisions if you don't necessarily know where your money is allocated for. It's not allocated properly. Question for you with these understanding that we reconcile to the fund. So they know the whole category they do not reconcile to the individual account. So as long as the money is in those particular funds the state won't necessarily report it as a fund because again it's not policy kind of govern how school districts manage their funding because again you have to spend your money uh on supplies you have to spend your money on contract
011services to say that they give the school district to do that that's up to the board and administration but it's up to the financial officers who are the experts to disclose that information and to make sure it's accordingly. So without this we would have never been able to discover these billing accounts and essence the financial advisor failed to be to the board to give us adequate information for our finances. I would agree with that statement even by the way this is not necessarily legal requirement problematically All right. Yeah. Lisa, do you have questions? Um, Mr. Brisco, on page 22 of the report you provided for us, you have a um graph that shows or a table, I'm sorry, that shows the um budget versus actual summary and it details the years um 2018 through 2024.
012Are you able to display that table and Can we talk about it a little bit? Thank you. Yes, I am. Thank you. So, just so I understand for each of those fiscal years, that is the amount that could have been dispersed by our but by our board but was not. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. no documentation uh with any anticipation of those amounts with that amount of position that's going to go back to your phone. So, absolutely, you know, you you should have had opportunity to anticipate, hey, we're going to uh all of our functional areas by $12 million. Uh here's an opportunity to recalibrate. So our budget amendment should have been brought to you in the amount of totaling up to $12 million using that as an example. I'll go ahead and
013read the amount. I'm sorry. And that should have been documented either in the or documented somewhere in your financial report especially uh your uh financial reports that are posted for transparency. Okay. I will go ahead and read the years and the amounts for people who might need that. Um so for 2018 the ending fund balance was in excess of $12 million. In 2019, it was in excess of 13 million. In 2020, it was um in excess of 15.6 million. In 2021, it was in excess of 18.4 million. In 2022, it was in excess of 21.3 million. In 2023, it was in excess of 23 million. And in 2024, it was in excess of 26.6 million. That's correct. Is there any further questions from board members at this time or statement? All right. Um, okay. At
014this time, we will need a motion to go into executive session. I move to go into executive session. Yes. Yes. Yes. Just so council and Matt knows, um, Mr. Murray has some questions he would like to ask in public. Um, so at this time, I'm going to make a motion to come out of executive session for those questions to be part of the the original conversation. And I will second the motion. Correct. We will need to set up. Yes. Okay. Yes. Sorry. So, u So, Mr. Murray, we need to make sure that you're agreeing to come out of executive session at this time for questions. Okay. Thank you. And you want to speak about this openly? Okay. Okay. Awesome. All right. So, Mr. Brisco um Mr. Murray um would like to just end the public
015hearing before we go into executive session discuss um some of the findings and and have some questions. Can you hear us, Mr. Brris? Yes, I can. Okay. Yes. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Murray, if you could come behind the podium, please just for the camera and and uh the mics. Thank you. My eyes is not that good. So just a couple clarifying questions for the fund balance calculations. So when you're looking at budly expenditures and actual expenditures, what funds are they what funds are you looking at to get those numbers? So So it's total of all funds all funds in the general ledger. Okay. So, so when you're talking about a $12 million ending fund balance, that's not just the maintenance and operations fund, correct? And that's not just capital funds, correct? Correct. So,
016would that also include like auxiliary and student uh student activities and um title funds or whatever? What funds are we looking at here? activities. [Music] Okay. But they are recorded in the general ledger. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Correct. So the 12 million that we're looking at just in context is is and is a fund balance of many funds in the state of Arizona. And and just in all due respect, can I ask you or how much experience do you have with Arizona finance? Just Okay. So, Arizona finance is extremely different than many other states. Most other states auditors will tell you that, especially those who work in the state of Arizona and have worked elsewhere. So, just that being on the record, um, in transparency, I just want to make sure because I I appreciate your
017your findings. I you use the word unethical. Uh, I'm just for the record, I'm an extremely ethical man. Um, there's nothing that I would do that would be below board in any way. uh this is I would walk away from this or any other job before doing something that was unethical for the record for the public as well. So $12 million again sounds like a big number but we're talking many funds. So to present it in a way that makes it sound like we have all of this money to spend and we're usually typically leaning to the general fund of maintenance and operations and capital for paying salaries and benefits, supplies and whatnot. Most of that comes from the operations fund and the and the capital fund. Mainly auxiliary is a cash controlled fund. So
