001John Gerber. I'm the president of the uh school board here. I would like to thank everybody for coming to our uh community forum to hopefully try and figure out how to move forward with our school district's budget. Um we're here tonight and I I just want to go over a couple things. Um we're we're here to, you know, inform each other and gather feedback from everybody. Um we're not here to debate individuals. Um that's why we have a different format and we have everybody sitting at different tables versus um people being able to, you know, come up and and speak. Um after the presentations um we're gonna have a round or not a round discussion at each table with different questions that we're going to share with you and and hopefully we can get your
002feedback and um come to a consensus after this. Um you know we we all care about all the students and the staff in this district. Uh we're we're here trying to come up with a budget so we don't have to go to a contingency plan because I I don't think anybody in this room wants that. Um so so hopefully after tonight uh we can come to an agreement. Um I would like everybody to be respectful. Um you know I I don't want to have to ask anybody to leave. Um we do have police officers here if somebody does get out of hand. Yeah. >> Um, but tonight's forum is designed specifically to discuss the school budget and working together to determine a path forward toward a budget that can be supported and passed by the
003community. We understand that there are important concerns and questions people want to discuss tonight, including topics such as class sections and home loans at administrative positions uh at the assistant superintendent role and high school tuition. you hear those concerns and those conversations are important. There will be an opportunity this evening to share thoughts on those concerns. In the future, there can be additional deeper discussion meetings and workshops dedicated to those topics, but right now our main focus is to come together as a community and and get a budget passed. All right? We we we're under a timeline here by the state. We have to have all this finalized and submitted so we can go out with another vote. Um so again the main focus is is to remain on the budget itself and what the
004budget and tax levy should be put forward to the community and how we move forward together from here. We are working with a very tight timeline which I just said and right now the most critical issue facing the district is avoiding a contingent budget by finding a path to a successful revote. So tonight, um, we're going to go over a brief timeline and the history of the budget discussions that we've had so far. Um, it's going to be an informational presentation. Um, the budget options uh requested by the board and um, you know, we met on Tuesday. Uh, there was a couple members of the community. Now, now these are just ideas, uh, that we came up with to share with you. Obviously, this is not the final plesio um budget that is going to
005be presented to the entire community and and that's why we're all gathered here uh tonight. Um we have facilitators from Boseies at each table. So, thank you very much for coming down and helping us assist to get this um matter resolved hopefully uh sometime soon. And then uh obviously we'll have a wrap-up and then closing remarks. >> Okay. Um, so throughout the evening you may have questions that come up. You'll notice on your table there should be a stack of index cards. If you have a question that's not answered or you have during the evening you don't want to forget, you can write it down. There's a question table at the back. There's going to be people at that table. They're going to take the questions and they'll join them together into themes um or
006universal ideas questions. um at the end of the night they'll share out those themes and then we will publish responses to the questions um for the next couple of days. All right. So that's what the purpose of the index cards for and you can just get up in during the evening and drop them in the back. All right. >> Okay. I'm going to hand over to to Scott to talk about some of our slides here. >> I'm going to try to just talk without the microphone. It's easier for me to just go off my slides. If anybody can't hear me, just speak up and I'll try to be louder. But I tend to have a confused voice if I want to. So, um, let's just go over to start with kind of just, uh, review
007where we're at to date. Um, the original budget that that we put out, um, you know, was prior year budget, the proposed budget was a 5.7% increase over prior year. It was also a tax levy increase of 4.87%. Um, that equated to average household a $21 per month increase. Um you definitely heard some feedback on that the first time around. Um and that budget of course got rejected by the voters um by almost 70 votes. Um some of the justification um behind that proposal um this was part of the conversation throughout the process in the spring. Um just the cost of everything, the cost to run a district um has increased substantially. A lot of that goes back to post pandemic and co the rates of inflation kind of skyrocketed for those two-year periods. Um
008this is kind of a a visual representation I did during the budget process to show where inflation was kind of increasing significantly. But there were during those years the district was working hard to keep the budget andor the tax levy at zero uh to combat some of that. Now, as costs continue to rise and our levby did not substantially make up the ground, you can see the red line is just kind of our budget increases over the last few years and our levy kind of remained kind of steady. Uh so that proposal was based on a a rollover budget and then with specific additions we had to add on top of things that we needed in the district this year that are going next year as well. We had to make up the difference somehow
