001605 committee members attending this meeting tonight Teresa Kate myself absent Mr and ju principally looks like we have most of the board members here to join us at the meeting so it go quick at the board meeting we won have toap things to you thank you that being said John I'll pass it over to you my thank you thank you uh rich I think we'll we'll start with the financial report and I'm going to ask um Mike to walk us through itone so this is the monthly report for the 9 month sat day March 28th 2024 we finished a few months uh few days early I'm sorry just because of the timing of the Clos closing of the month it's about a day early monthly expenditures were at 11.1 million and when you look at
002the 8 month average were is about 1.3 so it's been in line um with the average monthly spending there are some variances you'll see month a month and that's due to timing we'll talk about that a little bit um from a year dat perspective we have 91.9 million another 58.4 incum on a total budget of 1 15.6 million you'll see we have a favorable next slide we have here which is a general fund summary 281,000 unfavorable unfavorable variance but when you add any the additional uh 62,000 uh for additional Appropriations are still possible I just want to clarify that our favorable balance $20,000 the next few pages you'll see the next three pages are again this is the newer report that we've added in for the monthly some of that um some things I wanted
003to point out uh and CH perhaps you could speak a little bit more to this but there were some positions in the general fund that were moved to grance and when that happens you move the future also anything that's been so incumbered but the historical amount and with that amount goes the benefits so you'll see there is a small downturn uh in in the benefits line in the six benefits lines there because those expenses were moved to to the gr's that that that's correct um we're going to talk in a minute about I'll call it the deficit reduction plan and uh you'll see that's Ono so we've been moving things uh into the grants as part of that plan the following page about halfway down under other purchase Services I just wanted to turn your
004attention to the first two lines for the month of March is uh Z and 166 4,000 those two items are for transportation student transportation and transportation special ed um for this fiscal year we have just about $6 million in each one of them which is about 600,000 per month um those bills we we're on a cash basis so those bills are being paid realizing the financials Happ so this month we did not have them however uh the entire amount isn't covered at the beginning of the year so although you don't see it accounted for here in this monthly summary you'll see it um in the annual summary and again when we get to that portion about the transportation any the other lines you'll see the same thing under supplies on that second page about 34
005of the way down for natural gas and electric um there is two two amounts one under another for zero and again that's just due to time because we didn't get the bills in uh we in or we didn't get them out in time to Mar the next few pages we have are the general fund line item report this is where you're going to see the month-to date actual with the Year date buget year-to dat actual and this is where you'll see that fourth column year-to dat incumbrances where I said we might not have the actuals in the monthly data but we do have the expenses in covered you'll see those numbers are in the in that second the last column Year date cence and then the last column being the Year date budget balance on
006the third page about halfway down that report there's a line that says Transportation special and if you look at what our year-to dat budget is we have budgeted 5.89 million our year to the actual so through March is 20 uh 2.62 with another 5.0 incumber and when you add that together it's uh it exceeds the the budget number u i we believe that that number we still looking at it but we believe that that number might be slightly uh High over encumbered um I am personally a little hesitant to remove that encumbrance and loow that purchase order amount that's in there just because special education and transportation um typically a very variable so if we come up with um additional expenses for special education um specifically in transportation that will U that will cover us
007and then the last pages you'll see there's two pages that are the grand fund summary and that's our in our usual format budget year to date with the incumbrance and the budget balance any questions for Mike yeah mention I just like to explain to somebody I had asked them to put in that sheet which gives us the monthly the monthly expenses for the month for me and going to look at something it helps me but there were certain and Mike mentioned the the issues with that that's basically on a cash basis so to the point if you don't put something into your paying it today it's going to show a distortion but I look at that for other reasons and as long as the other reasons and the distortions pop up and we have explanations
008for it such as it wasn't overlooked but it's encumbered the the year-to date figures is really the Bible to look at so I look at the monthly thing for me just to to get a feel for how the numbers are going to some people it may be confusing I think to look at is is the the year dat because that includes all of the Cash Plus all of the appr that we have the other thing is we're 9 months into the the uh N9 months into the year and we're running this close variance of $300,000 positive uh during our prelimary meeting last week uh John conveyed to me that there believe it's next month may be additional expenses coming in that are going to reduce this uh by some 70,000 John so we just want
