001I'd like to call the special called meeting of the Forsyth County Board of Education to order, June 16th, 7:30 p.m. The members have an agenda before them. Is there a motion to adopt or amend? >> I make a motion to adopt. >> Motion by Mrs. Hoy, second by Mr. Usherwood. All in favor? Unanimous. Welcome, everybody. If you can please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance 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. >> [clears throat] >> With that, we will move into our one and only item on the agenda, the public hearing for the fiscal year 2027 budget. First up is Mr. Hammel with a very brief presentation on the
0022027 budget. >> I think before I start, uh Michelle wants to present this new back screen to everybody. >> Excellent. It's very nice. Very well done, actually. >> Very nice. >> Very well done, Dr. Guga. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Is this uh ADA compliant for the visually impaired? Oh, excellent. >> I don't want any of this to come off my time, just to be right. >> [laughter] >> Okay. So, uh ladies and gentlemen, tonight uh we are going to discuss the proposed 2027 uh budget for June 16th. And [clears throat] uh proposed timeline is uh we initially talked about the budget back on March 17th. We updated the budget presentation March 12th, excuse me, May 12th. Budget presentation May 26th. Uh we had our first meeting on June 9th. We're having our second meeting
003tonight. Uh per federal gu- excuse me, state guidelines, uh we are proposing a potential June 23rd budget approval vote. Um the update on the tax digest is I reached out to the tax appraiser's office and they said they were printing some document today, which means there's a possibility we might get a tax digest by Friday um before next week. So, uh I will leave it up to Mitch to talk to you guys about what you how you want to proceed beyond this uh and further discussions, but that date's still out there just in case we need it. Otherwise, we can we will could be looking at July if we want to move it out that far. Um so, what I'm going to do now is handing it off to Dr. Mitch Young to go ahead
004and talk about all the great stuff and then I can get into the meat of the scenario. >> Uh this is This is presentation [clears throat] number three. Um and so, we've got recorded out there all of our presentations on on the the first half of this. Now, the second half, by law, Larry's got to go down into the into the weeds of the of the finances, uh but for me, I think we've said this enough times and and uh I see Mr. Holder's out here tonight. Mr. Holder, you've been here for one of these. So, if you if you want it, I can go through it with you one-on-one uh or anybody out there that's watching this community-wise, reach out to us. Uh we can we can get you a link to the recording
005or I can go through it. But I I don't think it's probably necessary or appropriate. We want to get to the public participation part of this as quickly as we can, and we do have one speaker tonight, but uh I I would I would summarize go click through I'll tell you when to stop, Larry. Click through a few of these. Okay? All right. Hold hold Yep, nope, one more. One more. Okay. So, I would summarize the first group of slides by saying we have a very successful school system uh by any measure when you look at measurements of uh stewardship of taxpayers dollars we're fantastic. When when you look at the investments in school safety, in student support fantastic. And when you look at all the different areas that can get you accolades from from
006athletics as you see on your screen now to even more importantly the academic pieces in every metric we're doing fantastic, we're leading the way um and uh I I say all those things that we want to not just maintain but as we talked about this previous year, it's a war on complacency, we always want to be focused on getting better. Part of that requires an investment. These things don't just happen in isolation, they happen as a result of collaboration, innovation, accountability. And part of that collaboration we have is with our with our community and and that comes in the form of of tax dollars. So, the return on investment that you get with your property taxes and in your other forms of taxes in this community is that you get a phenomenal school system yet
007one that's been good stewards, we continue to be the lowest per pupil cost in the metro Atlanta area with the lowest millage rate of folks in the metro area. We always have that balancing act between maintaining those low millage rates and and expenditures while at the same time making sure that we're taking care of our teachers and our staff and our leadership um and and providing what our students need to be safe and ahead of the curve academically. All those slides capture that uh as we move forward and so when we get to the actual budget numbers, I just want to keep in mind that all those are tied to our strategic plan and and this budget continues to invest in all those areas as we move forward. Okay, Larry. Uh again, here's here's just