018while while I just want to focus on this for a second just my point was I just want to make it clear that the $26 million figure when we're talking 2024 again many funds. I I just want to make that perfectly clear that we're not talking about Mr. Murray has $24 million sitting in the maintenance and operations fund that we can pay teacher salaries. That that is that is not not accurate and I don't believe that you are communicating that. Mr. Brisco, so I just for the record, I I just want to make sure that everyone's clear. So ending fund balance, it's it's again it's it's what do you have left over at the end of the fiscal year that's available for you to roll forward in the form of fund balance so you can
019start your next year with those unallocated funds or un unspent funds from the year before. So on that Right. It's those are big numbers, but we have to understand the backing and the context behind those big numbers. Do we are we do we agree, Mr. Brisco, on that? I mean, is that an accurate statement that it's multiple funds? Yes, I agree. Okay. So then my next so this that that slide's no longer relevant for me but my next statement when you come when you were mentioning uh the fact that we have what was the word you used regarding the funding lines that had activity but no budget dormant accounts I think it was okay so a dormant accounts in the state of Arizona and you saw my general ledger I have tens of thousands of
020account codes. So in the state of Arizona, we just like other states as well, but state of Arizona, they always have to do something even more so to make it a little bit more complicated. But in the state of Arizona, not only do we budget or do we expend to the full account code strand for detail purposes, fund, program, function, object, unit, meaning the site level and even an optional is the course code on the end for other accounting transparency purposes. That is what we do in the state of Arizona. So all of those funds, all of those account codes in the AFR and in the financial reporting roll up to the fund level and that's where it's reported. So the dormant accounts the GL fluctuates on a daily basis as you know and as
021you pointed out the general ledger movement in and out of that and all around function I mean it it moves on a daily basis from actual um expenditures recorded in the GL to pre-incumbrances and incumbrances that are made and an attempt to purchase and permission to purchase and then when a purchase order is executed and then it actually becomes an incumbrance waiting to be paid. So the general ledger and all of the tens of thousands account codes that you saw are expended per the state of Arizona to a level of detail that allows us to capture for transparency purposes allows us to to capture in what I call in my department and when I train we call the account code we or we refer to the account code as that it should tell a story.
022An account code is like a book. As you know, when you look at an account code, you should be able to tell a story of where of what had happened with that particular transaction and that expense. I should know and anybody who's reading it should know that the monies came from a particular fund. Let's just say maintenance and operations. And then it was coded to program code 100. And in Okay. Sometimes we use 104, sometimes I use 550, sometimes I use two. I mean, there's so many program codes to drill down on the level of detail and transparency of what that actual expense, how who actually utilized that expense, where where would where did that expense actually what purpose did that expense have? So, it came out of maintenance and operations for regular education. The
023function of is for instruction. It could be in the 2,00 function range for support staff and students. It could be in the 2600 function code range for operational expenses. It could be in the 2700 function code range for transportation. It could be in the 3000 range for food service in the bookstore. So, every element within an account code tells a story. And there's a there's thousands of of ways to record a transaction with one account code, but the same type of program code consistent throughout. Or I can change the fund to a different funding source like title or like student activities, but then still record that expense to regular education for instructional purposes to pay a teacher or to pay a custodian. my object codes strands with 6,000 object codes or expense object codes. They
024tell a story. You looked at our chart of accounts from the auditor general that I that I sent to you. It's very very very detailed. In fact, the auditor general just this year did another revision to it for fiscal year 25 that we pivoted to yet again for changes from the state to make it more specific so that we can track um something like classroom site funds, monies paid to teachers that were for additional duties like coaching or an object code that is a stipen but it's not pertaining to additional duties like a national board certification. The the account code structure continually evolves in this state and And I think in all honesty, I think it's for the better. And yes, it's a pain sometimes. But again, to use your word of transparency, it's for