009to give you a heads up on that is that as long as we're aware of something that's going to occur we like to give you a heads up that next month it will be reported but to at least give you a heads up here because that that variance is so close what the impact of that is okay so so connected to that um I I'll call it the deficit reduction plan I have a sheet I'd like to walk walk you through and I think it puts the whole general fund together what are you Hing that at I was talking about the special a cost yep the um excess cost no yes, page you're looking at sort of the it's the sheet I would keep on my desk as we've gone through this to remind me
010of the things that we wanted to do were they done what still had to happen and uh as it's as it's finishing up I just put a on it and thought I'd show it to you and what it does is it it Chronicles things from the very beginning of the school year actually a few days before that our our June of 2023 meeting you can see that was the meeting we came and we reduced some of the lines in our budget we reduced some uh supply lines we reduce some utility lines and we move some positions into grants it was that million six and the difference between those first two numbers that's the 3,44 that's you see in some of the printouts Etc and these are not in any particular order but Roman numeral 2
011uh that's the expiring essr Grant the sr3 grant that expires in a couple months we asked the state to approve an amendment where we could take some expenses out of our school budget and they were eligible for Esser reimbursement it it took a number of weeks for the state to approve this but they just did on MAR on April 8 so I move that over into the column of resources U that are available we also had uh what is called a carryover grant or the a remaining Title One grant that when you don't spend it the first year you can spend it the second year and as we get into January and February we noticed we had not been drawing down on this grant so we took some salaries out of the school budget eligible
012for reimbursement and put them into the grant that was the second thing the uh third third thing although it didn't generate uh real dollar savings where you could take an expense away under the superintendent leadership we Clos down spending about a month earlier than we normally would do asked all the principles program leaders do your planning for June let us know what it is get your orders in now and they were very uh cooperative and helped us out in those regards many of the things that we do every year in June we've now encumbered and set aside we needed to know that so we knew how much where we really stood at the same time we've uh put in what we'll call a soft freeze on hiring that um essential positions uh would need a
013special U okay before they're filled the thinking was U sort of well it's April we've managed to get through so far who knows what the future brings let's see if we can get to the end of June with the staff we have so there's no savings there we're not hiring any new people right now unless it's Mission critical so that that was a step we took the alliance Grant uh we had an amendment to that approved on March 28 of a million dollars and what that really did it took it took some flexibility away from us but it did not it will not negatively impact the programs and services and what I mean is there are a number of things in the alliance grant that we would order at the end of the year so
014that they'd be in the classrooms for August and September or some of the technology and and software I've used the example of our student information database Power School we've all heard of that that's about $300,000 we had been getting build for that uh in May every year and we pay it out of the alliance Grant but the Bill's not du till July so what we're going to do is use the new alliance Grant to pay that so when they say we we took away some flexibility we'll do it that's sort of a onetime savings you can take you can't do that again but um this is the time to do it so there were some other things like that we're going to uh purchase in the new alliance grant that comes out so that that
015was approved March 28th by the state Ed department so that goes in the completed column we also uh look carefully we have a priority School grant that uh pays for was U eligible to reimburse summer school expenses and what we noticed was that when we had summer school last summer uh July and August we didn't use this grant to charge the expenses it's not too late so we went in reclassified those expenses as priority school reimbursements and picked up about A4 million dollars that way there were two o there are two other strategies we were looking at um just mention here because that was my list if something didn't work or we didn't U get what we wanted from the state we had other contingency plans the magnet school subsidy that's an amount that we
016put in the school budget to help with the declining out of District enrollment at AIS what we thought a month or two ago was that we had more in our budget than we really needed and we were use that to help with the deficit but what we found out um the 1 of April was the state Grant was reduced so we just didn't have the Surplus we thought we might have a couple just a couple weeks ago uh we also looked at the alliance Grant again there's an appropriation there for substitute teachers we thought maybe we could do something with that but the more we the closer we looked the substitute teachers right now are paid out of most of them are paid out of our sr3 grant so we would have been taking an
017expense from one Grant and putting it into another that wouldn't have given us relief in the school budget that was at the time we thought maybe it could and then the last thing that's I just for my own records I kept that amount that maybe we need from the city but as you can see right now the the strategies we employed uh five of them give us 4.9 million from the 4.7 we were looking we needed to to balance so there's a $200,000 uh extra that you'll see next month when when you see the balance you'll see the effect of these some of these uh some of these changes as I was referring to earlier some we've done journal entries some we've done the record keeping there's still a few more uh that we have