009in the tax revenue. That's where that proposal came from. >> Okay. So, obviously everybody's here because the budget failed. So, with that, um you know, the board had a couple meetings and our goal here is to revise the budget. Um revising the budget and and hopefully approving the budget allows the board to move forward on our own terms. um if we're forced to go to a contingency budget, unfortunately, uh a lot of the directive um comes from the state and and we don't want to have that. Um so, we're here tonight um to hopefully come up with an agreement on the the tax levy, what everybody feels is appropriate to go out to the community. I mean, obviously, you just saw the the slide that Scott presented. For many many years, we we held the
010the tax levy extremely low, but obviously with inflation and and the cost of everything else rising, um I hope everybody understands that it costs more to run a school district. So now we're we're, you know, in a predicament here where we we need to catch up. Um so we we did reduce the overall budget. Um we we reviewed the expedentials between what we had last year and this year and um there's certain areas where uh obviously the main budget or if we can't go out with the the original budget, we will need to make cuts to come up with the difference. And um you know we also have one-time revenues um in reserves but obviously we we would like to keep some of that reserve there for future tax increases next year long-term planning. I
011mean yeah we can use it all this year but then what do you think happens next year? Unfortunately uh the tax level would be even higher. So I mean with that um you know just this this year alone we we have reduced administrator titles. Uh I know um a lot of people see in the budget the administrative portion of the budget and and I just want to reiterate again that that is not the salaries of the admins that we have. Um, you know, we also, you know, try and keep our teachers here and only eliminate them when they resign or move to another district. And if the need arises, of course, we'll have to replace them. But, um, in this situation, if if somebody leaves and we don't have to fill that position, then that
012is an area for us to save money. Um, you know, right now we're in the process of of reviewing the different programs that we have and uh this the special education I mean I'm not sure if everybody's aware but special education costs are skyrocketing and um we did bring in an outside company to do a study for us and there you know after this we're going to move forward with a district-wide enrollment study for every student in the Um just to piggy back off what John said about administrative salaries though too. Um the salaries of administrators are in that component but there's several other components that make up an administrative portion of a budget that maybe the public isn't aware of. For instance, uh there's Bosey's administrative charges. That's the cost of Boseis operating for
013all the district districts in the county. uh both these capital costs that are related to the capital projects not going there that every district in the county has a portion of I mean those two alone for our district total around $400,000 you know so that's a pretty big percentage right there of those administrative costs that we've been talking about in addition to the the administrator salaries you have to also look at the cost of employees in those individual offices as well you know for instance in the past we had an assistant superintendent of business I've moved into that position but I don't have that title All right. But in that same as well is my staff as well who's my treasurer his salary. We have purchasing in that department as well. So even though it's
014included in the administrative budget, it's not just the administrators. All right. There's a lot of other things like uh legal services for instance or the the accounting services for our annual audit. A lot of these things are necessary and they add up to make up a big portion of that outside of the salaries. Uh John also mentioned reserves. Um in that original budget that was voted down um of course we were looking to raise the tax levy to 4.87 to kind of raise it to the legal limit we could uh to bring in as much additional revenue as we could but we were also looking to tap into some of these reserves balance the budget as is. All right. So we have the retirement contribution reserve and insurance reserve tax reserve capital retirement insurance and
015capital we were looking to use entirely to balance that first budget that's keeping the budget as is rolling it over putting necessary increases into it even with the tax that we had at 4.87%. Um so part of this process now that been part of the conversation we've been going through also is revisiting you know these reserves and the use of one kind funds and trying to reduce the effect on the district to use and just um you know one topic uh that was also on the budget was the uh the fire alarm system at the elementary school. Um, not only am I the board president, but I'm also on the facilities committee. And um, when I first joined to replace the elementary school fire alarm, it was um, under $250,000. But obviously, we are trying
016to save the district money. Um, and in those past two years, that same fire alarm system is now over $400,000. Um, and unfortunately due to the age of the system itself, uh, we're we're it's hard to find parts for it. So, if that fails, and and we did discuss this on Tuesday night, if that fire alarm fails at the elementary school, until we can get a new fire alarm into that school, we would have to move all the staff and students down to this school. Um, and then obviously come up with money somewhere to try and pay for that. So, right now, you know, we have two options. We can either add that back into the into the budget and hopefully we get approval for that or um you know, after we get the the
