001All right. We will move that. That means the second or the third item would be the welcome and the pledge. If we all stand for the pledge, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag for the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, for liberty and justice for all. Very good. The next item is presentations. It's going to be the fiscal year 2027 budget, Mr. Larry Hamilton and Dr. Mitch Young. >> All right, Larry. You want to start us start us on the right side here. I'm going to try to do this as rapidly as we can. >> Yes, sir. So, we are here today to discuss the 2027 proposed budget. Just to remind you, when we had talked last week, we had talked about the
002timeline for the budget presentation, the budget hearings. Based on the latest data that myself and Mitch have gotten from the county, it looks like we are not going to have the millage information we need in time to have the meetings on June 9th and June 16th. So, right now we are temporarily scrapping those meetings for now until we have a better idea of what information we can get and when. My understanding is it's possible we may not get the information till after the 15th or 20th of June. Just FYI. >> And And if that does be the case, then we'll have a discussion at our next board meeting about the budget approval vote. You can approve a budget prior to doing the millage rate. There's debate on whether or not that's a good idea, so
003we'll talk through all that. Um and and push that out. The The most important thing we need from the county is a solid >> tax digest. >> a solid look at what that digest is going to be predicted to be. They've given it to us at this point and it and and for the things that we're going to present tonight, um it it's all encompassed it's all encompassed in that. So, we feel feel good about Larry's prediction model that he used. All right. So, I'm going to do I'm going to zip through these first few slides and just um just remind the viewers out there. I know I don't need to remind board members, but I'm going to remind the viewers out there that um that we've got a phenomenal school system and we're going
004to go through a few slides that highlight that. Travis is here so we can remind him how wonderful we are. Uh but you know, when we talk about communities with the best public schools um and Forsyth County schools but showing up on that as number five in the nation, it it's um it's a community effort. All right, it's the communities that are the best have great public schools and the public schools that are the best usually have a great community supporting it. So, we'll keep moving on here, Larry. Uh I'm not going to read all these slides to everybody. Um but but with our all of our Georgia milestone data, as you know, is always lagging. Uh kids that just took tests this year, we won't have those results, you know, until we start the
005next school year. So, when we build these slides, a lot of this this information is lagging, but this is where we were uh as we got all of our milestone data at the start of this school year for the previous school year. One thing that we celebrated in here together uh and the paper highlighted, which we were really excited about, was that all of Forsyth County schools were named Advanced Placement Honors from the uh Schools of Honor of the Georgia Department of Education. So, very proud of our schools and the work that those teachers and administrators and families do at it pouring into our Advanced Placement, which is probably the most rigorous course offerings we have. We continue to stand out with our SAT and ACT scores, uh the highest mean score in the state
006SAT, uh the highest ACT composite uh when put against all of our metro Atlanta rivals uh or sister schools, I should say. And um so, we continue to do well, very well in that regard. The graduation rate, not not the current graduations we just have because that that that data lags until until about September, but um, for the previous school year, you know, last year when we did this we were really excited cuz we had that number 96 on there. Weren't sure that we could go much higher than that, but um, but the results came in and the 2025 graduate was 97% and um, while we're super proud of that, equally as proud, that's a four-year cohort when you look at the five-year cohort, those are really a measure of what you do with the
007students that didn't graduate on time. Do you forget about them and kind of leave them to the wolves or you still work with them? And that graduation rate was was over 95% as well. So, very very proud of of the work that goes into to get kids across that stage. Uh, once again, this that that year our pathway completer graduation rate was 100% as was Larry, I believe our fine arts, the next slide. Yeah, the fine arts was also 100% graduation rate for all those kids that completed a pathway. And these are students that come in and maybe they're not taking the high level AP classes, maybe they are, but a lot of them are not and they find their passion while at the school and that passion is what hooks them and and helps
008get them across the stage. So, two two great numbers there. Um, state champions, not going to list all these, but while we were on stage at graduation last week at Lambert's graduation, um, Miss Thrower was talking to the crowd about how in the four-year cohort of those students, they were sitting with that afternoon's golf championship at 12 and while we're sitting here the girls wrapped up the girls golf state championship moved them up to 13, but when you look at that the state championships athletically, uh, when when you go back, I I want to say back when Chris was in school or maybe back when we first moved here West, you know, back in the day. Um athletic state championships for South Cobb schools weren't usually in the same in the same breath. And in
