001Good morning everybody. I'd like to call the June 9th, 2026 special called meeting to order. It is now 8:31. The members have an agenda before them. Is there a motion to adopt or amend? >> Oh, second. >> Motion by Mr. Ashawwood, second by Mr. Grimes. All in favor? unanimous. With that, welcome everybody. Good morning. If you can please rise and join me for the pledge. 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. >> All right. With that, I'd like to open the public hearing for the fiscal year 2027 budget. Uh, Mr. Hamill, welcome. Good morning. We eagerly await your presentation. >> Morning. So, this morning we'll be talking about minor changes from
002our last uh meeting we had a week ago. So, as we just want to follow up to say we still haven't heard anything from the county on the millillage information. We're being told it might be late June still before we get the information. Of interesting note, the governor is holding a special assessment June 17th to cover about four or five topics. He's calling the entire illustration back and one of those topics is Senate Bill 33, which is the bill that has the cap on uh future Avalor taxes. So FYI, we'll keep an eye on that as we go forward. In the meantime, we have um cancelled both the June 9th and the June 16th meeting for Miller until we can get the tax digest, get the information we need to put put the ad out
003and reschedule those meetings. So, um this is where Mitch and I kind of tag team a little bit on this and I'll let Mitch kind of talk a little bit about these first few slides. >> Are you sure? >> Yes, sir. >> Yeah. I don't I don't mind seeing the floor. All right. Okay. So, uh I'll try to go through this as efficiently as possible while maintaining effectiveness. Um every time that we come out, uh and and do our budget presentation, I really think it's important to start with where the end in mind, where does the money go? And and the money goes into us trying to continue to develop and maintain the best school system that we can in the state of Georgia and one of the best in the country. And um according
004to Nichch, right now we're number five in the nation and uh we'll continue that climb to try to get the number one spot at some point. The learner experience um is one of the five main areas of our strategic plan and uh you can see that we're doing well on that. I'm not going to read the slide or bullet points to you, but in in terms of how the state asked us to measure our schools, but through Georgia Milestones, we're doing very very well uh throughout the state of Georgia at or near the very top in just about every category. Uh advanced placement, we we have all eight of our forid schools high schools that earned the advanced placement honors from the college board this year. Uh these are national, you know, national recognitions or
005standards and um and then you can see the additional honors that we got from the Georgia Department of Education. Also for our advanced placement programs, we have once again the highest SAT and ACT scores uh in the state of Georgia. uh top 10 in Georgia, four for Scythe County high schools rank among the top 15 in Georgia for the highest scores. Um and five FCS high schools ranked within the top 21 for the average composite score. Of course, this is lagging. Always want to point that out because we won't get this year's data until probably September officially. But uh so this is this is for the previous year where we were just over 96 and some thought that you couldn't go any higher than that and it made backside but in fact in 2025 we're
006able to to get 97% of our students across the stage on time which we're very very proud of. Um when you look at our graduates those that complete a pathway once again in 25 had a 100% graduation rate. If I'm a parent looking at this, um, I I want I want to help my child find a a purpose. And when they find that purpose, oftentimes through something like a pathway, uh, they're going to stick it out and and finish successfully. And another another one of those passion areas or purpose areas or fine arts. And those that completed a fine arts pathway, again, 100% graduation rate. And while this is going on academically and in the fine arts and and in pursuing their their you know careers, we also have students competing at the highest levels.