025that purpose so that we can we can detailed we can we can record a transaction to the level of detail that will satisfy all transparency. The state of Arizona over the last couple of years uh in our financial reporting has also added another document to report expenditures to the site level that has happened just over the last couple of years. So that unit code that I mentioned earlier and that account code strand also plays a crucial role in transparency so that we can look at the general ledger and expenses and drill down to the site level. so that I can and anyone who's looking at and I present it to the board probably I'm going to do that again here next month for the budget revision it shows there's actually the AFR shows the detail
026at the end of the year but it shows detail as to the transaction and the purpose behind the transaction and that sitebased accounting we were able to see how many teachers are at Smoke Tree elementary. And as far as how much are we paying for teachers at Smoketree Elementary, how much are we paying for supplies at Smoketree Elementary or purchase services and so on and so on. So the level of detail and transparency is there. So going back to your dormant account statement, dormant accounts exist because there are so much variation to the level of detail in which I have to expenses that even throughout the year we're adding additional account codes. I just added one today to pay for professional development or for for professional development that will be coming here in the near
027future. I just added that account code today and it's to that level of detail of the fund and it's coming out of rural assistance fund 482 regular education. is staff professional development. 2570 is the function code and the object code for for staff development and training of bringing in someone to present and the unit code is the superintendent the superintendent's office. So 529 all of this in the state of Arizona is by design to promote and increase transparency when you're looking at the GL. It's complicated. It's hard to follow. If you don't do this every day, it it's a foreign language to you. And I I think you can understand that in your roles that you have had. Sometimes what we do on a day-to-day basis and trying to help others understand it. It It's
028really difficult for them to to grasp that level of understanding. Um if they really just kind of sort of want to know, you have to really want to know in order to know it. If you're just casual and just give me the information, give me the 5-second version of it, you're never going to grasp it as you're aware of that, I'm sure, in your role. So that that delinquency account or those those dormant accounts, the reason why there may not be a budget assigned to it is for that level of of recording, drilling down to the expense and all of those account elements. Yes, I could I could adjustments. Bank I can do budget journal adjustments that we've done that from time to time but again in the state of Arizona it all rolls up
029to the fund and to the function and to the object code. It's all reported there. I don't have to in the state of Arizona assign a budget to a 6114 object code when it just rolls up to 6100 or to a an 1101 function code when it all rolls up to function 1000. That's how it's reported. There's no unethical practice in that. There's no not being transparent about that. It's just a fact in the state of Arizona. That's how it is. And I present that information when it comes to fund balance on that slide that you showed us earlier. Again, we we need to we need to we need to bring in the total context behind some of this as well. The $26 million, yeah, it sounds big, but it's not big when you're talking
030about student activities, auxiliary, um, M 610. There's how many funds did you see on that report? There were there were close to a hundred. So to say that there's some mismanagement here, there's a lack of transparency here, you know, I I don't take offense to that. But when my name is attached to this, I I take a, you know, I'm going to defend myself a little bit. So again, the the dormant account, if that's what the board's going to request, uh we could do that. We could do that. I I just, you know, I'm going to we're going to need some help. It's there's just a lot. You know, you saw my org chart and I I know that superintendent is working on some other how how to restructure some things around here. You saw
031the org chart and you you pointed it out. How many people are overseeing that org chart, that structure? How many people were actually the ones overseeing those sub departments? That's a qu that's a question. How many people were were Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How many people were there? How many people are overseeing that org chart purchasing accounting? There's one director and then what you what you then what you don't go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just saying as I'm as I'm now just asking questions and presenting some information here and I'm not making excuses. You know, I I navigated this district and you probably did too through a pandemic. People were were throwing money at at entity government entities left and right. The federal government dumped a lot of cash in a lot of districts around
032this country. We were trying to pivot and monitor and adjust to not only meet the demands of the requirements involved in these excess funds, one-time funds, not sustainable funds, one time. And then and then make informed, sound decisions in the meantime to responsibly allocate funds and spend them so where it's not wasteful spending. I'll never for I'll never forget this and and maybe it's maybe it's going to be a fault of mine and and and maybe you know the board and others may may not appreciate what I'm about to say or this this this viewpoint but here's an experience I had. I'll never forget it. And I was actually kind of embarrassed for these individuals and it stuck with me about wasteful spending. I I had there were two city workers city I'm not going