017budget approved, we can go out to a capital project vote. Um and it would just be for the fire alarm at the elementary school. Okay. So, review of the uh the the workshop and what we're going through. So, um, again, on Tuesday, we we came out, um, and we modified the budget and reduced it by 1.1 million, um, and keeping the the tax levy at 2.98%. Um, but with that, uh, that does not pay for everything that we just discussed. So, we went out and, um, if you know, we want people to discuss this. That's why you're all here, but we would like to go out with a higher tax levy. uh to hopefully get that fire alarm paid for and actually be able to put some of that money into the reserves that we're
018going to have to use this year for future tax levies. So, um just to pay so just for basic numbers here and I Scott if I'm wrong here just correct me but in increasing the uh the tax levy by a quarter so 0.25 25 that raises the tax levy I think 50 grand roughly. >> Yeah, just >> so raising it to 4.25 would we would have enough money to pay for that fire alarm at the elementary school and you know a little bit of money left over to put in reserves. Not much but that's you know what we would do with that. >> So this is a detail of what John mentioned about Um the proposal we put out on Tuesday night at the workshop, it was the initial revised budget proposal. As John stated,
019it was 2.98%. Uh would that be increase? Um overall, we we looked at a proposed budget. It would be a decrease of over $1.1 million in this plan. Um the 2.98% tax increase equals uh for for the average house for Green Lake a $13 a month increase compared to what we originally went with it was over $21 that got voted down. Um so in addition to a reduced tax levy though you can see on these reserve lines for retirement insurance we're we're we're reducing the amount that we're pulling from one time funds as well with the reserves planning to save that money in case needed in the future for for additional reasons. Um so the combination of those all of those reductions there uh we had to look at reducing the budget over 1.1 million.
020Also you can see here state aid went up um the legislative state aid run ended up coming out where we were receiving additional state aid compared to what we had previously been reporting. Um and in addition to that um we got a recalculation from state aid on our projected aid as well. So the combination of those two is what makes up that $156,000. All right. So this kind of plan reduces, you know, maybe the tax levy a little bit. Also reduces the district's reliance on one time funds also to balance the budget when it comes to the cost of reductions. >> So Edwin's question becomes when you have to cut $1.1 million, what gets cut from the budget? And the first thing you do is you try to look at things, right? Like what can
021what can we buy less of? What can we cancel a subscription about? What can we do that? But in all honesty, that only gets you so far. When you're talking $1 million, you're talking more than just things. So, yes, with a going out with the 2.9%, there would be an impact to staffing. What does that look like? Well, it looks like six positions across multiple departments. When I talk about multiple departments, it's administration. It's instructional staff. It's instructional support staff. It's buildings and grounds. It's transportation. Every department we've looked at, we had meetings with the department heads, we said we're going to have to look at staffing. So we are looking at at a 2.98 and really in all the proposals that we're looking at tonight cutting six positions in add and what that is,
022it's five in addition to the assistant principal. Uh and then also a reduction in the number of work hours for some of our hourly workers. the things that we were able to cut that we looked at cutting. So for example, curriculum instruction, business and technology departments were able to cut some of their softwares and they're going to work with less softwares. Buildings and browns agreed to to reduce some of their contracted services. Couple examples of that. One, we do tick control two to three times a year. We're now only going to be able to do tick control maybe once a year um with a goose control. If anyone's up here, you guys know the goose population. They like to live here. Um and the geese do some damage to our fields every year. So, we
023hire company to come out and help control the geese. That would also go away. Um and then there's some other contractual services as well. uh and we would buy only two buses instead of three buses. We would eliminate the fully funded field trips. About I would say probably eight nine years ago, field trips were added into the budget whereas parents didn't have to pay for the academic field trips anymore. That would come out of the budget and would go back to the uh parents. Reducing tutoring services that we offer. Uh we have been purchasing student consumables like crayons, pencils, scissors, notebooks, uh folders for students that would be reduced to some extent, not eliminated, but reduced. Uh clubs, before school club, before school clubs, after school clubs, reducing the number of clubs, uh reducing the
024training for the school lunch fund. So, for anyone that's not familiar, a school lunch bud is a completely separate fund from the budget, but there is money allocated from the budget to go into the school lunch fund every year to help supplement it. Uh, so we'd be reducing that transfer a little bit. Um, and then again at 2.98% it eliminates the fire alarm system replacement at the elementary school. Uh so similarly, this is the same kind of idea for the four the first order request which was they wanted to see what it would look like if the tax levy uh was still a little bit higher of an increase of 4.25% um as well as including the ele funding for the elementary school fire alarm system seeing as now that's it's kind of top list.