009these last 15 years, uh it's been a it's been a a tremendous a run of success for our athletic programs across the county. >> Uh as of last week, scholarships awarded, this does not include the Hope Grant or the Zell, but $36 in scholarship money awarded. Potentially, when you look at the number of of graduates that are eligible for Hope, that that itself is looking at about $67 million. So, phenomenal return on the investment in our school system. They actually comes back not only is you know, improved real estate values for people's homes, but also money in their pocket when there's when their kids graduate from here. Last year, we had this slide up. It was really excited to put it out there. We put the name of the company in their in their bold
010font, and then have found out that we can't put their company name there and present it without permission. So, we don't have permission quite as of tonight, but let's just say there is a a well-known, world-renowned financial-based magazine that for 2 years in a row, he has recognized our school system as being one of the best large employers in the country. Number four in Georgia, number 158 in the nation. And while I can't mention the specific name of that magazine, we're still very proud to to be in their pages. We continue to be the largest employer in the county. We have incredibly high retention rates. Uh every year at about this time, when it's at the end of the school year, teachers are tired, and parents are tired, and administrators are tired, kids are tired,
011you would think that oh my gosh, everybody's leaving. And then the retention rates come out, and I think as we as we look forward to next year, we've retained again well over 90% probably pushing 95% again, and that doesn't just happen. That that happens by the intentional efforts that go uh into retaining that staff by principals and APs. When you when you interview, you know, across the country, when you look at this research, when you talk to people about their number one reason for leaving or staying at a school, it usually is not pay. It usually is tied to the administration and leadership of that school. So, this retention rate is a is a large pat on the back of our of our district leaders. All right. So, as All that to say, we've got
012a great school system, but to maintain that excellence, it does cost money. Um so, as we proposed our budget for for FY27, the 2026-2027 school year, as we have for the last 4 years, we align our key budget building objectives here as a district staff to our strategic plan areas. Uh and you can see they're in lockstep with the strategic plan. And as we go through the rest rest of the slideshow, you'll see the strategic plan area at the top. The overall summary for this year's budget is that we are proposing a budget of 761.5 million dollars in total. Uh that represents and and we're going to get you the historical data. We have a little confusion on that, but I I will tell you I believe that is probably one of the lowest increases
013aside from the one COVID year. That's probably one of the lowest increases over the last 10, if not the last 20 years. Uh we're only looking at a 1.47% increase over last year. And we do not anticipate any military increases this year if the numbers that we've gotten preliminarily from the tax assessor and the tax commissioner, we feel like that that we're going to be able to to hold that military. >> Yeah, I think when you look for the historical data or also compare to other large school systems in the metro area, especially when it comes to the actual budget increase every year. Cuz it's amazing what we do being conservative with our money. >> Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. All right, so operational excellence, which is really that you know, really a measure of
014how responsible our stewardship is. No proposed millage rate increase and and that that brings us right up to this year. We don't anticipate doing that. Um Again, there's some debate out there whether we're going to have a 2% cap and reassess home properties based on Senate Bill 33 that was passed this year or a 4% cap, which was based on the referendum that our community passed with us last year has Bill 717. The reason there there's still a little bit of confusion on whether or not Senate Bill 33 is going to take hold in the upcoming school year or in the next fiscal year. And so we've got attorneys at the state and the revenue department and in our tax assessor's department. So everything we've done is trying to be on the conservative side is
015using this 2.7% cap and and as Larry will explain later, we believe that will allow for an overall increase in our digest at around 4% give or take that when but when he gets to his budget items specifically later, they are built on an increase in our digest of 4%. Our budget is only increasing 1.47%. Sometimes people hear well, the digest is going up 4%. Does that mean your budget's going up 4%? No. It takes a 4% It's going to take a 4% increase in our digest to be able to equate to a 1.47% in essence in our in our budget. Okay, Larry. Of what we control locally with our local decision-making, we're looking at increasing our budget from last year to to this year, excuse me, the current year to next year, and increasing