033to disclose where I was at. Two city workers came into a a business that I was managing at the time before as I was going back to school to enter into this profession. and they came into the into the the establishment and they walked up to the front counter and the front desk with a purchase order in hand and put it right down on the counter and said, "It's your end. I need to I need to spend this money or I'm going to lose it." and they continued to shop and they bought thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of equipment. It's good for us, but that's not how it's supposed to be. We shouldn't be incentivizing bad purchasing requirements all in the name of of risking that that hey, I'm going to lose
034this money. So, because I'm going to lose this money, I'm just going to just randomly purchase. That's wasteful spending. So, as I navigated this district through the pandemic, I had people anded probably too coming into this very building wanting to sell portable air filtration systems. And they wanted to they wanted to sell by the hundreds of thousands. And there were a lot of districts, not in this state, but even throughout the country, who who did that. And what did it profit? Had a man come in with a small little personal air filtration device that he wore around his neck. Had to sell that to every every every staff member in this district. That was his that was his uh sales pitch. Why? Because we had to breathe cleaner air during that pandemic. Maybe so. But
035how long did that last? Do you see that today? Few and far between. Do I ever see somebody wearing a personal air filtration system around their neck? That I could have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars because I'm going to react to that. And we didn't. One-time funding is one-time funding. No matter how you slice it or dice it, there's many people in this state who committed those funds and now they're backpedaling and and are hurting people who have who who did not make that decision. But it's impacting the lives of people and organizations because they now are backpedaling and trying to figure out how do we how do we now sustain this and that's coming in the form of layoffs and other reductions. So when we talk about unethical practices or we talk about
036not budget or having dormant accounts again we we need to we need to understand that this is the state of Arizona. It's not Texas. I love your state, but it's not going back to the to the revenue. I don't disagree to your statement about about budgeting to the line item and posting revenue, I should say, to the line item. That's not how it's done in the state of Arizona. It's but we budget we record revenue to the fund and to the revenue object code. So if I'm going to record revenue, it's I'm going to have a fund that it's going to and the revenue object code that shows that this is revenue. It's not recorded in detail to the line item. I don't fill in a a a a program, a function, a unit or
037course code. In rare cases do I do that? Maybe when we're talking about gifts and donations because we're restricting those funds for a specific purpose because the donator came in and said, "I want this money to go for this purpose. I'm going to restrict that revenue to that level of detail because I want to make sure that it's expended to that level of detail." But overall revenue that's coming in via property tax and from the state, it doesn't reported that way in the state. It's not a Lake Havasu city thing. It's a state thing. Fund object code. That's where the cash, the revenue lies. All of the expenditures hit those other individual um account codes by detail. And yes, because there are so much we record to that level of detail, there is so much
038detail behind it. Not line is going to have a budgeted number next to it. Not every expenditure line because again it rolls up to the fund or to the function or the object. That's just the state of Arizona whether we like it or not. I'm not saying I like it. I'm not saying I don't like it. That's just that's just reality. So, you know, and when you went back when you talked about the the revenue lines that we here's our actual revenue and and what we budgeted to. The reason behind that as well because we're talking about a lot of funds. We we just had that conversation as we pointed to that that fund balance chart. There's a lot of funds involved. I don't hang a budget I don't hang a budget line on cash
039controlled funds and the reason behind that is it's a cash controlled fund. Monies come in and out all the time. We have student activities they're fundraising all the time. So when when the student council at the high school does a car wash and they gather money and we deposit it into to their specific account. I don't have a budget signed up or assigned next to that. And the reason behind it is because I'm not going to restrict them to what they're able to spend. It's their money. So there's no budget assigned to that. Yes, there's revenue, but there's no budget attached to it because it's a cash controlled account. They may have $1,000 in it today, but they do a big fundraiser, which a lot of them do, they could have 20,000 in it next
