001Good evening everyone. It is 7 p.m. on September the 22nd, 2025. I would like to call to order the meeting of the finance committee for LA Community School District 202. Second off on the agenda is item two, public comment. Did we have any? No, we did not. Excellent. Uh, the third item on the agenda are the minutes from the August 25th, 2025 finance committee meeting. Does anyone have any questions or changes? >> No. >> Do we all feel they accurately reflected last finance committee meeting? >> Yes. >> Excellent. >> Yes. >> All right. We have a very short agenda today. Uh, item four is the snow removal services bid addendum for school year 2025 2026. The information can be found under the regular board meeting packet under item 6A8. Mr. Wilkinson, if you would please.
002>> Uh, thank you. Uh, our first agenda item is the snow res removal services bid addendum for uh, school year 2526, the one we are currently in. Uh, the Lenin group was awarded the uh, snow removal contract at our October 2024 board meeting. Uh the specifications within that bid allowed for up to four rollover years uh one year at a time uh with annual increases that would be capped at either 5% or CPI whichever one was lower. Uh this past year was the first year that we had Lenon and we were overall pleased with their performance during the 24-25 school year. And so based on that, I reached out to them regarding an extension uh which they were amiable to and agreed uh to continue services for the 2526 school year. And the pricing obviously
003followed the bid specifications which matched the 2024 CPI of 2.9%. Um, snow removal costs are typically charged to the operations and maintenance fund. And for the FY26 budget that we'll be talking about here in a few minutes, we budgeted $52,000 for this purpose. Um, though obviously weather can fluctuate depending on weather patterns, what the Farmers Alman Act says, and all that kind of good stuff. I did receive a question regarding the cost of snow removal for the last three years and how that compared to what we actually budgeted for during those years. And so, um, I would say that overall they've been consistently coming in below that budgeted amount. Um, largely due to, uh, the lighter snowfall that we've seen at least the last two years, maybe longer than that. Uh just for example, last
004year we budgeted 65,000 and only spent 33,000. Obviously is good. Fiscal year 24 the budget was 50,000 and we spent $31,000. And then the year before that it was $55,000 and we only spent $24,000. However, I would add if you go back just a little bit further to fiscal year 21, uh we actually spent just shy of $50,000. And if we look back at our rates and what they were back in fiscal year 21, they're a lot lower than what we see right now. So, um I know it's a conservative budget. We obviously hope that we do not spend all of that, do not have to, but if we get some significant f significant snowfalls, uh those dollars can be eaten up pretty quickly. Um, if there are no further questions, that was the only
005one I did receive via email. Uh, the recommended action is to approve the snow removal bid addendum with Lenon as included in your board meeting packet. >> Thank you. Are there any more questions? >> Excellent. It was a good summary. Uh, next up is item five, the fiscal year 2026 final budget, which can be found under item five of the finance committee packet. If you would take it away again, Mr. Wilkinson. So, the budget has been on public display since it the tenative budget was approved back in June. Uh, so that meets the 30-day requirement uh spelled out in school code. And then also the public hearing that's scheduled for later this evening during the regular board meeting. Uh so the purpose of our time right now is just to look at uh those changes
006that happened between uh our tenative budget back in June and what you have here tonight, which is the final version of the fiscal year 2026 budget. I think it's uh I don't have it in front of me here, but it's page uh page two of what you have. Uh that's the sheet that uh kind of compares the tenative budget to the final budget and I made some notations there of what those uh changes were. I'll just run through those really quick. Um first of all, the beginning fund balance was updated to reflect the final or I should say the unodudited financial results that we have so far for fiscal year 25. and those came in a little bit more favorable than we initially uh kind of projected at that third quarter um financial uh update
007that we had. And so that ended up increasing by about $300,000. As far as revenues are concerned, I did make an adjustment to our interest income figures. I actually uh increased that by a little over $200,000. What I've noticed over the last few years is that it seems like that interest income is always coming in higher than what I budget. And so I looked back a little bit at kind of the methodology I use for that uh budgeting of our interest income and decided that there was some more dollars that were kind of in our money market fund over the course of the year and weren't necessarily in CDs and treasury notes and bills which I specifically map out what those are going to mature and what those amounts are. And so I think I
008wasn't accurately reflecting some of those cash balances in our money market accounts, kind of that cash reserve to make sure we have dollars available for bills and things like that that might come up. And so the interest income on those dollars actually ends up increasing what we earn. And so I kind of adjusted our methodology for that those kind of balances over the course of the 12 months. The biggest reduction in our revenues came on the um state side with our transportation fund revenues. Um, I should have looked at the specific amounts before tonight's meeting, but I I I know that on the um on the claim when they give us kind of our estimate once Mary Beth does all of the puts in all the information, all of our costs, all of the mileage