018to do so that's that's where things stand so to put this into some sort of a event situation when we came on the board this year there was this big Hollow about the the budget being shorted $4.7 billion and shortly thereafter um there were some adjustments made by 1 Point some OD million dollar to reduce it but there was some $3 million that was left and if you recall Kevin and John went before the the ad hoc committee and and sort of requested that we take down from the reserves $3 million but not really giving it to us because they said they weren't sure because they had a plan as to if they needed it so they sort of asked if you would give me the opportunity to draw down I needed it make a
019long story short that's passed so all of the strategies that they utilized for this difference had come to materialize in our favor which is good so at this point here the request that we had before the board to to take down the $3 million relative to last year years differences no longer exists not to say it may not exist this year we have to watch it but at least that part of the conversation ends up and it was through the different strategies that we that that was implemented here so I I thought that was important that at least John fill you in on on how it would came about and also the the Comfort level that we have to know that at least the reserves as of today going to use the word free I'd
020like to say free for out taking if we need in the future but we don't have to use any of it for the the prior year the prior Year's adjustments um I I did also want to follow up on something it was during our conversations last week that and this what I was talking about about this individual coming into the district that was going to have a uh an additional cost on us uh for special ed yeah we a high cost higher cost student placement right we're not expecting them did the budget but it will have an impact next month yes okay and it will take that $300,000 subsequently adjusted by this favorable variance and drop it by some $70,000 correct okay uh if you want to go into a little bit more on that
021to explain what it is uh board understands I have another question follow on that balance that were talking about before it okay to ask Mr about that um uh John and Mike thank you for the presentation um I just want to clarify this [Music] 220,000 um um balance that we have meing as a result of these reduction strategies so this is $220,000 that we having um at our disposal is that reflected in the uh 320k that we have or that will reflect next month next adding it to that correct okay thank you so Kelly I wasn't looking to reveal Secrets just talking General numbers okay we've already got detailed on one specific student so we know we'll have an extra expense so by that um so I think that pretty includ the financial part of
022this um the the other thing that John brought to my attention was that in the recent week or weeks you've heard a lot about the of course the city budget and the cap as the city has relative to spending expending cap and John put something together just basically for information to us as to what this means who want us just briefly go through that um this is just a matter of information so that uh those of you who don't understand what the St is this a briefly explain some of the charts behind there are ter complicated we get so it came up at the uh city council meeting when we were talking about our budget you mentioned there was a sort of a side conversation that broke out with the City Finance director and the
023mayor and they talked about hitting this cap and how that um affected how much they could spend and I I thought it's kind of a rare thing so I want to take a minute and just show you what they're talking about uh particularly as it might relate to next year when we're looking for a boost for the Academy I thought it was important to to hear about it did everyone get of everything okay so um let me first um take a look at the one that says expected state aid and what what that has what's on the top is what this what the city of danburry uh expects to receive in state aid next year if the governor's budget remains uh as it is still not finished but you can see there's U seven or
024eight different AIDS and they're called categorical AIDS because they're for a category and these are the ones if you looked in the mayor's budget book you you'd see the total here they they break them out a little bit just I'll give you the names the the pilot program nothing to do with airports it's payment in L of taxes so for example uh for Westcon which is here we don't get any tax for that uh some of the churches and things um the state will give cities and towns money because they have those tax exempt properties that they can't get anything for but there's still a burden from having um those facilities in your town um the revenue sharing I I'll get back to that in a minute because that's the one that's important the uh
025Casino money you see here that they call it mash and Tucket pquad and Mohan that's the slot machines that's not the sports betting that's not here but uh Town Aid Road a misnomer it should be called Town Road Aid because I call it Town Aid Road and that's money that cities and towns get to repave and and things like that from the state losp is a program certain capital projects the state will provide Aid on uh when you conduct them so they they know which projects they are and they'll they'll get their entitlement Municipal grants and Aid that's just um a general state aid that goes to cities and towns there's our educational cost sharing that's a that's a revenue for the town you can see that's the only one that was going up under