040month. If I restrict it at $1,000, then then I got to I have to I have to continually adjust that every time money's come in and out on a cash controlled fund. It's just not sustainable. It's doable. But then again, I would say that I would be fully in support of Dr. Skinner's idea of how do we restructure things? I I've had clean audits here the the the entire time I've been here. Talk about transparency. Every year when our auditors are sitting in the room right off to my left, we have a work session where the auditor comes in and presents current information to date. This is what we found so far. This is what we're working on. It's not the AFR or the acter or the AFR that comes later. The only reason why
041we we submit an act for or we have an ACT for completed is because we've sold bonds. Our financial report is our annual financial report which is shown to the board in October of every year. And I sometimes have been criticized by or joked at maybe a little nudge, you know, and joking from board members in the past asking me how long is this going to be? I know they care, but I when I present my acter in budgets, I go down the budget report. There's a lot of districts. I just came back from a conference last week of school business officials and one of one of the actual breakout sessions had to do with budget revisions and budget presentation. What they present to the board, I'm telling you, is far less than what I
042give our board. I walk through the budget sheets because that way people can connect the dots between where did the money come from or how do we get it on a budget form to then how did we spend it on the AFR in October and I have a summary page of page one of the AFR and at the bottom I break it out and I give them examples of what what actually constituted what what made up number in the form that you're looking at utilities, salaries, benefits, etc. in each of the columns. I can give more if that's what's required. No, not post. I just need to know what's what's expected. But for for me, one one of I won't mention, but one of our board members overheard a conversation in the high school parking
043lot a number of months ago from another individual. She actually criticized me for putting her to sleep because I usually don't present this way. Maybe I need to stand up more often and present, but usually it's just here it is. I'm a pretty mild man, but I'm I'm not going to allow the setting to paint me as an ethical man. If I'm not, then I I will hand over my keys and walk away before I would do anything unethical. This means nothing to me when we talk about ethics. Nothing at all. So to sit here and to hear that and to sit here and have you present respectfully on something that has no relevant or little relevance to the state of Arizona, your your detail was relevant in the facts of figures and numbers, but
044the context behind it not 100% aligned. So I respect your your findings. I'll own whatever findings the board accepts, but I won't um being cast as an I won't I won't own that I don't that I'm not upfront and honest with the people that I associate it with. I won't I won't. So yeah, your report sounds really bad. In fact, I should probably just walk out. And maybe that's what happens. I don't know. But I'm not an unethical man. I'm not hiding things. to a fault. I'm transparent. I appreciate your report. I respect you and your report and your job and what you were hired to do. And in all transparency, I gave you what you requested and I didn't hear anything back. Usually in every audit that I've ever been a part of, there's
045a little bit of back and forth like, "Hey, can you provide me some clarification on this? I think that what I just communicated right now could have probably made you go. Okay, I I can see that point. But no, it had to happen in a public meeting without any type of back and forth before. That's what it is. I'm fine with that. And I'm not an unethical man. I am completely transparent and and I will not ask for forgiveness of it. But I am a humble man and I appreciate you. I appreciate the board. Whatever happens happens. I'll shake hands and walk away. still support them. Most people will say why would you do that and ask myself why too but I would any other questions. Thank you Mr. Murray. At this time Mr. Brisco,
046do you have any response um to that before I open it up for questions to the board? Okay. And uh at this time I'd like to open up for questions uh since we are the part of the public hearing. Uh questions to Mr. Murray from the board before we do go into executive session at this time. Vice President Houston. Any questions? to the students and so I don't think that I want you to know that the board apparently So are you talking about the fund balance report again that that slide that he had up just earlier the 26 million especially in a district where our students% proficiency out of three students that only so they are brought they are brought they are brought brought before the board in the form of carry forward that's where
047it all was function I saw that money is here for not and that was our problem. That's the problem. So, so that's so the problem is is that you've been here for three months. So, when they come to you for money. So, so for the record, I don't push people down. I don't tell people we don't have money. That's part of part of my concern to be honest with you because over the last several months, I've had a handful of people come to me that I know Mr. Murray's a conservative guy who needs that's not a bad thing. This is this is how it's communicated to me, actions and all that. Hey, but we're going to we're going to start spending money. We spend money. We spend money responsibly. I'm I'm not I'm not the