009uh for that's required for the transportation claim, it spits out an estimate for us, which is typically what we use when doing the budget. And in that estimate, they use a proration of I think it's 80% for regular and 70% for special ed. I don't know if you recall when we were looking at the on results, I mentioned that, hey, what we got for revenues didn't match what I had budgeted. I had budgeted higher and we ended up getting less. Well, I dug into that a little bit more. And what I realized is what they put on the estimate, I would say, is a rosy outlook on what they're actually going to be providing. And in reality, it ends up being about 10% less than this. And so there was also I think it was
010in a it was in a newsletter. I don't know if if it was the ISB weekly update, but they were projecting the proration because for the most part the funding is flat. The state hasn't been adding any additional funds to what reimbures us for transportation. Yet, as we're seeing at Lyall and many other school districts are seeing, those costs are going up. So you have the same amount of dollars available for higher claims and so ultimately it just ends up getting prrated further. So for the budget I actually used I think it was around 70% for our regular and 60% for um special education. Without getting into too many of the details there's also a factor within the claim that looks at what your property values are within your district. And then that also I
011would call reduces what you end up getting reimbursed from the state. So even if I'm telling you for special ed we're getting 60% and regular we're getting 70%. It actually ends up being when all is said and done if you look at our total expenditures for the year we get about 40% back from the state. So, in terms of the change from tenative to final, I used what the state is telling us is probably going to be that proration, which is about 10% less, and that reduced our transportation fund revenues by about $200,000. Um, so that kind of takes care of the revenue side. On the expenditure side, um, as we get to September and we start with the final with the first payroll of the year, we have better idea of what our salaries
012and benefits are going to be. We've hired all the positions, everybody's in place, so those numbers always get um finalized in our in the final budget versus the tenative. So those numbers are reflected in what you have tonight. Purchase services also ended up increasing by just over $400,000. A lot of that is we saw where the transportation fund ended for the year and so based on those final results I ended up kind of increasing what we were budgeting for our costs in the transportation fund. Um supplies was mostly the same. We did uh if you recall back in I think it's February when we talked to you guys about our requests for um technology items. One of those items was Chromebooks for the first grade level. And so after further conversations, it was discussed that
013we could defer that a year. And so those costs were removed um from the budget and we decided we're going to um move forward with what we have for at least one more year. And then um special education budgets for tuition. Mary, Beth, and Jen did a great job of looking at all of our students, what the actual estimated tuition costs are in terms of the private facilities, and what Sassid was saying tuition was going to be. And so, the numbers that are in this final budget reflect those uh revised student counts and revised tuition amounts to try and get that as accurate as we can at this point in time. Obviously, students can move in the district, students can move out of the district. Um, so that number can always fluctuate, but uh, both
014Jen and Mary Beth did a great job of really digging into our numbers this year to try and get that budget as accurate as we could um, as we finalize things here this month. And then finally, just kind of a small item, we did purchase some um, furniture for the STEM lab over at the junior high. Part of our uh, desires for the renovation is to get some new furniture along the way. And so this was kind of that initial um step is just to get some kind of really necessary furniture right now in that STEM lab. Bottom line um overall looking at all of our operating funds, we do have a balanced budget in terms of uh revenues and expenditures. It's just uh just slightly over a balanced budget, a small surplus. And then
015across all funds, um, we are seeing a excess of expenditures over revenues by just over $800,000. And that's primarily related to our capital project at the junior high this past summer, which consisted of um HVAC renovation uh replacement in the commons and then adding a um theater stair um in the back of the the junior high auditorium uh to meet code. Um let's see here. the uh operating fund balances. I this time of year we always look at kind of where our fund balances stand relative to board policy 4 col 20. That was I think uh a separate attachment in the in the finance committee packet and you can see that it's projected at the end of this budget year to be about 166 days of expenditures which is well within our guidelines of 90
016to 180 days. As far as questions, I did get one question on the fund balance report. Why isn't the FY Oh, I'm sorry. This is related to this the page two that's in your packet. Why isn't the FY25 ending fund balance the same as the FY2026 beginning fund balance? Um, I think if you look at the first page, you can see uh the beginning fund balance there in that first column doesn't necessarily match what the uh starting fund balances for fiscal year 2026 in the second column. And the reason for that is um the FY25 column is showing um the ending balance from our FY25 budget that was filed back in September of 2024. So that's based on kind of what our anticipated budget was where the column for FY 26 is actually the beginning