007And 2526 was no pun intended, but a banner year for athletics. And um as you can see there, we we racked up uh quite a number of state championships across the board athletically and across our county from the north end, south end, the west end, all all the way across. We've we've got great representation athletically at the state level. Very proud of that as well. [clears throat] This is the I think the as of as of the end basically as of graduation time. Um and this this will trickle in and we'll probably have an update on this at the end of the summer. But for those who got scholarships, and I'm not talking about hope, over $36 million was accured in scholarships this year. And then when you look at the total number of hope
008eligible students we have, if they decide to stay in state, uh there's potential there for that to total up over $67 million. So that that's pretty that that that's pretty impressive. I cannot say the uh publication that provided this with us. got in a [clears throat] little trouble last year for using their name and image on here in our excitement. But there is a well-known financial magazine that exists out there that looks at uh among other things looks at the best employers because we know employee retention is a is is a major focus across the country. And um uh so so proud of our of our school leaders and our district leaders as as the retention rates are high. Our our recruitment continues to be positive. And according to this major financial institution focused magazine
009when it comes to large employers, we're ranked number four in the state of Georgia and 158th in the nation. Uh staff recruitment and development, what that's all about. and and this is just a really a reminder for our community that we are the largest employer in Forsythe County with pushing uh you know 6,500 full-time employees. When you look at all the employees, it's it's over 7,000. Um and our retention rates this past year uh 90 over 94% which is which is impressive in any industry. So, with that, we're going to go into a proposed budget, but I say all those things upfront because they cost money. Um, we look at that as an investment that that is made by our community. I say this at every public function I'm at. But, you know, the public
010public schools are only as good as the community that supports them. But, I would also argue that communities are only as strong as their public schools. And so it's a partnership that we've got with our families, with our business community, with our legislators, with our leaders, and we've had a wonderful partnership for the last 20 plus years. We want to keep that going. That's why transparency in our budget process is so important. So for fiscal year 27, here are the highlights. And a reminder to our public out there that we've got a strategic plan. We're actually coming into our final year of the five-year strategic plan. So we'll be looking to renew that for another five years and that's going to take a lot of participation on the part of our of our community and
011all our stakeholders. But the last strategic plan you can see the plan areas there on the right. So when we do our budget building we make sure that we keep that strategic plan in mind and you can see the objectives on the left side that align to the strategic plan areas on the right. Overall summary is, and this changed a little bit from the last one, and I we we'll explain that as we get in there, but we're looking at a 762.5 million total budget as we go into FY27. That is a 1.6% increase over FY26. And in this budget, uh we we propose and do not believe we will need to have any mill rate increases in order to make this happen. Um, and when you look at our history of of millage rates,
012uh, we try to demonstrate to our community is that we're responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. And when you look at at the right hand side of this, you can see that in the last uh in the last four years, it has either been lowered or remained the same year after year. And uh so again, for the for this going into this year, we're able to accomplish that while at the same time, all of our senior residents here uh enjoy a tax exemption of all school property taxes. Um, we've we we show on here this this estimated 2.7% cap of Senate Bill 33 does in fact go through. But if it doesn't, our taxpayers should rest assured because last year we had put on a referendum a cap of 4% on reassessed home values and we'll
013be operating under that cap this year as well. And of course, we want to continue to have some funds reserved for future debt payments and being able to, you know, in those in those slow collection times, be able to continue to make payroll without having to take out loans. And we are continuing to build to do the things we do, Mr. McCall, debtree, >> just in cash. >> Yes, with cash as we go. [snorts] Uh, this just show this this shows you a a 10-year history of our budget increase. So, we proposed 1.6 this year. This was a new slide that we that we didn't have in there last uh at our last presentation but was requested and u so Larry and his staff put that together but you can see over the last 10
014years the the percentage of budget increases uh that that we've seen each year and certainly there was a spike right at the at the end of co and the explanation of that very simply is all the systems around us got hundreds of millions of dollars in in uh And what was the what was it? CARES Act money from you know from the federal government. >> We did not. Yet we still had students suffering from from COVID and and learning loss. Uh what the surrounding counties did quite frankly is poured a lot of that into u increased pay and wages. And so we followed suit which is why you see the increases in our local budget. Um, but we've been able to maintain that that that we've been able to sustain those, you know, those changes