026the governor's budget everything else was flat and then there's some adult ed state aid you you've heard us say how we need to put some money in our budget there's a local share you have to spend in order to get this so we we budgeted that but um and then what I put next to it the it's this is what we call the the runs when the governor releases his budget or the assembly you first look for the runs and it shows you town by Town who get who's going to get what um and you the numbers that I have in the cover sheet are coming right from these runs so you can see the payment in Le of taxes if you look down to the damn Barry there's our number so so these six
027or seven things are the entire state aid that the city gets and and other than for the alliance Grant which we spend they use those grants to lower the tax level so you can see that's why I put at the bottom 290,000 or 300,000 that's what the city plans to spend they'll get state aid of 57 or 60 million so the tax levy uh is the difference primarily along with some other things so that's that's first what you see now the cap that they're talking about is in on the next handout that has a little yellow in it and it's a it's a piece of legislation it's that old but the point I want to make is it's not a cap on total spending like the state of Connecticut has you know there's some statutory
028language the state budget cannot go up more than a certain amount we read about a lot these days what this cap does is it says that if you go above a certain amount either I think it's here either 2.5% higher or the rate of inflation then you pay a penalty on that overspending um someone told me was like the luxury tax in baseball I don't know too much about that but apparently it's the same thing um and but there are some exceptions when you you do that calculation special education is an exception there's some other things and that's what they were talking about the other night what was the cap with these exceptions but the point is if you go over the cap uh for every dollar you go over your that one particular categorical
029Aid the supplemental Municipal Revenue sharing goes down by 50 CS so the most you could possibly lose by going over the cap is in our case a million too we could choose the city could choose to do that and give up that state a you can see it's I put over on the far right column it's 410 of 1% of the budget so it's not a lot when you compare it that way but that's that's the cap now they have the city has options I I want to bring this up now because for those of you who saw that the three-year budget we were asked to do for the ad hoc committee you see the um the acad expenses coming in next year next budget and that would push us up over the cap but
030what the city can do is they could set that set this money aside now a million to they have a couple sources to do that um they have their own Surplus their own fund balance uh a last time they counted it it was I think $24 million they could take a million two out of that and reserve it so that we can go over the cap or there may be some other things they could just you know budget out of it too but um okay so so that's I I want you to to know that they'll have some choices I thought I heard the mayor say he didn't want to do that right they they don't like to um take money from the Surplus it it's um you know it's a savings account it's for
031um you know you use it for unexpected events uh activities and things but I was telling Rich today um we're so insured for almost anything that can happen it's hard to imagine something that's not insured that we'd have to dip into the savings for I'm sure there are things but it's not like it was uh before we had some of these really sop at policies my judge again Teresa we're not here to make recommendations or statements it's more information relative to terminology so that for those that you want to enhance their knowledge they have a little bit knowledge what the terminology needs and what the consequences are and not to get two in the weeds but just briefly the second page there um this particular budget that um governor on presented they shifted some things
032around and they put this particular Aid in with some other things and what this pay it's sort of a a mixed bag they take part of the sales tax um part of the casino money uh they put some other money in they and it's and they from it they they pull out some motor vehicle reimbursement you know the the same Honda cord in Harington may not pay the same taxes is a Honda Accord in New London and there's some Equalization there but this particular Aid along with its penalty went into this big bucket that's that's new this new this year and of course be new measure so it's a little more than we probably need to know but that's um that's what the spending Cap's all about thank you are any questions relative to stat
033from the committee members any board members have any other questions uh if I may could you just adjust a minut to show that one here so the only one is Mr Hol um that one thing I'd like to say is I'm constantly looking to improve the financial statements to make them informative and basically fun to read this is an interest that I have but if there's any recommendations that you feel that we could do to enhance this just to let me know or if there's anything that you would like to see in terms of further reporting let me know we can try to to get that implemented uh so but the more knowledge we have the better off I think we are to be able to to govern uh and I think the the better
034understanding we have of these numbers the more comfortable we are in in basically understanding what we're up against or what we're looking to to to accomplish so with that just call formal I'm not formal I'm sorry so I will ask the comme if we could make C agreement to make a recommendation to the full board to accept thek second second thank you all in favor I I thank you very much thank you Kate okay that I thank you for your participation thank you John and mik Y please thank you all in favor