048one who makes those decisions, but you know what? often times that's people come to me and I give them numbers but then it requires a team an admin team to then pull those numbers apart going through the pandemic like I said we we were spending money we were pushing monies though from we were instead of using operational expenses to buy um custodial supplies by the truckload because we were trying to just make sure we never ran out of product because there were issues with supply chain as we all recall. Those monies were spent out of federal lesser funds and we did generate a healthy carry forward out of other funds. It's not that we didn't want to spend it. It's that we needed a plan on how to do that responsibly, sustainably. It was never
049requested. I I bring every I bring every budgeted every budget packet to the board and it shows and it shows variance. I'm not saying million for students noticed. That's right. process. Member Roman, you have questions. I would I will add to that. There's No accusation here of malice on your part or personal enrichment, but I have you said that Mr. Houston has only been on the board for three months, which is true. I've been on the board for years. I have sat through your budget presentations. I do not believe that you have ever given us as a board the information. Here we are at the end of the year. This is how much we have in excess that has is not been spent. What would you like to do with that money? Would you like
050to it for the following year. Would you like to disperse it? No one here is advocating for wasteful spending. No one here is advocating for, you know, the so the so-called use it or lose it mentality where we're spending things money on things that we don't need just to get rid of it. But here's are some examples of nonwasteful spending of useful spending where we could have allocated this money in prior years in a place where it would have been very much used. We could have substantially increased salaries in previous years. We could have uh put out hard to fill stipens for some of these positions um that where we can't get teachers and we can't fully staff our schools. Those are not examples of wasteful spending. Those are examples of where it is appropriate
051to take your excess balance and put it to good use for our district. And that is as a long-term board member, I feel like I was not given the opportunity or the information to make a decision that was beneficial to our district. I am not accusing you of benefiting yourself. I am I am saying that you have withheld information from our board that we could have used to benefit our entire staff. So while I I respect your comment, I can tell you I've not withheld anything from the board. I have when I took this position, I just like any business director would. I'm sure Mr. Brisco over time, same thing. You walk into a new position, you figure out what's been done in the past. I provided what was provided in the past and then
052even enhanced that. I I asked people what they want and what I presented. All I get the only feedback that I ever receive is again jokingly, is this going to be a long time? But every time I walk out that door after any type of budget presentation, and that's that's that's my feedback. So this is this is a litmus test. Am I doing it am I doing this right? Am I giving people what they need or am I not? Never at any time did anyone, superintendent, board members, or anyone say, "Mr. Murray, we just we just need more." Never happened. Every time I walked out that door, I walked away from that seat, whether it be people in the public or all five board members, they'd say, "Hey, good job. You know, thank you for
053presenting that. It was easy to follow." And and that's the feedback. I've never my intention is to never withhold anything. There's nothing to be withheld. But if if that's if that's what's been what has been presented over time and then I even brought it to the next level and people seemed fine with that, then that's all I know. That's all I know. Everything is available online. the full entire um spreadsheet of any AFR, any budget form, proposed, adopted, whatever, it's all there. And that's what I knew to bring because of the feedback. So if someone's telling you, hey, you're you're satisfying my needs, then what why would I do anything different? because if I'm satisfying your needs, whether I was or not, nobody told me that. So, so it's hard. I'm pretty good at reading
054a room and I'm pretty good with being open and transparent and being I try to be approachable. I really am a nice guy. I don't say no to say no. In fact, go ask my maintenance guy right now because that used to be the standard here. and it wouldn't get back to me. The standard used to be no and other people were making the no decisions and it wasn't at the admin level. So, it never got to the end of the row to make me aware of that until I finally caught on and had somebody tell me that. Then I put a stop to it. You ask my maintenance supervisor now, it's kind of a joke, but it's not. I always tell him, "Give me five reasons why we can't doesn't mean I'm requiring exactly
055five, but the point is I'm not going to accept no. No doesn't cut it. That used to be the old way around here a number of years ago, but over the last couple of years that it doesn't cut it. And so I I know there's there's something, you know, at another school, not going to say which one, about wanting to redo a gym area. I give you full contact. Nobody's coming to talk to me about it. You take you come to the source and Mike's saying, "Oh, hey, Mike, why'd you say no?" It's pretty easy to ask that, right? And I'll tell you why. We actually involved the high school administration coaches because the original plan was they wanted to put in they wanted to utilize weights. The high school said, "No, no, wait. We