008another example of return on investment. Okay, keep going. Uh go go back one on Larry I I will mention that as I talked about the balancing act, uh this is a good indication that we're taking care of our employees with with our retention rates and the fact that a major national international magazine uh continues to rank us in the top five in the state of Georgia and 158th in the country as a large employer. We are doing some really good things. We always want to get better. We always want to find ways to make sure that our staff and our teachers have what they need to be successful in in in being able to provide for their families as well. Um and all those things taking investment by our community. All right, continue on. So,
009the proposed budget for this year, again, everything that you see presented in this aligns to our strategic goal areas. This year's budget is a proposed amount of $762.5 million. That is a 1.6% increase over last year, and we anticipate that there will be no millage rate increases needed in order to accomplish our goals this year. Um this is just a historical millage rates and where our 10-year history is. And as you can see, over the last four years now going into our fifth year, we have either lowered or maintained the millage rate from year to year. Uh very very few systems can say that and still show the the success that we've had. Uh and then again, just another visual for that. Larry. All right, this year's budget The of 1.6 only 0.58% That's That's
010half of 1%. is a budget increase that is based on a local decision-making. So, it is a very small increase. Um which again gives gives evidence to our financial stewardship. >> [snorts] >> Uh again, I'm not going to read all these slides to you, but this budget helps continue to pay down our debt. We continue to go forward with our building projects paying cash. Uh the East Boss that our community partnered with us on and passed will will help us continue to do that in 2027 and beyond. Uh and we're able to do all this and absorb the cost of state mandated requirements while also maintaining that 15% fund balance for our financial security. This year, we want to invest in our nurses. When we talk about our great retention rates, the one area that
011that we see is a glaring need is we have got to throw some more support, financial support, to our nurses. This budget does that. We continue to to invest in school safety uh and continue to invest in mental health of students and staff and continue to provide funds for our our exceptional school resource officer program. Continuous improvement is always This is the core work that we are experiencing. So, continuous improvement is always at the center of what we do. Um that doesn't necessarily mean you always have to spend a lot of money. Okay, we do invest in that, but it also means working smarter. And we've begun to harness the power of artificial intelligence. And that's something as we enter this school year, I'm really looking forward to us talking about with our with our
012community. Uh but finding ways to streamline and consolidate um is is part of the investments we're looking at making this year in that. Um again, providing a salary step for all of our eligible staff, making sure that we have that end of the salary end of end of career salary schedule uh to extend out this year uh you know, for for teachers. I believe that would take us to year 28, for some other staff to 27, but again, a statement that we want to continue to retain our teachers to retirement and beyond. And again, one of our one of our goals is always to make this this ever-growing system feel small. 54,000 students, yet we continue to hit the mark in most cases of making sure that everybody feels welcome and connected. The state mandated
013increase this year that we that we have to absorb is about a 1% increase. It was a little bit lower than anticipated. We're grateful to our legislature for the help that they have have given us in health care and in TRS. They are also requiring this year and included in those increases are increases that we have to hire 23 literacy coaches. Props to Derek Hershey and our principals for rapidly getting those positions filled. And we're blessed that people still want to move to our system and work here, which is why we're able to fill those positions so quickly. And again, there there you just see that the $7.6 million increases that we have to absorb based on state mandated cost. In the next slide, you can see where the health care and TRS costs have