015uh for for our teachers and our staff. But since 20 uh 24 25, we've been going down each year and this year really an historic low is what we're proposing at 1.6. >> In addition, uh Dr. young the um 22 through the 25 time frame where it was 12, 10, and 10 saw a significant increase in healthcare costs and TRS increased cost as well during that time period. >> Absolutely. Great. Great to point that out. Yes. And those were mandated costs that we had no control over quite frankly. >> Yep. So locally, our budget increase uh that we're proposing and again this was adjusted slightly from from our original uh proposal to is 0.58%. Um, I'll explain when we get a little deeper, but we had and and I want to I want to credit
016uh Sony Power Company. They got us information that normally we didn't get in the in the past this early, but they were able to get us a um a letter that shows how our rates are going to increase slightly next year. So, Larry and his team was able to and along with Matt Walk and his team was able to put that into our operational budget. So, that ticked our operational budget up slightly. Um but at the same time we've got another area where when I presented last week when I was showing the statemandated um I I I didn't put in the full calculation for the um the literacy or the uh yeah the literacy coaches that we're being told that we have to add this year and um and so the balance between us and
017the state in terms of the increases is basically back to where back to where it was. operational excellence proposed investment in operations. Again, I don't want to read each bullet point to you. You can read those for yourself. Um, but uh being able to do what we do without raising the millage rate. Um, by keeping the debt mill debt service millage rate where it is, we should be totally debtree uh by the year 2038. Um, and again, by by doing things the way that we've done them, even when those stand statemandated requirements come down the pike, we we've got the funds to be able to do it without raising the millage rate. Uh, in terms of an area of our strategic plan, social and emotional well-being, uh, we've got these proposed investments this year in
018student safety and student and staff support. Uh, that increases that includes increases for our school nurse hours. So, we're very proud of our retention rates. As I mentioned earlier, one area where we see lagging behind all of our high retention rates is the area of school nurses where our retention rate is just slightly over 70% where our retention rate for um for everybody else is over 90%. And so, you know, we're we're hoping that an investment in that will keep these nurses at their schools because we all know and those of us have that had children and as well as those of that have worked at schools um sometimes the the person on the front lines both physical uh safety, emotional safety is going to be the school nurse. That that's the the person that
019all those kids elementary all the way up through high school feel comfortable approaching. And um so it's vitally important that we've got we've got great school nurses in place. And then you can see the continued uh investments that we have in in safety panic alert systems, mental health experts uh and supports and um continuing to to fund our school resource officer program. And we're going to see an increase in funds for SRO's over the next two to three years as we work uh closely with the sheriff's department to make sure our SRO program is is solid. All right. In terms of academic achievement accountability, we want to just continue. We've got great momentum in moving the needle in a positive direction, particularly in those areas uh where we've seen gaps that we're trying to close.
020And so, enhancing our continuous improvement and assessment uh programs, we're investing in that. special education compliance. We see an uptick in in you know special education um concerns and I don't mean concerns that that uh are alarming but when you know when people have access to AI a lot more questions come up a lot more questions require a lot more answering and um we want to make sure we're doing that with the with the absolute most accuracy and dependability that we can. We want to make sure we continue to invest in that and then certainly in technology professional learning and in our locally developed instructional materials when you develop them locally and scientifically and researchbased uh it it keeps you from from what we saw happen years ago where outside agendas can slip into the
021curriculum unnoticed. And so this is this has been really important that we're developing those locally now. um uh proposed of you know continued incur investment in in staff recruitment and development. Obviously this year we want to provide salary step for all eligible staff. We want to add that s step at the end of the salary schedule for eligible staff so that our so that our salary schedules match up with with retirement dates which would be year 30. Um and then all of our pipeline building and teacher and leadership development programs. We want to continue to to develop those. And one of the things that we'd never want to lose sight of is even though we're a large system of 54,000 strong, one of the unique things about Fory County schools and making making sure that
022our large system feels small. And that means that you've got to have not just SRO's and nurses and SAS's, but you got to have the right SRO's, the right nurses and the right SAS's. And uh so we we want to continue to recruit these these frontline folks because they they make sure that every parent and every student feel heard. We do have some statemandated cost. Um and so while our proposed increase locally here to the budget is 0.58% um the rest of that 1.6% comes from statemandated increases predominantly from healthcare. There's also some for TRS. And this year, uh, we have mandated that literacy coaches that we have one literacy coach in every elementary school. So, that's 23 positions we had to add that we would not have added, um, because we've we've we've been