025Um, so by doing that, we're looking at a proposed budget uh reduction between what was voted down at just over $700,000. Um, and then you can also see the corresponding uh adjustments of use of reserves and the tax levy at 4.25%. Uh, that would then be an increase for the average household of of just over $18 a month compared to the original 21. Um, so of course that's a little bit higher. We're trying to let me a little bit more taxes in this proposal to get some revenue into the future. Still still reducing a few reserves to save that money going forward. Um but we have to make x amount of cuts to do that as well. >> And so basically what you're going to see with this 4.25% including the fire alarm, it is
026the same exact number of cuts. It's the same reductions. There is no changes. The only difference between what I just shared before and this 4 25% would be that the fire alarm system would be fully funded through the budget. >> Uh the other option the board asked was for the same type of increase in tax levy uh to to get that tax revenue in uh but then just maintain all of the reductions from the initial initial plan we put out on Tuesday. So, this wouldn't include the alarm or any of those other items. It's just reducing the district's reliance on one time funds and reserves. Um, so that's kind of what's happening in every one of these budgets. If we're we have a set budget, even with cuts, we have to make up the budget
027deficit between tax revenue and or one time. So, that's why you see the fluctuation here. In this example, we would increase the tax levy, but we wouldn't have to tap into the retire retirement reserve at all. So that 701,000 will stay for. >> So again at the 4.25% and the reduced reliance onetime funds in the reserves, the reduction still stay exactly the same. They do not change on almost any of these plans. The difference here is the reduced reliance on one times. So same changes >> the budget fails a second time. What happens? All right. We have to look to adopt a contingent budget. All right. Um the main thing with a contingent budget proposed tax levy is zero. So we would not be able to raise the tax levy at all the prior year.
028And that's a big deal because that does not only affect the budget we're talking about now, but it restricts the amount of tax dollars we can get into future years. Um the tax calculation, the first part of it, prior year's tax le that affects not only current year based on this proposal, we'd be looking at a contig budget reduction of over 1.6 6 million. All right. Now, even with those reductions, you can see by the 0% tax levy, we're tapping into these onetime funds and reserves, insurance, tax certiary. I mean, those are funds we'll never get back, but we would have to use them just to balance the budget. Um, once again, for the contingent budget, again, it's the same reductions. Um, initially you see that the list is a little bit shorter um because
029things go from reduced to eliminate. So you now can buy no buses. You now buy no Chromebooks, no iPads, no garage tools for the transportation garage, no equipment for buildings and grounds. If something breaks, it breaks. Um, we would then have to charge the community for facilities use. That is not a choice that the district makes. That's not a way for us to recoup money. That is the law. When you go to a contingent budget, if the community or an organization uses the district facilities, they have to pay to use the facilities. It cannot cost the taxpayer any money. Uh there will be no fire alarm replacement at the elementary school. We look at potentially going out for a vote, I would hope. Um and then potentially even further staff reductions beyond what's already announced.