016our budget by 0.66%. This will allow us to maintain a 15% fund balance and provide the needs of our of our school children, of our district staff, and some of the highlights that I'll hit a little bit later on. Um operational excellence, the proposed investment with that 0.66% increase, um again, allows us to continue paying down a debt that was existing uh from from years ago. I think 2018 was the last bond, and that should be paid off in 2038. >> 2020, okay. 2020 was the last time a a bond was issued, and um by by doing what we're doing in this budget and in previous budgets, we should have that paid off in 2038 at the latest. Um it allows us to continue streamlining financial compliance and personnel monitoring. Um investment also covers the
017cost of the state-mandated requirements that we'll get to uh in a few slides down the road. And again, allowing us to maintain a 15% fund balance. Now, Senate Bill 33 does allow you to move your fund balance up to 25%, but again, we're we're still not 100% sure, based on what they're doing, that uh if that kicks in this year or next year. So, everything we've built has been designed for this 15% fund balance. This allows us to invest in student safety, which in includes a a uh an increase for school nursing. Uh we we're in constant competition. When we talk about our fantastic retention rates, there's one group that stands out where our retention rate has has been at about 70% while all others have been 90 and above, and that's in our school
018nurses. A lot of reasons behind that, but this is they are such play such an important role at the front lines of of mental health as well as physical health that we want to we want to try to make a statement in here to try to retain as many of these wonderful nurses that we can. Uh it this continues to to fund our mobile safety panic alert system that goes operational this year, but has annual cost of with it. Uh this would enhance our mental health support not only for students, but staff as well. Um and this this includes the increase that we worked out with the sheriff's department for uh for our SRO program. In terms of the learner experience, part of our strategic plan proposed investments in both academic achievement and accountability. Uh
019this will allow us to enhance our continuous improvement and assessment planning. Uh improve special education compliance uh as well as continue to make investments in technology, professional learning, uh and allow us to continue as much as possible to develop locally instructional materials. Uh we talked a lot about that in the last couple of years, but it's it's I'm really excited to see where the results are this year uh with our milestones now that we've had a full year of implementing a lot of our own instructional uh materials to see how well we move that needle. Um and then of course we we need help in we've got just so many students doing the dual enrollment that we've got to uh in invest in trying to streamline that the coordination of that program. >> Dr. Green,
020would you say I think I don't heard the number. I mean we have several thousand students doing dual enrollment. >> We do. We do. And And when you look at the numbers, you've got several thousand, but they may be taking multiple sections. Like Like for instance, when there there was a year when my son he was taking a couple of classes a semester, so that multiplies out, so you're looking at thousands. Yeah, thousands of sections that Yeah. Uh this budget also provides a salary step for all eligible staff in that new or in that salary schedule. Uh that that will add a step on as we've talked about and we've been able to do over the last two to three years. The goal, obviously, being while we can while we can afford to do it,
021is try to get our salary schedule to match up to when teachers are able to retire, which is year 30. Um it for years and years and years it was stuck at 25, and we're trying to to get that to where we can retain some of our most experienced teachers. Um and then continuing to invest in these in these programs that will help develop our pipeline both for teaching and leadership. Um and this is just one example, but obviously the the reminder that we always make to our community is the state funds you through the QBE formula for your quality basic education needs. Um then each community supplements that, and each community determines some of the things that they feel is important to their community. Uh this is probably the the largest example uh of
022that is that we our community strongly believes that you need school resource officers in every school, nurses in every school, and certainly our student advocacy specialists, and those are not things that are provided uh for every school by the state. So, these are These are the These are the people, quite honestly, that that go out there and allow our families to feel safe because they keep our our students safe um physically, socially, emotionally, and it's what helps our large system feel small. All that that we've talked about comes through our 0.66% increase over last year's budget. The other 0.81% increase comes from state mandated cost, and this includes an increase in health care premiums. We're very happy to report that what we initially were preparing for uh was cut down drastically. The state did kick