023doing some really good work in literacy, but the state has mandated those. So, so that's increased our bottom line. And so, you can see what that breakdown looks like. Um, and actually the literacy coaches, that's just our side of it, Larry. So the actual overall is that that should say 2.9 million 1.6 comes from us and 1.3 comes from the state. So I thought we had that slide fixed but we need to make sure that we get that get that updated. Uh you can see over the recent history of the increases in statemandated cost and again when people look at our budget and see budget increases over the last 10 years, you can just look at this slide and see where a large chunk of that has come from. And that has come from the
024cost of health care in retirement, which are benefits that are promised employees, but that the state controls what the what the cost of those are as well as the market. To be fair, the other thing that's important for our public to understand is as we collect and we've got the lowest millage rate of anybody in the metro area uh at 15.208, but five mills worth of tax revenues collected do not go into our school system. They are used for the statemandated local fair share. So these tax dollars are used to go throughout the state of Georgia. And so when you look at that visual piece there, these are local property taxes to the tune of five mills that get that get dispersed through the the QBE formula or the quality basic education form of the
025state uses to fund uh districts throughout the state of Georgia. I'm not making a commentary on that. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing. I understand where it's coming from. I just think it's important that the public realizes that that uh over a h 100red million for Scythe County property tax dollars go to to help schools throughout the rest of the state of Georgia and we have no control of that. And you can see where that number has risen again over the past 10 to 12 years uh in in terms of dollar amount. Well, I would like to say along those lines that we might have the lowest millage rate locally, but our millage rate is also valued higher. >> Correct. >> Pay more. >> Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. A mill here is is
026worth a lot more than a mill in, you know, in a in a community in southern Georgia. [snorts] What's interesting, too, though, is to get those uh those millage dollars that are dispersed throughout the state. Um it used to be that they had to locally collect Larry, what was it? that they had to collect a minimum before they could receive that money in their own county 14 mills and that has been dropped now to 10 mills. So they get to lower their millage rate, >> you know, while we while we Yeah. while we pay for that. So again, not not not it may sound like a snarky complaint. It's it's just the facts. Well, [snorts] I mean, I think it's fair to point out that for the last four or five years, there seems to
027be a mad dash at the capital, the first three months of the year, to tinker with education when you can see that's cost, you know, the local taxpayer a couple hundred million dollars over the last few years while at the same time allowing systems in far away places to lower their millage rates. taking a hundred million from our taxpayer every year, sending it elsewhere, and adding to our budget every year, every year, every year, every year. >> And then they get up there and they pass these sweeping tax measures that are one-sizefits-all solutions that the poor tax assessor is is losing his mind every year trying to figure out how to even calculate things because it just every year is like a mad dash. So, >> 100%. Yep. >> It's it's it's difficult. This climate
028is difficult to uh to plan. >> It is it is it is challenging uh for sure. frustrating to to some degree, but we can only control right now what we can control. And we're doing a a heck of a job of that, I believe, as a as a governance team and and as district planners. And when you look at this next slide, click one more, Larry. I I think it's important for our community to recognize that that the dollars that we do bring in both from the state and locally, you can see where the bulk of those dollars go. And when you look at this compared to other metro systems and really other systems throughout the state, I I'm I'm taken back to an old preacher quote that says, you know, you can tell me
029what you care about, but let me look at your checkbook and I'll tell you what you care about. And when you look at what we care about, we talk all the time about it being about the kids. When you look at this, we've got the highest percentage in the area of dollars that are that are dedicated to instruction, which is the kids in the in in what goes on in the classrooms every day. So again, I love this visual that Dr. Dugan put together. Um, but 70% of Force County School's operating budget is invested directly in reflection, which is which is where our priorities are. So that's the overall summary. Larry is the the weed whacker, so he's going to get down to the weeds for you. Uh, but again, 762.5 million, an overall increase,
030which is historically low of 1.6% um from last year's, and we do not see that there's going to be a need to increase the millage rate at all this year. And um, Larry, I'll turn it over to you at this point. >> Thank you very much, Dr. Young. So, we're going to just start diving straight into it and we'll start with the revenue side of things. Just kind of give a breakdown of how the state and federal portion of the budget breaks down percentage- wise. As you can see, the um local section it creeps up every year. It seems like based on how QB is doled out and how other federal funds come to us and has our property tax become a greater portion of our budget. This year about 53.7% uh which includes Avalor