017balance based on our unodudited financial results that we just looked at last month. So it's really comparing kind of apples and oranges budget from September versus what our actual results ended up being um this past fiscal year. Another question, why are the state and federal revenues decreasing and is this a trend? I kind of uh laid out for you in detail what's happening on the state revenue side as far as our transportation reimbursements. Um federal revenues is a little bit different story. It's primarily because of our ESSER funds finally falling off. We had a little bit I think it was around $160,000 of ESSER funds in fiscal year 25 and that was the last year. So those all dropped off and we will not have any esser funds in in fiscal year 26. The only
018other item related to federal revenues is uh we have been doing a good job of spending some of the carryover. We had kind of some carryover amounts from the COVID days and and when we weren't in session and not spending all those dollars and so we've been spending down those those carryovers from one year to the next. And so we're not getting as much carryover dollars as we have maybe over the last few fiscal years. There was also a question if the decrease in state funding was tied to both transportation and lower CPPRT. Again, I touched on the decrease related to the transportation proration. CPPRT is actually in a different category. That's actually in our local sources is what they consider corporate personal property replacement taxes. And so those budget amounts, while they have fallen
019the last two to three fiscal years, this estimated amount that we got from the Department of Revenue for the the year we're in right now, fiscal year 26, actually ended up being flat. So there's some good news there. We didn't see that drop, but we also didn't see it increase at this point. Uh, another question was the decrease in federal funding tied to lower school lunch reimbursements. Again, it's kind of the the same theme. Um, mostly tied to our ESSER funds, but we did uh I guess refine our national school lunch um estimates in terms of what we were expecting to get in terms of those dollars. If you recall last year, it was our first year with Chartwells. we were um looking at increased participation. So we had to make an estimate of what
020we thought we would get based on that increased participation. Turned out to be a little bit less than originally anticipated. So we did lower that budget a little bit in fiscal year 26 um based on those results. I think I have one more question. Um can you elaborate on the Yeah, this is related to the fund balance review. That's that separate attachment in your packet. It talks about uh can you elaborate on the $1.1 million increase in the transportation fund balance shown in the fund balance review. This one's a little bit complicated. Uh I'll try and summarize it as best as I can. Um if we actually go back a few years to fiscal year uh 2023, um we saw our fund balances go from 1.8 8 million in the transportation fund all the way
021down to $900,000 as our cost rose. And so kind of based on seeing that, making sure um the fund would would stay solvent, we wouldn't go deficit in that fund. Over the last two to three years, I've actually started to increase our levy in the transportation fund to make sure there were enough dollars in there to cover our costs. As I've also mentioned, we're getting less from the state. So, if we're getting less from the state and our costs are going up, I had to increase the levy in that fund. Um, we've seen a little bit of a stabilization in some of these costs. If you look at the year, we just finished up fiscal year 25 as compared to last year, it stayed right about that $3.1 million amount. So, that's some good news.
022We didn't see the increases that we've been seeing over the prior few years. Um, and so kind of with that in mind, obviously we'll see where we head as we move through this year, but when we get to the levy for 2025 coming up here in a few months, we will obviously evaluate where the fund balances are in the transportation fund, what those expenditures have looked like, and we may make some modifications to how much we levy for transportation versus moving that levy into the education fund a little bit more. So, uh, it was very observant to notice that increase. We're aware of that increase. Um, I guess we're kind of kind of happens after the fact because you have to make decisions on the levy and then you increase the levy and then all
023of a sudden like the fund balances go up where previously we're worried about the fund balances going to zero. Um, and so obviously we will look at that closer when we um come up here in in October and November and look at the next at the 2025 tax levy. I mentioned this uh earlier uh at the board meeting. Once you vote, there will be a clipboard uh that Miss Alman has. Please make sure that however you decide to vote, whether it's a yes or a no, please make sure you sign your name in the appropriate column on both copies. There's actually two copies on that clipboard. I will need that when I go to file it with uh DuPage County. And unless there are any other questions, um that's kind of the overview of what
024has changed since June. And we are recommending approval of the fiscal year 26 final budget uh at the regular meeting as presented. >> All right. Are there any further questions on the budget? No. Thanks. Well, thank you for all your hard work on this, Mr. Wilkinson. We appreciate it. And we'll be uh looking at this in the regular board meeting. >> Okay. So that brings us to uh agenda topics for future finance committee meetings. Does anyone wish to add something for our uh next meeting? No. Okay. One day someone will. Doesn't seem to happen in this meeting very often. I don't know why. All right. So uh with no other agenda items, I will attain uh entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. >> Second. >> All right. So we will adjourn then at
025uh 7:19 with uh Mrs. Alman and um and Miss uh Dina. Thank you very much everyone. Good day.