014gone up over the last 10 to 12 years. Larry. Always a reminder to everybody that while our our military right now stands at 15.208, five mills worth of that money is redistributed to the rest of the state through the local fair share, and that's in excess of $100 million for our our community that Forsyth County tax dollars go out there to support other systems in the state, and you can see that on this chart as well. When you look at our budget, where you spend your money is where your priorities are. Proud to say that when you You our budgets to systems all around us in the state of Georgia, we spend the most on what we say is our core work and that's instruction. And for those folks that feel we're top heavy or
015spend too much at the top level, this is a visual uh image visual image I guess that's redundant but this is a visual display of the fact that instruction is what we spend the bulk of our of our dollars on. And in a nutshell, we need 762.5 million dollars to both keep our students safe safe, uh to keep them challenged academically, to fulfill the promises made in our last strategic plan, and and and continue to be good stewards of our of our taxpayers dollars. And with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Lawrence Hamilton. >> Thank you, sir. So, we're going to talk about the uh the revenue side of it first before we dive into the rest of it. So, typical what we've seen over the last several years is is as we grow
016bigger um and as we have to absorb more costs from the state of Georgia, the percent of our uh budget that has to come from local sources keeps increasing. For this particular year, we're about 53.7 of the budget we pay with local sources versus about 46.3 paid with state and federal. Now, when we look at that breakdown of numbers going from left to right, you can see we have local, state, and federal 27 versus 26 and the increase or decrease for those particular areas. So, right now we're predicting about a 9.8 million dollar increase in local funds versus only 3.4 or five in state and federal for a total of about 13.2 or 1.77% increase. Now, in order to break that even further, what we'll do is we'll look at local revenue funds uh going
017down on your left column as well as your state revenue funds broken down by different categories uh between the 27 budget and 26. As you can see, ad valorem taxes is going to be about 13.9 million dollars. That is a 4% um collection rate with a 99.5% Excuse me, a 4% increase in the tax digest with a 99.5% collection rate and a continued 15.28 mills. Um this year we were behind on collections on a lot of the other local revenue areas. You can see we've downsized some of those areas as well to reflect that change in historical data. Uh the only area that's really even increased has been tuition and that has to do with Gateway and uh the activity over in ACE. On the KBE side, you can see that uh because of slowing
018enrollment uh and other factors, our KBE funds only went up about $2.4 million as other state sources also went up about a million dollars. Now when we look at the KBE Excuse me, we look at tax revenue first, I have a gross projected digest at a 4% increase. I don't know what the exemptions are yet. We don't have the tax digest. So that theory that should bring in about $24.8 billion in the tax digest at a 4% growth. With a 15.28 mills rate, that should bring in about $377.5 million gross revenue minus the commission that we have to pay, the 9.4. That would bring in about $368 million. Then at a 99.5% collection rate, we're looking at 366.2 or about a 3.96% increase in total. Uh on the KBE formula, uh the amount of money
019we're going to get this year for that formula is about $346 million rounded and because we don't project any growth in the enrollment this year, we're not predicting a mid-term adjustment. Now when we talk about the operations, we always want to point out before we dive into the numbers that uh salary benefits makes up a large portion of our salary benefits. When I started this job back in 2019, the salary benefits was more like an 85-86% but because of the huge increases in TRS and health care over the last five or six years, that percentage has jumped up more and currently we're at 90.2 versus 9.8 for operations. Now when we look at the breakdown for instructions, um, in terms of how the budget's set up, you can see it's about 60.49% for instructions, and
020you can see the breakdown for the categories going down. Typically, the other three large areas that we have are school admin, maintenance, and transportation since those are such vital to making sure that students get to where they need to be, and there's people to handle the kids at the schools. Now when we look at the actual budget, uh, going down your left-hand side, you have the different function categorical areas per the state Georgia, uh, chart of accounts, and we have our 27 numbers versus our 2016 numbers. Last year's budget had a almost break-even point at $15.9 thousand for revenue over expenses. This particular budget right now, based on the 4% increase in tax digest and QBE funds, we're looking at about $1.3 million revenue over expenses. So we're going from about 750.5 to about 762.5