031tax and other forms of taxes we collect during the year make up our entire budget versus 46.3% of which the majority of that is QBE funds. Now when we actually look at the number wise you can see that local for this year's budget will be about $410 million versus about $354 million for state and local. Uh as you can see the increase in the local portion is about 9.8 versus 3.4. 4 3.5 for um state and federal and a total budget increase of about 13.3 million for a total increase in total revenues is about 1.77%. Now when we break that down you can see local revenue is made up of Avalor tax, TVA tax, that being the tax on your cars when you purchase them intangible tax, real estate transfer tax, interest income, tuition, other
032local revenue and surplus sales. You can see the breakdown between the years on that. um this year uh based on collections being very slow for the current year and not knowing where we're headed next year uh with the political environment being uncertain as well as the economy not quite solidifying yet in terms of what's going on in the market. We've dialed back on some of those tax collections for those areas just based on that information. Avalor tax is at still at 15.28% 28%. That 13 $14 million increase is a 4% um collection rate on the tax increase digest with about a 99.5% collection rate in terms of what we actually get and we'll dive into that more. On the QBE, you can see we're going from about 343 million to 345. That's a slight increase
033this year of 2.4. We've had larger increases in the past, but then again, the number of students we have has slowed down or has actually gone negative. The other state resources have gone up slightly. Uh there's some grants out there that we are getting additional funds from from the state and then we have the indirect cost for federal and flood control funds that we typically get every year. It's almost exactly same amount every year. Now when we look at the tax digest what I did is I basically just did a 4% increase gross amount from the previous year. I do not have the actual t tax digest to show you uh because otherwise I would know what the exemptions amounts would be. But if we do a 4% increase that brings us up to about
03424.8 billion at a collection rate of about 15.208 for the millillage which we're not changing. That should produce gross revenue of about 377.5 million. And again the commissioner's office is allowed to take up to 2.5% of that as a commission for doing the work of collections. That's about $9.5 million, leaving us about 368.1 million. And then we're going to apply a 99.5% collection rate to that, reducing it down to 366.2. The reason we reduced the collection rate this year is that we are slightly behind this year compared to last year. Um, and collections, we did get a big chunk of money this month, like I told we would. I think we're down to about $3 million left to collect for the rest of the year. That means collections for the month of June and whatever
035comes in in July trickles in on the QB formula. It's pretty standard formula. Um that formula like I said did not go by much but about $2.4 million. Now when we talk about our cost again we are heavy heavy heavy employees because our main product is students and because of that about 90.2% of our budget is salary benefits. And the reason it's gotten so much higher than the previous year is again the increase in state health cost and as well as the TRS retirement cost that we having to take on because of increases in those area operation has shrunk down to about 9.8. Now when we look at the breakdown of what this looks like you can see the different categorical grants to the left that we're responsible for keeping track of from instruction all
036the way down to debt service. And just a couple areas I point out, our largest instru our largest expense is instruction at 69.58. And then you go to places like maintenance at 7.6, transportation at 5.6, and school admin 5.5. Now when we look at the actual budget compared to 26 to 27, you'll go down from the left on the function levels again from instruction down to debt service going across between 27 26 budget. You'll see the increase and decrease in percentage breakdown. Last year, our budget had about a $15.9,000 revenue over expenditures. Currently, we're predicting about $1.3 million revenue over expenditures in this current budget based on revenues versus expenses. The entire budget will go up about about $12 million. The one change we did want to point out was in maintenance operations. Uh last
037year was about $56 million, almost 57. This year it jumped up to 50.8. The initial increase was less than a million dollars, but we added a million dollars to that budget uh since our last meeting to show the increase in rates from Swany Electric that the letter uh specified. I do want to point out that there is one big change you'll notice when you look at the increase and decrease between instruction and pupil services. So what happened was the state came out last year and they updated their accounting code records and they basically said there were certain job descriptions that in the past have been under instructions that they wanted to see reclassified under people services. And after we made all those changes in our system, you can see that it pulled about $18 million