023in uh and pay a lot more towards the health care that we thought they were going to. And Larry, we ended up having to pony up an additional $50 per month per >> Correct. >> per employee when it one time we thought it was going to be closer to 100 and 143. So, that was a significant our our our legislators, that was something we hit them really hard and asked for their help, and they're thankful that they that they heard us on that. Teacher retirement has a slight increase. And then the other one uh is the literacy coaches. Uh there was legislation passed and and the governor signed into law um that literacy coaches would be would be added. When you look at what that adds to us, the total cost for literacy coaches is
024somewhere in the neighborhood of I think 2.9 million. The state funds that came with that only amounted to about 1.3 million. So, just like when bonuses are given out um we we appreciate the the efforts by the state government and by the governor, but sometimes those gifts come with additional costs. Uh and in our case, it's going to cost an additional 1.6 million dollars for us. Uh we hit time for that or maybe even a little worse, quite frankly. So, as we put this budget together uh and talked to each of you individually as we looked at the budget, that was baked into that. It ended up being not quite as bad as what we thought it would be, but we had some holes in there that uh that allows us to do that. But,
025just want you to see that 7.6 million of this year's uh you know, increase is is from state mandated cost, not things that we decided on here locally. Obviously, also also baked into that would be, you know, the QBE numbers for the cost of teachers. And um And we did have a slight enrollment decrease uh over the last couple years. Another another one this year that when you look at them combined, they're significant. But one of the things that does is it also brings down the overall cost and expenses both at the state and local level. Um so again, all those combined for how we're able to keep that budget at 1.47% increase. Here uh you you see a chart of the state mandated costs. I like the fact that up here in this recent
026year, it looks like it's leveling. I'm just hoping and praying that we continue to see that level or maybe even a drop in the next few years. We'll continue to talk to our uh our delegation about that. They they they've been great at listening to us about that. Larry. Just a reminder for people out there when they when they when they look at us through our budget um this past year five mills and we have a a millage rate of 15.208. Five of those mills are collected from us to go around to the rest of the state for communities that that don't have our resources. And again, I'm not passing judgement on that. I just think people need to know that our millage rate, if we didn't have this this, you know, fair share law
027that's in there, our millage rate would be 10.208. Uh but it's 15.208 because five mills are redistributed throughout throughout the state. And again, uh there are needs throughout the state and we're all Georgians. But uh that just needs to be out there so people understand that. And then you can see the increase in in how much we've given in the fair share uh you know, over the over the past um 12 years or so. Reminder and you can do the next slide, too, that 70% of our budget uh of our operating budget is invested directly into instruction. Um which which again, people can tell you what they value, then look at their checkbook. And so when people look at our checkbook, you can see what we value just from the from Michelle Duggan's wonderful image
028that she has here. But 70 70% of the money spent goes directly into into instruction and and teachers. And then we sometimes get it sometimes bandied about out there that we're that we're top-heavy. Um you have to have buses, you have to have administrators, you have to maintain your facilities, and those are the sorts of things that you see, you know, at the top of this uh image. So, my part for the executive overview is done. Uh again, 761.5 million, uh up from 700 and and 51 million last year 750 million last year. That represents a 1.47% increase, and based on the information that we have as of Friday from the tax assessor and the tax commissioner and their projection projections and Larry's projections matched up, um we anticipate there being no millage rate increase
029at all this year to accomplish what we need to accomplish. Larry, I'll let you get into the weeds. >> Thank you, Dr. Young. So, just to reframe again what we had talked about earlier, uh our budget went from 750.5 million to 761.5 million, or basically 11 million dollar increase. This is equal to about a 1.47% increase over the 26 information. And again, no millage increase. When we look at the budget overall, uh you guys can see that again, local provides the majority of the funds for our budget every year. Uh we're up to 53.7, and then QBE and other local funds provide, excuse me, state funds provide only about 46.3. Now, to break that even further, we'll look at the actual numbers. Uh starting from left to right, you can see and going down the
030revenue side, you'll see the local went from 400 million to 409.9 or about 53% 53.66% total. And state uh federal went from about 350.5 to 350 almost 354 million for another 3.5 million dollar increase or about 46%. Yeah, as you notice, the in total increase is about 1.77 versus the expense side and we'll cover that later in other slides. Now, when we look at the breakdown of the revenue, um you look at the state and federal side and you'll see that you have net QBE earnings of about 345 million versus last year 343. We have a slight increase of about 2.4. Um part of that money is the literacy coaches that was included for this year. Other state sources uh we're going to go up about a million dollars just because we're getting other grants