021million dollars for a total increase of a little bit over 12 million. As we pointed out in the past, in the last couple meetings, the reason you see such a large decrease and increase between instruction and pupil services is because of how the state's asking us to reclassify some jobs and to show it on a county-wide on our records. Now when we look at the breakdown of the current budget for 2017 between salary benefits and operations, you can see the breakdown there, about $74.6 million for operations versus about $687.9 million for, uh, salary benefits for a total of 762 versus the budget of last year, 2016, 750 for that 12% $12 million increase or 1.6%. Now to your lower left, you'll see that last year we're about 90.33% for salary benefits, and we've dropped a
022little bit slightly. Part of that reason is because we had to increase operations a little bit more than we thought, uh, because of the last-minute letter we got from Suwannee for electrical cost increases. Overall, right now we're predicting about a $3.9 million almost $4 million increase in state health care, uh about $2 million for TRS, and about 1.6 for literacy coaches that we'll have to pay out of pocket to match what the state of Georgia is requiring us to do. That comes out to about $7.7 million or 1.02%. On the other side, uh because of decreasing enrollment and less teachers per the allotment sheet, we're going to have about $8.5 million less in staff, but we're going to increase the budget about 12.8 for other areas for a total net total of 4 million, which
023equals your $12 million or the 0.58 for local increase cost and 1.6 overall. Now, we look at the fund balance. We started the year off with about $171 million from last year. Currently, we're projecting a expenditure over revenue of about 27.7. I would like to point out though about 24 almost 25 million that is money that we designated as reserves in the previous years that we spent this year. So, about 20 million of that is going to be Mashburn, another 4 and 1/2 million is going to be security and other items uh that we had allocated during the previous years that we spent and above and beyond um the budget that we had set up last year. That should give us an estimate ending balance at the end of this year of about 144 443.3
024at the end of 26. Uh currently with a $1.2 million increase in the budget, uh and the reserves still out there of about $28.5 million from the 23 budget, we should end the year with about $116 million estimated ending fund balance for 2027 or about 15.21%. Now, we need to um transfer over our segue over to the debt service and some of the other budgets that are also important for 27. Right now, we have ad valorem. For the debt service, we have ad valorem about $33.7 million. We have some intangible real estate interest earned for a revenue about $34.6 million. We do predict that we're um based on the current um uh schedule of payments for debt service of about $41 million, we're going to end the year about 6.5 in the hole in terms
025of revenue versus expense, but we do have $7.6 million we will be transferring over to SPLOST 5, and that was the remaining funds of SPLOST 5 that we had geared towards debt service payments. With that being said, we'll increase our fund balance slightly by $1.2 million, and with the beginning fund balance of 13, we should end the year strong at $14 million. Now, when we look at food nutrition, this budget is uh brought to us by food nutrition. I go over it with them, review it. Last year we had in '26, if you look at that column, about a $5.5 million deficit built in. Right now, we look like we'll be about 3.4. The current budget has uh reduced budget deficit of only 4.7. Part of that savings coming from the new food contract they
026have out there that they approved. We do expect slightly decreased funds um coming in for revenue. Um we begin the year with about $20.5 million in fund balance. As you remember from the previous meeting we had today, we're about $17.6 million or there have of fund balance or cash balance, and this is where we see that fund balance ending around that number. With a $4.7 million projection in deficit for '27, we're predicting to end the year next year with about 12.3. Uh the one reason we have to spend this money down so fast is there's a federal requirement on how much money you're allowed to have in cash, also in fund balance, and we exceed those balances right now. That's why we have a deficit spending plan for this year and next. If we go
027look at special revenue funds and capital projects funds, the special revenue funds that you're looking at are a combination of all the federal funds plus school nutrition we just looked at. If you look at it in total, we're predicting about $35 million in total revenue. That's a combination of federal funds and school nutrition in total. And as you can see on the expense side, 26.6 of that will be spent for school nutrition versus the other 13 million being spent by the federal funds. In total, we predict that deficit from the previous slide of $4.8 million. Currently, the fund balance there is the same fund balance we just looked at in the previous slide. Capital projects was a little bit harder to budget this year, and the reason is we're ending SPLOST 6 in December and