030The one thing with a contingent budget is that the administrative component and that's all those things that uh Mr. Sullivan talked about earlier which is um yes it's the superintendent's office and some of the administrators is also legal services and uh district clerk and board of education costs has to stay at 8.49%. So there's some movement in there as well. So then we said, well, let's look at all the options on one slide. >> Yeah, it's exactly that. I mean, I thought it'd be good to have a summary um comparative line by line. You can kind of see the uh the adjustments to the reserves and onetime funds, the changes in the tax levy and overall the changes um would look like. Now, these as John stated earlier, I mean, these were conceptually kind of
031different versions that were discussed we talked about were a good idea to present tonight. Nothing is necessarily set in stone. That's what tonight is all about. Um but these numbers kind of reflect the ideas behind it. You know, we have to either, you know, we're going to cut the budget. We also need to adjust the proposed tax that we have used to reserve longterm health. >> All right. Yeah, thank you everybody. So now now the discussion starts. So like I said before we have a a moderator from Boseis at each table. Uh we will be putting questions up and uh remember the the the sole discussion tonight is on these questions and we're not discussing anything else because we need to get this budget figured out. So thank you very much. >> All right. So
032here's here's what this next portion is going to look like. So we do have five uh prepared questions that we will do one at a time. The moderator will facilitate the discussion. They will first introduce themselves. There will be one to two board members at each table. Their role is to take note to listen and to take notes so that they have a good understanding of they want to walk away with a really strong understanding of everybody's thoughts that are here tonight. Um we really want each person at the table to have a chance to share their thoughts and then have a brief discussion. Again, as uh President Thurber just said, we do ask for respectful participation. One person to speak at a time at each table. No personal attack. So if you disagree with
033somebody at your table, let's have a respectful agree to disagree or different input. If people different have different people have different opinions and that's okay. Uh the discussion should relate to the current question at hand and facilitators do have the role of facilitate discussion. So, we are going to soon though we're going to move into question one in just a minute. We're going to do quick introductions and then I'll get a thumbs up from each of the moderators that you're ready to start and then we'll do question one. You have time to talk again. Use the index cards if you have questions. moderators. I turn it over to you and give me a thumbs up. You guys are All right. We're going to move forward with question one. Question one. Should the fire alarm be
034in the budget or go out for a capital project vote? What are your thoughts on the fire alarm at the elementary school? fire alarm. >> It's from what I understand. I don't have an exact I think it's going to We tried to go back to orderate. So many days I think the full budget for you I actually think I thought better. I do. >> No, I do. playground. So, we're still should be part of the budget. Is there to go out? Everything is absolutely That's good enough. So, I'm going to pause the timer for one minute because I've had the same question at a couple tables and I just want you to have the answer so that you can finish this discussion in the two minutes that are left and there's another part too. Part
035one is is it one question per index card or all your questions on one? Please put one question per index card because they're going to be back there sorting them and they're not going to have a way to make copies. So, it's one question per card. In terms of the pay it out of the budget or go out for a capital vote. If we go out for a vote for the fire alarm, there's two different ways to pay for a capital project. One is you create a reserve and then you refund that reserve over time and then you pay once you have money. We would not recommend that in this case. The other way is to go out and then you would do what's called bond the project. And basically what that means is get
036a loan and then the district would get a loan to pay for that and then they would pay it out over time. Either way, it still comes out of taxpayer money, right? Just one is slowly over time over the next however long your bond is, a 5year bond, a 10-year bond, however long your loan is, or you wait till you fund the reserve in full and then do it. So that's that is what a capital project bone means and how it's paid for. Okay. >> Good. All right, go finish. interested in hearing project. So Is that something? It's just like when you're doing something right now that that's Thumbs up years ago. All right, we are ready for question number two. Mike is not working. >> Okay, there we go. All right, question number two.