031that we haven't had in the past. Um and the federal direct cost and federal flood control money uh pretty much are stable. They stay about the same amount every year. On the local revenue, um the QBE did go up about 13 almost 14 million dollars. That is a 4% increase and the budget as we have it set up, we don't currently have a tax digest, but we made that calculation and that's at a 99.5% collection rate since this year has been a little bit slower than uh normal years in terms of collection rate. The other thing is I do want to point out to you is based on how the economy is doing and the analysis we've done on other local revenue sources and we don't have a crystal ball, we have to basically look
032at prior data, dive into what's currently going on in the economy and try to do the best prediction we can. We believe that both with TVA taxes, real estate transfer taxes, interest income, and other local revenue will see a decrease uh of almost 4 million dollars in those categories just because of how the current economy is going. You hear it in the news every single day. People are cutting back on items or they're downsizing the stores they go to. Instead of Target, maybe they're going to Walmart. Instead of Walmart, maybe they're going to Dollar Store, and etc. The tax revenue projections, so basically what we did is we took the gross digest and made a 4% increase in it. We don't have the digest right now, so we can't tell you what the exemptions will
033be. At a millage rate of 15.28, that brings gross revenue to about 377.5. Again, we have to give a 2.5% commission to the tax office commissioner's office. Mitch, you don't have to say anything. They get about 9.5 million dollars from us to run their offices. I might understand they don't need 9.5. Some of it flows into their general fund. >> No commentary. No commentary. >> Um, that's 368 million. And this year we decided to go with a 99.5% collection rate since we basically looks like that's kind of the direction we're headed to for this year. That will bring us about 366 million versus the 352 last year, or about almost 14 million or almost exactly 4% increase. On the QB formula we talked about there earlier, the majority of extra funds we're getting are the
034legislative coach funds, and then a little bit of extra funds in some other areas. Now, when we get ready to talk about how the operations and the salary benefits work in conjunction together, and before we dive into that, I just want to tell you that this is the second year in a row that we've come up exactly almost the same percentage for salary benefits versus operation. When I first got here back in 2019, we were about 11.4% for operations. As the cost for salary and benefits keep rising since then, it's slowly climbed to 90.4 and we're down to 9.6 down on operation cost. Which if you look at it, tells us that we're doing a great job of keeping our operation cost pretty flat from year to year. It's the increases in health care and
035state health TRS money that's really been the driver on that cost going forward. Okay, so if you look at the breakdown you see instructions is 69.58. A couple of things I do want to point out to you. Um transfers out, that's money we send to other programs, particularly ROTC and GNETS program. Debt service is a small amount. Again, that's the Alliance Academy money we have to spend every year when we did the revenue bond. Other support, central support, business services, and general admin, those amounts and immediate service even uh are not even quite 2% when we add all those amounts up. We saw that in the previous slide. So, the majority of money is going to either operations to keep the schools going or the actual instruction at or support of instruction at the school
036level. Now, when we break down the expenditures by function level, and these are the category function levels that we are required by law to present to you. Going down from top to bottom, you'll see we have instructions all the way down to debt service. Going from left to right, we'll see we have the '27 budget versus the '26, whether there's an increase or decrease in the percentage of total. Now, in previous years, we've been slightly above 70% for instruction. What happened last year was they came out, GDOE, and said, "Hey, there's certain positions you have in instruction that we feel they should be shown in pupil services, like counselors and some other positions." So, this year when we did the budget, we had to reclassify those particular positions from instruction level to pupil services level,
037and that's why you see the big difference between those two categories, a negative 18 and a positive 19. That's the reason for that. And that's the other reason instruction level went down a little bit. Overall, you can see most areas do have increases. Improvement in instructional services has a slight decrease of $61,000, and debt service has a slight decrease of $77,000. >> And I think the important thing to note, too, with that, Larry, when when you're looking at accounting functions, both instruction and pupil services are focused on pupils. >> Correct. >> So, so for people that are looking at that, it's accounting, but it's still focused on the children. >> Correct. I just want to point that out in case they had a question about it, Tommy. >> Like the the transportation of 5.65% increase,