028starting SPLOST 7 in January. Um with that being said, there are some projects we have planned ahead of schedule for SPLOST 7. Earlier today, we had a meeting about the turf fields trying to get those pre-approved. So, currently, based on us spending out SPLOST 6 and starting SPLOST 7 through June of next year, we're predicting about $82 million. That's the combination of both local and capital outlay funds. We're transferring out the 7.6 to help debt service out this year for total 74.4 million. And we're predicting only to spend about $55 million. If we take that $19 million revenue over expenditures and add it to our current fund balance, we are expecting to end about $42.8 million of fund balance for next year. Um So, that is the budget presentation for fiscal 2027 for the different
029funds. As we said again before, back in March, we talked about the timeline. May, we presented the updated timeline. May 26, we had our initial budget presentation budget budget presentation. We had our first meeting June 9th. This is our second meeting for June 16th. We tentatively have a 5:00 p.m. approval for next week. Uh depending on where we go with the tax digest. If we have to, we can push that out to July. Uh and the millage meetings will not be um set up until we have a good tax digest to go on. Any questions? >> Larry, if we if we if we're able to get that tax digest this week, um I know you need a a strange like amount of time to make sure it hits the newspaper that that only comes out
030sporadically. I I think probably the fairest thing to say is the week of July 6th. If we had millage hearings the week of July 6th and the week of July 13th, then we could potentially approve a millage rate in a budget hearing by um by our called meeting or by our regular meeting on July 21st. Is that Is that doable? >> If the only thing that would possibly hold us up, sir, is this. There's certain data I need from the tax digest office before I can do the publications, and that's the breakdown of how the digest would increase local taxes based on a 15.288 millage rate. If they don't give that to me in time and I can't get the ads in the paper, then it would push out >> to go get it, man.
031>> I I hear you. >> Yeah. Okay. But if if that's information what I I guess what I'm saying is my hope is between your efforts and their uh cooperation, if we have all that information even even by by the start of next week, we should be able to go ahead and um get advertising out so that we could find some dates between July 6th uh and um July 21st that would satisfy hearing requirements. Is that correct? >> Correct. >> Okay. >> Questions? Comments? All right. Thank you, Mr. Hammel. With that, we will open up the public participation portion of the hearing. We have one speaker signed up, Mr. John Holder. If you would come up. >> Hello. >> Rules are pretty simple. You get 3 minutes. You got this little machine here. When it
032starts to flash yellow, it means you got 30 seconds. When it starts to scream at you, that means your time is up. Uh we'll let you wrap up your thoughts, but pretty much screaming means time's up. >> Okay. >> Go ahead. >> Okay. Uh John Holder. Uh I've got six kids, three are currently in the school system, two are about to come in. So, I know, you know, with Forsyth County we've got the 65 and over exception where they don't pay taxes on school school taxes. And so that puts the burden on you know, which we're glad to take from our parents and grandparents so that uh you know so they don't have to have that burden. They've already paid their dues. Um but it puts the burden on us and I know that uh
033y'all do a good job with the budget keeping the millage rates low. Uh but uh and we take care of our school teachers and school nurses and resource officers. So we do those things. That's kind of who we are here in Forsyth. We take care of people who need taking care of and uh you know, we take care of our kids. So, that being said, I wanted to hopefully give, if y'all would like to respond after I'm done, give you a chance to uh tell us like from like last year's budget to this year's budget, how have you found waste uh that you know, you've corrected or maybe readjusted to a different area that needed the money in the school system. Um because I know that there's a lot of people out there even though
034they're not here, they think you're wasting their money. So, um where have you found that waste? And what have you shifted it towards? And then just cuz I've been looking I was looking online and trying to look at the website uh like for myself to look at old budgets and more than just what we've seen here like the the graduate with the colors and that's you know, it's a representation of the budget, but like where's the money really going, right? So, how can I see that and is there, you know, I guess they call it transparency. Like why can't I see where the money's going other than you know, the few lines that I've seen. It's hot up here. Um, seen with Larry's budget. It's it's a broad budget, right? But there's a lot more