037What is your tax levy comfort level? 2.98 4.25 somewhere in the middle. Where do you feel? And again, knowing that for every 0.25 25. That's $50,000 to the tax >> ley% >> 4.87. >> So tax levy comfort level for the taxpayers. actually have such a special I'm sorry. Side by Everybody out I think it's very late. Again, the question is Don't worry. I don't even know. Go back to question number one. So, we're down to like a couple minutes. That's what I need. I think that's great. But I guess that also on what is a matter You guys suss out. That's 20%. We're not We're not the because I think the second So the risk is back. Okay, we are wrapping up question two. Moving on to question three. Question three. When making reductions, what
038guiding priority should be considered? When making reductions, what guiding priority should be considered? when they introduction. Thank you. Well, I know who I am. Everybody, I don't know. Whatever it Yeah. Yeah. Elementary. almost. You got any questions? I believe Thank you question. There you have it. So now it's my turn. And we need specific. Wow. That's what they want to do. Yes. So if you bring Okay, next question. What is important to preserve as we move forward in district planning? As we move forward in district planning, what is it important to preserve? state on 450. Okay. starting next year. >> I don't These are the is like you don't get They also need right now. They don't care. Last thing was passed that by 18 or 20. >> Okay. teacher. Same thing. There's another What's
039happening? better use of staff and better training. Can you hear me? I don't know. I know. By the way, What do you think? as a result. I'm going to do that after school. Happy legality. seconds. Okay, our last question. >> Our last question is a general open topic question. Are there any other areas of feedback that you'd like to give tonight? Uh that goes back to what President Thurber said earlier about that you'll have an opportunity to talk about these things. What are some other areas you wish to give the district feedback on? Eight minutes. All right. number of I think it would question from the actual Just let me explain. Chester I wasn't You were recording just over the So the account go to those print. >> I understand. specific last year. So it
040was presented by special maybe Not forcing. I mean, I actually Yes. radio. kindergarten first time around. information all the And we can talk about we can open the board. We have a second school district. So that's what they show. But that overall chart Maybe it's just an eternal father. Okay, take about 30 more seconds to wrap up the conversations at your table. Okay, we're going to come back together to the whole group >> in 5 2 1 Mr. Sullivan, can you join us up here? >> Okay. So, the first thing that I wanted to share interesting. >> The first thing that we wanted to share was just some of the question themes that came out and I don't have full questions but we'll turn them into full questions but the the different topics covered were
041about tutoring. There was a question about custodial salaries. There was a question about can there be a capital vote during a contingency budget. >> There was a question about salary cuts and professional development. There's a question about the cost of police and security. There was a question about substitute teachers and why we have a budget for them. And there was one more that Miss Meeros, you just brought me one. What was the >> Oh, the use of reserves. There was a question about the use of reserves. So, we will actually take these questions. Like I said, we will put them out to the community. You will get answers. Okay, >> table three. Tis kiss tis. >> Um, and now, uh, to end the evening, u Mr. President Thurber is going to end the evening with
042some closing comments. Um, so we did pass out a survey. If you filled it out early and you want to do different answers or you want a second copy, there are extra copies at the front table. We really would appreciate if everyone could fill out here that is here. Take the time to fill out the survey. There is a basket on the table on your way out. Just drop it in there. We are going to sit and review them. Okay. Thank you very much. I turn it over to President Thurber to close out the night. Okay. So, first uh thank you very much everybody for attending. Um, I hope it was helpful for some of you and and I know um, you know, we're trying to move forward here and uh, one thing that that
043came up is, uh, and I'm not sure if it was at every every table, but, uh, at least at my table, more people would like forums like this in the future um, for open discussion with the board um, and community members. And, um, you know, maybe that's something that we'll look forward uh, to doing in the near future. Um, but let's focus now on on getting this budget passed and um, you know, hopefully having everybody be able to stay in the district and uh, not have to make cuts. So maybe everybody approved a higher tax levy and we can get that out there and uh, voting on. Um, so I just want to sincerely thank everybody for being here and uh, participating in a thoughtful and respectful way. Um, I didn't hear anybody arguing too
044loudly, so that was a good thing. Um, we recognize that there are strong feelings, concerns, and differing perspectives surrounding the budget process. Uh, obviously due to the recent vote, these are not easy conversations, and the decisions ahead are difficult ones. At the same time, what was clear throughout tonight is that our community cares deeply about our students, our school, and our staff, and the future of this district. That shared commitment is important and appreciated by everybody in this room, or you wouldn't be here. The feedback gathered this evening will help inform the uh continued development of the revised budget. Uh we will continue to communicate openly with the community regarding the next steps. Um posting online, sending emails. Um and then obviously you have additional questions, you can always email us. Um so thank you
045again for taking the time to be part of tonight's discussion and for remaining engaged in this important process as we move forward together as a community. Uh, have a great evening and thank you for coming and hopefully everybody in this room that's a community member will vote yes. Thank you and thanks Scott for putting all of this together and Sarah