038out of instruction and moved it down to pupil services. We're talking counselors, social workers, and other positions like that. Now when we do a breakdown between salaries and benefits in the same format, you'll see that the actual salary uh this year that we're projecting for salary and benefits is about $688 million. Operations is about 74.6 for a total of 7625 versus last year's budget of 755 for an increase of about $12 million. As you can see, last year at the bottom left, salary benefits was about 90.33 versus 90.21 for salaries and operation went from 9.67 up to 9.79. Uh the previous uh presentation we had when the budget was going up by 11, those numbers did not change. They stayed the same, but since we added the million dollars for electricity, operation costs went up
039slightly. Now, if you look to your right, you'll see the changes that [clears throat] make up that $12 million. Again, we like to break it down between mandated state changes and local school a lotment cost. I mean, sorry, local increases. So, you can see state healthcare increase is going to be almost $4 million TRS2 and the literacy coach portion that we had to pay uh to and mandate those literacy coaches is about 1.6. The actual budget is about $1.93 million. On the opposite side, we did lose students this year and we based on the a lotment sheet, we did decrease um the number of teacher slots we had in other positions and that brings it to a decrease of about $8.5 million in salary benefits. Now, the local budget increase uh the $12 million is
040made up of the different other categories that we had to put money into in terms of uh based on operation and benefit cost outside of the state healthcare and CRS. So, the total increase is about $12 million. That's a 1.02% increase for mandated changes and 0.58% in local cost for a total increase of 1.6. Now, when we look at fund balance and what this will do to that, currently we had a fund balance of about $171 million beginning of the school year. Currently, we're predicted to go over budget by about 27.8 million. Now, of that 27.8, eight. The majority of that is the reserve funds that we reserved out in prior years for expenses like debt service control, land sales. Uh the mash burn is the biggest portion of that. Almost 20 million of that
041is for the mash burn expansion. You decide to use local uh reserve funds to pay for that instead of wait for SPLA 7. Currently, uh based on the cash flow for the month of May, we're looking at about a $3.2 million deficit in actual revenue versus expenditures. We're at 99.21% 21% collection rate versus the 99.7% expenditure rate. So we're within 1% of each category. That small difference between those two is about a $3.2 million deficit predicted for the current budget. >> And Larry, [clears throat] you lowered that based on what we've seen the last couple years. Correct. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> Now, the reserve, the only reserve we currently have out there waiting still to be spent is a reserve we set up back in 23 for debt service. Remember that time we set
042up about $33 million. We're down to about 28 of that. Um, and we will be taking that money out as needed uh to offset the 1.418% millage rate for debt service as we need the funds to help make up the difference for that millage rate drop we made back in 23 uh to make sure debt service is paid in full. That should leave us a fund balance at the end of the current 27 fiscal year of about 116 million. And if you compare that to our expenditures, that's about a 15.21% fund balance. Any questions? The 27 million negative, do we do we expect to collect that? >> No. The $27 million negative is the reserve funds we spent plus the current deficit that we're predicting for the normal deficit we're predicting for the budget this
043year. We spent about $20 million this year on MASH burn alone. So what happens when you have reserve funds that are not budgeted and they're sitting in fund balance? when we start making those expenditures, we actually have to increase our budget by the amount we're going to spend out of reserves. And that created a deficit in the budget expense-wise versus revenue. >> And that those thing those include, as you as you said again, but those includes the the the planned use of the fund balance, which were uh for Mashurn, which of course like everything ticked up a little higher than we than we thought, but Mash Mashurn, then we had to invest in the in the strategics as part of last year's state mandate. And then mid year we um this this past year mid
044year we got the um $2,000 bonuses for everybody that we had to go into the fund balance to fund that. >> But I guess the point I'm trying to make this at first glance it reads like you know we spent more than we brought in which is really not the case. This is an accounting >> this was all planned. Yes. >> Accounting function but we had set aside these funds and we spent from cash. Correct. It's not that we didn't it's not that we spent more than we took in. >> Correct. We used cash reserve to do some onetime offset expenditures. Now we finished the general fund. We're going to dive into the other quick funds real quick before we finish the presentation. Uh this year's debt service again is predicted at a 4%. We're
045waiting to see what those numbers look like, but we do have some other costs we get revenue we get in in tangible real estate interest earned. We're predicting about $34.5 million. Our our uh debt service cost this year is about $41 million. I believe we have two more years of $40 million payments in total and I believe it drops down to the high 20 20 million like 2628. So we will see a significant drop in a couple years with that. So currently we're expected to spend about $6.4 million greater than revenue collections. We are going to use the last of the SPLAS five money that we have dedicated towards um debt service. So we'll bring in that 7.6. That'll allow us to have a net increase of about 1.8 1 point excuse me $1.18 million.