035that goes into it obviously. You guys know that more than anybody else. So, how can I see what you guys are seeing? You know, as a as a citizen who doesn't want to pay a ton in taxes, you know, fiscal responsibility is I think everybody's on board for that, right? So, how can I know that you guys are doing everything you can? >> [bell] >> And yeah, I'd like to end my thoughts there. Thank you. >> So, I guess [clears throat] that everything that we do here is subject to open records. So, the the full detailed budget is, you know, it's like 5-6 inches thick and it it could be made available to you. That's a you know, there's some things that are that are not subject to public records like individual salaries and and
036things are are things along that line. Um, Mitch, we can probably connect connect him with staff or >> Yeah, I it it it's one of those if you would get lost in codes and accounting uh, abbreviations and all that if you were to look at just the the the binder, the Bible that Larry calls it in in his office. Um, so to guide you through that, uh, we would be happy to to have you in and and and we've opened that up, uh, you know, board meetings themselves which I appreciate your participation and and attendance. Um, but this is our our monthly transparency where every month you get to see the board do their work and hear the presentations to hear as is in earlier tonight's board the the levels that we go through through
037procurement processes to make sure when we're bidding on things like fields or buildings that we're getting the best price while at the same time getting the safest quality for our children. So, really everything that we do with at board meetings is an open book for how we spend money. Capturing it all in one spot like you said, you you try to get the executive summary out there. Um, but but it it requires an investment of time on the citizen as well to come in and and we make ourselves we make ourselves available and happy to do that cuz the more people that are informed the the more that they go away saying, "Holy cow, they they really are lean and they really are, you know, very fiscally uh, conservative in the in their approach." >>
038Sure. >> Yeah, and I will say about the waste question. I think it was a a fair question and over the years one of the things I could say over the last 2 years specifically uh, under Dr. Young's leadership is we've taken the opportunity of waste away. Uh, if you look at the budget increases in the past, you're looking at 10 to 12% every year, right? Well, last year it was below 2%. This year it's at 1.68. You know, the those look that's taken away the opportunity for waste. I think the other thing is is like going through and and um, Derek has done this with HR and under Dr. Young's leadership is looking to see what positions are really making an impact. And doing a one-to-one changeover. If we have to get a new
039position, they're not getting a new one. They're they're switching those out. We did that last year in the or this current budget year. Uh so, I think that the biggest step was taking away the opportunity for that coming in. The other thing is it used to be is um well, let's look to see what our our revenue is and let's make sure our expenditures are matching that and we don't do that anymore. You look and see what your expenses are and then make sure your revenue matches your expenses. Uh so, switching that mindset has been very um it's kudos to you guys and your leadership for doing that. Uh that's been the biggest change is the opportunity wasted. >> Well, we're glad to have you in. Um you know, everything that we do is public
040record anyways. Um I encourage you to come in sit with staff. Larry will run you through the book. It's this big. Uh it's it's it's a lot to consume, right? It would you know, hundreds if not thousands of pages, but I mean definitely we're we're glad to have you in and walk you through it all. >> Yeah. It's not anything available online or >> Um not that level of detail is not usually put online. Um it could probably, you know, subject to open records could be could be produced digitally or whatever if you if you wanted a copy of it. >> Yeah. >> I mean, it's all Yeah. >> Just Um right now, I might be the only one uh interested in looking at it. I don't know. But, there's you know, >> Before I
041was on the board, I asked for the budget book a couple of years. So, >> Yeah. We might be the only two. >> Okay. >> Cool. I appreciate your uh answering those questions. >> Yeah. That's true. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. >> All right. With that, I'll seek a motion to adjourn. >> Make a motion to adjourn. >> Motion by Mrs. Hoy, second by Mr. Underhill. All in favor? Unanimous.