038is that mostly due to fuel costs? >> Yes. Uh that and repairs and maintenance, believe it or not. Now, when we break it down even further, going from left to right, 27 salary benefits and operations to 26 budget and going down down from on the left column, function level of instruction to debt service, you can see that the total budget this year about 687.9 million of is salary benefits and only 73.6 million of it is actually operations for a total budget of 761.5 versus 750 last year. That difference is a slightly over $11 million or the 1.47%. Um and if you look to lower left, you'll see that last year we had 90.33% for salary benefits and repeated that exact same number again for this year. Now, to your lower right, if you look at
039the mandated increases, you've got health care and TRS, which is about $6 million. And then you got local allotments and budget increases that's averaging about $5 million for the total of the 1.47 or the $11 million. Now, fund balance. Um we've talked about fund balance during the year with the budget presentations and we know that we spent a lot of the reserve funds that we had planned to spend this year. So, just to give you update where we are on that, we began the year with about $171 million. We're currently expecting to spend over revenue about $27 million, almost $28 million. Now, a large chunk of that is going to be the Mashburn expansion, which is almost $20 million. The security expansion uh that was almost $2 million. The two point almost $3 million we
040spent on the salary supplement uh that the government did out. So, we add all those up, you'll see that's where how we got to the $27.8 million. That will leave us at the year year end about 143 uh going into the next year. The next year we're projecting a current increase of revenue over expenditures based on how the budget set up of about 2.3 million dollars. We will increase fund balance. We still have 28.6 million dollars reserved for debt service we have not used yet. In theory that would give you an estimated ending fund balance at the end of 2027 about 117 million re- remain not having the reserve number in that, which gives about a 15.36% fund balance. >> And I just want to again point that to to folks that are watching. The
041reason why it's so important, one of the reasons why it's so important to have that fund balance is this year for example, a lot of people are paying their taxes later or they're appealing in larger numbers than than the the tax commissioner and assessors have seen in years past. Um if those go on in deep into the fall, that that means we would not have the cash flow coming in to be able to make payroll and make make do your bills. So you have to have a fund balance in order to maintain cash flow. If you don't, then you have systems that that have to go take short-term loans out from banks in order to pay their bills each month. So that that that's probably the most important reason you want to have a fund
042balance of an excess of 15 15 million 15%. And I obviously the other thing the 15% is the magic number for as we saw earlier this year when we refinanced a bond, that that helped us maintain our triple A bond rating for that too. But really talk about that, but the more important thing is being able to be able to dip into that when you have to pay your bills while you're waiting for your revenues to come in. >> Correct Dr. Young. And last year we thought we would start getting some of the money early in October like we've done in the past and it didn't come in until late October, almost beginning November when it was due. And so we were scraping the bottom of the barrel when it came to cash flow at
043that point. I see the same scenario happening again this year. On Now that we've covered the general fund, are there any questions about that before we proceed to the other different accounts we have to talk about? All right, debt service. Again, on debt service, we're projecting a 4% increase in ad valorem tax. We do get some uh intangible money, some real estate tax transfer, interest earned. We're predicting about $34.6 million in total revenue. This year, we have about $41 million in total expenditures for debt service. That would give us a uh expense over revenue about 6.5. We had the last $7.6 million that we had projected to spin out of the SPLOST accounts that you guys reserved out a couple years ago. So, we're going to bring that in. That would give us a $1.2
044million uh increase in fund balance. So, we're going to go from about 13 million to 14 million. Now, at this point going forward, any additional funds we start putting in here will be coming from the general fund on the reserve amount you had set up in the previous years. Food nutrition. Currently on the free food nutrition budget, we were planning to end the year with about $5.5 million deficit. Right now, we're scheduled for 3.4. And that might get a little bit better. We'll have to wait and see how the final numbers come out. With that being said though, the current budget set up has about $21.8 million in revenue split between local, state, and federal. Um state being the money they give us just to kind of for a certain positions within school nutrition. Federal