046Our current fund balance is about 13. We should end the year of about 14.2 million in debt service. Any questions? >> So essentially we're using SPLS money to keep the millage rate lower, >> right? Uh when SPLAS 5 finished, we collected we collected for a couple months more than we thought um after we paid for everything. So, we got a little bit extra money and we presented to you guys several years ago about using the reserve money to help offset the back in 23 to offset the uh debt service. As part of the money we reserved in general fund, we also reserved this money as well in SPLS 5 in order to drop the millage rate by full mill. >> Yeah. >> I just think it's good for the public to know that if not
047for these dollars, that debt service mill rate would need to be higher to service the debt. >> Yes, sir. >> Absolutely. >> Goes back to the property tax. >> Yep. property owners. >> The other thing we're going to present to you tonight is the food nutrition budget. Um you'll see in 2026 they had a total budget of about $28 million with a $5.5 million deficit built in. This year we have a budget about 27 excuse me in 2027 we have a budget of about 26.6 million with a built-in deficit of 4.7. One thing I do want to point out is if the two biggest cost for food nutrition is salary benefits and food purchases. everything else is pretty much minimal compared to what those two are. Um, they think that this new vendor that they
048got back in the open RFP process is allowed them to drop their food cost by about $858,000. I know I took Todd's uh excitement away from last meeting, but I just I didn't think about that when I was talking about >> the cat is out of the bag now there. You you you ruined his glory moment, but that's okay. uh we do see some decreases and some cost on the salary side because we are readjusting staff. So the number of students we have at our schools. So that did reduce some of the staffing. The other thing is is they been able to keep a good job on keeping their other costs down where they really haven't had to raise those budget costs for this year. Now you would say why are we having such large
049deficits in this? Well, one reason was during the pandemic, uh, the way the government was reimbursing us, we were getting so much money reimbursed that we just built up a huge fund balance at the time of almost 22 $23 million. The way the federal law reads is you're only allowed to keep so much of that money as a reserve. And one of the things we agreed with the department of education through the school nutrition department was that we would build a deficit in the future budgets and that increase local cost to our students, our teachers to run that balance back down to a more manageable area that they agree with. So this is about year three of us spending the money down. Now currently we are predicting only about 3.4 of that 5.5 to be
050actual deficit. So if you take the beginning fund balance of 20.5 reduce it by the 3.4 projection that actually gets us to 17 million and the 17 plus the current deficit and the 27 budget will get us back down to 12. That's a more manageable amount. Um, I think it would be up to is it Kim Davis now to make the decision to talk with you next year on what that would look like in terms of if they're going to raise the revenue cost of the meals or anything going forward because that now we're down to a point where if we keep spending $4.75 million, we're going to eat that fund balance up pretty fast. The next thing we're going to show you is a breakdown between special revenue funds and capital projects. The the
051tricky thing with capper projects this year in terms of budgeting it is we're finishing one splast in December and we're starting another splash in January. So we're going from spl 6 7 and the reason it's difficult to figure that out is is as we finish splash 6 we know we're going to be spending almost all that money in terms of like what we got out there. There was not going to be a lot of reserves except for some cap outlay money coming in. But with SPLA 7, it's really tricky in terms of what's going to go first and what are our primary projects we're going to start at that way. It's possible we might go 3, four, 5 months. And I can let Matt speak more than that than me. We really don't spend a
052lot of that SWAT 7 money up front. We're spending a portion of it, but not the majority of it. So with that being said, we predict a budget of about $82 million in capital projects. There's the 7.6 going out for the remaining SPLAS 5 money that should finish that up. That should bring in revenue about $74 million. Um, with that being said, we only predicting about $55 million in expenditures. That'll give us excess revenue about $19 million. We have 23 in there currently, which means we can end the year up next year, June, by with almost $43 million in cash build up in that fund. Now, the good thing is the more cash we have available. And then when you guys start working with Matt and his team on the projects you want to get
053done, that cash is there to knock out the projects fast. Now, we look at special revenue fund. This is a combination of the previous budget that we just looked at for school nutrition with all the federal funds. The one thing about federal funds, you have to remember we only can spend what we bring in for federal funds. So, it's a net zero fund balance end of the year. So, if you look, you see the the federal sources of about 23. Like we saw up here, we have 21 for school nutrition. So, this 23 here for federal funds is the difference between what we're going to get in school nutrition of about 10 versus the 23. So that's about $13 million plus some other sources. So in essence, we got the $35 million in revenue. If