056don't even do weight training until 10th grade because of developmental of a person's body." So two principles ago is when that conversation started. We talked about a lot of different things. It went right back on that principal's lap and his court figure it out. Let's tweak it. Never heard back at all again until just a couple weeks ago. This just came back to life. So I don't say no to say no. I always give a why. And don't come to me, not you, but anybody. just just say, "Hey, I'm never going to just tell you a flat out no and walk away." I tell you no, there's going to be backing behind it. That doesn't mean it'll remain a no. Maybe others are going to see something different. Okay, I I'm overruled. Fine. But I'm
057I don't say no. And back to your point. I I can't do any now. Now it's obviously pretty clear of what you want, but it wasn't that way. My my feedback was good job. It's exactly what we want. And if it didn't say anything, then I I apologize that I didn't hear that. That was the feedback that I've received. I'm going to push back on that a little bit because if I go to a doctor and I get a blood panel and I I go to my doctor to discuss and he says, "Well, your hemilocrint was this, your um your iron was this, your B12 was this." Goes through a bunch of different numbers. The doctor has gone through a lot of information with me. If he says your blood sugar is blah blah blah,
058but doesn't mention, oh, your blood sugar is at a level where it means that you're at risk for diabetes. He doesn't say that. He just gives me a bunch of numbers, a bunch of information, and doesn't give me the relevant information that I'm there for in the first place. I am relying on that medical professional to give me advice in accordance with his expertise that would help me make a meaningful decision. The fact that I did not know to ask you, by the way, you've given us all these numbers, but what is our bottom line going into our next year? What actual amount of money do we have at our discretion? The fact that I did not know to ask you for that specific information does not erase your responsibility as a financial director to
059to give our board that information. It's it's there in the budget documents. I mean, I I always push those forward, but I I I apologize if I didn't highlight it to your level of of satisfaction, and I that's that's on me. But it's it's been there. it's been presented. It just But that is the whole point of having a finance director is that they a finance director gives the board the information that they would need and and gives them maybe a little advice or you know we have all this you know we have this money just sitting there year over year over year and it's growing every year and our staff salaries are below the state average. Is there something that you would like to work on to maybe improve that? That is what I
060would expect from a financial director. All right. Thank you, Member Raman. Um, first of all, Mr. Murray. Um, I want to thank you for being here today. Um, I I do want to reiterate what Vice President Houston has said. I don't believe you're an ethical man. Um, I consider you a righteous man that wants, you know, tries to to do the right thing. And I I do have some concerns. Um, I think there are some miscommunication issues. um decisions that have been made that have um potentially, you know, had the previous board known and and I want to direct this more to the previous board because we are, you know, 3 months in. Um things could have, you know, there was different decisions that could have been made. We're not here today um to question
061um your ethics as a as a person. Um this is not a session to attack you personally. Um we are here today because as an elected board we have an obligation to the community of transparency um when it comes to finances and to to seek the answers that we're looking for and and communicate that. So um I just have a couple questions uh just for myself. Um when we speak about the auditors that we are using um how many years have we been using the the current auditor? I I have to get that information. It's been since I've been here for sure. All right. And who hires that auditor? Is that a board decision or who's they do approve the auditor? It goes through an RFP process. Okay. All right. And what and of course
062you don't have this in front of you. Um we're close to the end of the school year. Uh we're we're a month away almost month and a half from from the 202 uh 425 year coming to an end. Um would you just off the top of your head know what our current fund balance is in our accounts as as a district? Just obviously it's not total fun balance. I can tell you that M general fund um we still have incumbrances there. So we're still we still have movement because we have people who leave early. Some people who are still encumbered for a full amount of their position but they have left or terminated early. right now in the general fund, we're probably at around $10 million. Okay. Thank you for Thank you for answering this.
063Um, at this time, if there's no other questions or discussion from the board, I would need a motion for us to go into executive session. I need to go into exe and I'll second. Yes. to come out of executive session. I move to come out of executive session. All right. Yes. Yes. All right. At this time, I will need a motion. I have a second. Yes. Yes. Is there any announcements from the board? All right. Second. Yes.