045being uh the SNP or school nutrition funds. Local money is all what we charge our students for meals. Then, you got the breakdown between the different categories. One thing is um that I'm really proud of of what uh Todd's group did over there along with Donna, is they went out and they redid the whole RFP process for a manufacturer to bring in food. They were not happy with the current one they had. Uh they went out aggressively and they basically told people, "We're looking for no increase. We're looking for a decrease." And they actually had a vendor come in that wanted to work its way into the Atlanta market and they came in very aggressively with their food um RFP process and because that looks like we're going to save about $858,000 on food purchases
046next year cuz it's been averaging anywhere from 15 20% a year for the last couple years. >> And you had to do that. That was going to be Todd's big finish at his last meeting in June, but unfortunately we had to do that as part of the budget. >> Oh, I'm sorry. I did not know that. >> That's okay. >> We'll act surprised. >> Yeah, just act surprised when he says >> So, currently we do have a $4.7 million deficit built in. So, based on that um we predict we're going to end about $17 million, maybe a little bit better, maybe 18. And right next year we should be at 12. Um the one thing I can say as a CFO of looking at these numbers you're going to have to find revenue sources down
047the road. So, it's either going to be a combination we get better federal rates of return or you might have to start increasing your local cost for meals. I'm just looking at it from that point of view. Okay. So, we start looking at our special revenue fund and capital projects. We look at capital projects the reason capital project is going to be harder to figure out is because we're ending two SPLOST programs. We'll be ending SPLOST 6 in December and picking up SPLOST 7 in January. And the reason it's a little more difficult is is it's because we're I sat down with Matt and we were trying to figure out the order of what we're going to do come um January of next year in terms of the collections and what projects are going to
048go first. And that's a lot of time between now and then especially with October count numbers coming out, uh changes in economy and things like that. So, that'll be a big discussion that we will have to have internally with our staffs and Mitch and then Mitch will get with you guys on that down the road and how that looks. But by doing the the best estimate I guess we can come up with Matt and I, we think it's going to be about $82 million. 16 of that's going to be the last group of capital outlay money we're going to get for a long time, that 16 million. That's going to bring in about 82 million. We have the last 7.6 we're going to move out of one of the SPLOST accounts, SPLOST 5, over to
049that service, which will leave us 74. We're predicting about $55 million. The majority of that money is going to be money that we are going to pay to finish out the last clusters and final programs that we have for these programs going through December. One thing I will say though is I've been here going on 7 years. SPLOST 6 will probably be the fastest SPLOST we've ever spent in the history of this place cuz we still had SPLOST 4 money, SPLOST 3 money, SPLOST 5 money when I got here. We just finally closed those programs the last 2 years, majority of them. SPLOST 5 is the only one that's open right now. But SPLOST 6 is going to be spent extremely fast compared to what it has been in the past with our SPLOST money.
050>> That's straight up because of the cost of >> Correct. >> materials, correct, and labor? >> Yep. So, we're looking at excess of about $19 million to the current fund balance of 23, so we should have about 42.8 million dollars left over next year after we finish this year. Under special revenue, this is a combination of all the federal programs plus school nutrition we just looked at. In fact, that fund balance at the bottom is school nutrition only. The way federal programs work is you whatever you bring in revenue-wise is only what you can spend. So, they have to be um fund balance neutral to themselves at the end of the year. So, with that being said, the majority of the budget that 39, 26 of it, 26.6 is school nutrition, the rest of it
051um about 13 million dollars is the other federal programs. As you can see, federal sources jumps up significantly because of that as well, the 23 million uh transfer in for the RTC program from the general fund of about 180,000 dollars, and we'll end up with a fund balance of 12.3 again, school nutrition funds. Um we talked about this at the beginning, but right now we are tentatively going to cancel the millage meetings until we get more additional information from the finance >> Say postpone. >> Excuse me, postpone the meetings temporarily. Until we hear otherwise. Um, so in a nutshell, we have about a $76.5 million budget we presented to you with about a 1.47% total increase over 25 budget. I'm sorry, that should be 26 budget. I'll fix that screen. And no millage rate increase.
052Any questions? >> Any questions? Comments? >> No. >> And then this will be posted online? >> Correct. After I make that change on the last the last one. >> No. Great job. Thank you very much. All right. >> Well, that's number one. You're you get to hear it How many more times? Three more times, Larry? >> times. >> Two more times. >> It's three and three, right? >> No, it's two and three. >> Okay. >> Oh, okay. >> Very good. Very good. Well, thank you for that. All right. If there's nothing further, the last item is to adjourn. We got a motion to adjourn. >> I make a motion to adjourn the meeting. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? Motion passes. The meeting is adjourned.