054you look down here, you can see school nutrition itself is 26 million. You have another $13.3 million in federal funds out there. Um the excess revenue expenses about 4.7. That's the decrease that we built into last year's this year's coming school nutrition's budget. And the beginning fund balance, any fund balance all belongs to school nutrition. Any questions on that? So this 23 in federal includes the almost 11 for food and nutrition. >> Correct. >> Any other questions? >> Just could you just explain quickly very quickly to the public what the rest of that federal funding goes towards just in general? >> Sure. It's sped title one, title two, title three, homeless, uh any other special grants we might get in terms of those areas. Yep. >> RTC as well. Excuse me. All right, just to
055go back over what we're what we have done and what we're planning to do. We have canceled our mailer meetings until we can get good information from the state and the county on tax digest. This is the first of two meetings for the public for the budget hearing. We have one more meeting planned June 16th at 7:30. Bring your pillows. Um, and that meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. I'm just saying it's a late night for all of us. [laughter] You know, my bedtime's 9:00 >> and I think and and I think we'll have to make the decision at the regular board meeting next week about uh the June 23rd meeting because, you know, can you approve a budget without having done all your millage work? you can, but then you stand the chance
056of having to go back and revise things if the millage numbers don't don't come in as projected. So that budget approval meeting will probably try to time up to do at the same time with a millage rate approval meeting. Um, so that's probably one that that based on what what you guys decide next week at the June 16th meeting whether or not to keep that on the on the calendar. >> What are we hearing in terms of millage? When when will we know? I have not heard anything. I heard that the date could be June 23rd. It could be June 26. We just don't know right now. >> What have we heard in terms of numbers or when >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. Um they my [clears throat] conversation um with the assessor was that notices
057they were hoping to have notices out by the middle of of June and and [snorts] to have everything tied down millage rate wise, everything else um by June 30th as the as the at the latest. Um, so there's a chance and I think we ended up having to do this last year that we will have to come back and um I think Larry was it last year each of the last two years we've had to do a continuing resolution to get to get people paid and get things rolling at the start of July and then and then as soon as those millage numbers are official and we can have official millage rate hearings as soon as that's wrapped up middle to end of July we can we can approve everything. I would struggle to not
058struggle but I just don't know that it makes sense to approve a budget without knowing what our millillage is going to is going to be. Yep. >> Well, then that that makes it but we we'll just go ahead and so when we come out on the uh next week at the board meeting, Larry, if you and Michelle would work with one another and work with the newspaper um yet again to adjust our and and just figure that those are going to be sometime in mid July and go ahead and we'll reschedule the budget approval vote. >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you. >> All right. So quick summary and I think this is the third time we've told you this. I heard repeating something gets it across time. [laughter] >> Our pro pose budget our proposed
059budget is $762.5 million. That's only a 1.6% increase and that should say 26 over 26 year and no millage rate increase. Any questions? >> Got one question. I know we talked about in kind of the overview that we're adding a step on for all the teachers at the end. So, we're giving a step and then we're adding a step on at the end of our scale, but I know we've been doing that over the last few years. Does this get What year does this get us to? Is it 29? >> Well, it's a it's a Derek Hershey was in here. He would smack me for trying to trying to answer this, but you've got different salary schedules. uh some certified, some classified, and then certain positions that are all slightly different. But say for the
060for the general teacher, um >> we're we're adding year 28. >> Added a 26 and a 27. So this would add a year 28 to that. And the goal is to try to get that because for teachers, you can retire at 30 years. The goal, God willing, and and financially capable over the next couple of years, the goal will be to to get that up to year 30. Um because what we don't want to have happen is teachers who and you're talking about your most veteran seasoned teachers getting to year 28 and then leaving our county to go somewhere else to boost their retirement. Um and and us losing that, you know, that that great veteran teacher. So, if we can get them up to the point of retirement, um that that's the ultimate goal.
061And and I say that for teachers, but that's really for all of our employees. Try to get them to the retirement number, questions, comments, suggestions. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Ham. >> Yes, sir. >> With that, we will open the public participation portion of the hearing. Miss Mayo, do we have anyone registered? >> One audience member. [laughter] >> We'll we'll hang tight. Um we'll give it five minutes or so and um if no one presents themselves, then we'll we'll adjourn the meeting. I did the that is All right. Public participation going once. Dr. Dugan, would you like to Dr. Low, would you like to public participate? >> Excellent. Mr. Shirley. Okay, sir. No, [laughter] can't answer. All right, with that, um, I will conclude the public participation portion of the hearing and I'll seek
062a motion to adjurnn. >> I'll make a motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> Motion by Mr. McCall, second by Mr. Grimes. All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you everybody.