001All right. Good evening everyone. If we welcome to our October board meeting, if we could rise for the pledge of allegiance. Thank you. I >> aliance 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. Right. We have a we have a full agenda tonight. Thank you everyone uh for coming. Um and uh before we start our meeting, I would just like to uh uh mention on behalf of the board, we'd like to uh keep the Kushner family in our uh prayers and our thoughts. Uh Matthew Kushner passed away. He was a uh a board member, a resident of North Merrick, a uh a long-erving North America Sheilia Sheila Kushner uh was our beloved uh kindergarten teacher
002that just retired uh a few months ago in June. So, uh, we, you know, hold the commissioners in our prayers and thoughts and, uh, just wanted to mention that tonight. Um, I'm going to withhold any other comments because we have our auditors here, uh, this evening and we have some other things on the calendar, some celebrations. Um, so I'd like to, uh, let the auditors do their presentation to the public and I think there are handouts uh, thought there handouts, but if not, there will be a, uh, PowerPoint that everyone can look at and we'll go right into our, uh, auditor's report. Move out of the way. >> Good evening. Thank you for inviting us to present the results of the audit for this year. Um, we just met with the board and went into
003detail on the audits and we are really going to go over this PowerPoint just to give you an overview of how the audit went this year. Once again, a great audit. We're happy to say you received an unmodified opinion, which is the best opinion you can get as a school district. So, congratulations. That's awesome. Um, wanted to thank Marie Donnelly. Um, she's she was great helping us with getting all the information for the audit. Her team did a great job getting all the books ready for us and everything went really smoothly with the audit. In addition to issuing a a uh opinion on your financials, we also do look at your internal controls. We do spend a lot of time on testing your controls. And I'm happy to report once again last year as well
004as this year we did not have any findings. the uh the the district has very strong internal controls and the business office has an excellent financial operations. So all good news so far. Um required communications. This is just something that we have to disclose within your packet and these are all the estimates that go into your financials. Um we listed them there. So that is something just for your information. We did not have any difficulties in the audit. We did have some minor audit adjustments but nothing material and um we did not have any disagreements with management. This is just a financial highlight of the different funds that you have. So this one is the general fund which is the most important fund. This is what your budget is based on. So what we do
005is we show you last year versus this year and really give you the fluctuations. So you do have what you call restricted fund balance which is all the reserves that you do have and those are really for long-term expenses. Um so they're all earmarked for those specific purposes. Then you have what we call assigned fund balance. So you have appropriated fund balance assigned. Last year was 80,000. This year it went down to zero. And this is an excellent excellent strategy that we've been talking about that the district should have a selfbalancing budget and should not be relying on fund balance to supplant the the budget. So you have gotten to that point where you're not utilizing fund balance to balance your revenue side of the budget. Out of the 42 districts that we do, we
006only have one other district that has gotten to that point. So this is really, really great that you've gotten to this point. and I know you've been working on it over the years. Um, so great great job on that. Um, unassigned fund balance is where you do have monies that are not earmarked for any specific purpose, that's subject to 4% of next year's budget. So, if you have any unforeseen expenses or any state aid or revenue shortfalls, that's the purpose of having those monies and you are at that level. Um, last year you were at 4% and this year at 4%. So overall you did have a decrease overall and the one change this year was the voters approved spending your capital reserve down. Um so you can see where it says capital that's the
007one reserve that is voter approved to establish as well as spend. So that was the big change for this year. That was a planned reduction. So, if you just do not take that into consideration, your fund balance is pretty consistent from last year to this year. Couple other funds you do have in your financials. One being the school food service fund. That's your school lunch operations. That's pretty consistent from last year to this year. It it went down slightly, $4,000 from the prior year. Debt service, you have a small amount in the debt service fund, no change from last year. And then the last fund is your capital projects fund. So this is where you spend money on any capital projects that you do have. So we break it out restricted capital which is any
008projects that are funded by that capital reserve that we spoke about where the monies got transferred over to the capital fund. That's why that did increase 1.2 from the prior year. And then you have an unassigned fund balance which are projects that are funded by a state grant. So the district is still waiting for that grant money. So that's the reason for the negative. So it's really just a timing difference. Okay, these two slides pretty much summarize what I just said. This is a nice snapshot of your restricted fund balance. So we were talking about your reserves and last year versus this year. And so you can see that you are utilizing the reserves which is important. However, you are you do have a plan to replenish the reserves. You don't want to deplete your
009reserves too quickly. So all in all, you know, like I said, you're using and replenishing the reserves, and that's really the purpose for the reserves. The big change is your capital reserve because you did use that reserve to um that was voter approved, and that dropped down from 1.3 to 14,000 for the 2019 capital reserve. So, and then you have your new reserve, which is 2025. Okay, so this is your unassigned fund balance roll forward. So you started at your 4%, you ended at 4%. What transpired during the year? So your revenues and other financing sources were over budget of 146,000. Your expenditures and other financing uh uses and encumbrances were under budget. Um and that was roughly 3% which is in range where you want to be. Um, generally 2 to 5% is is
010what we see as as a normal range. So you're right where you should be as far as on the budget, which basically says you were within 97% of your budget. So um so you were pretty pretty accurate on the on that side. Um you had some unused appropriated reserves which went back into the reserves. Then the allocation to reserve. So what I just mentioned in the prior slides, these are where you funded reserves and also you allocated interest to reserve and then you ended up with 1.7. So it's pretty consistent. Last year versus this year you went up slightly about 50,000 but you are at that 4% level which is really important to maintain your current um financial situation. And then these slides just basically go over everything I just went over. This is a
011nice snapshot of your revenues last year's versus this year. So overall your revenues went up about 5%. Um primarily your real property taxes, your state aid went up and then your other categories went down um slightly. So overall, you know, a change of 5% from last year to this year. Then if you look at your general support expenses and your total general fund expenses, so that went up between last year and this year and it was a 9% increase from the prior year. General support went up and that primarily was due to salary and step rises along with any growth growth in Bosei services this year. The other financing uses increased and that had to do with that capital reserve we spoke about earlier. So that did increase $1.3 billion from from last year. So
012overall financially you do have a short-term plan, a long-term plan, and it's really important to have that. And these are the reasons why you want to have a strong financial position. It helps you with your cash flow, your setting of your levy. It improves or or gives you a good credit rating. Um if you have to go out for borrowing, it reduces any interest costs. It will fund any unbudgeted contingent expenses or state aid shortfalls. And bottom line, it will preserve your existing programs and opportunities for the students. This year, there was one slight change in the financials. Um, we implemented a new Gazsby. This has nothing to do with your budget or your fund level. Um, this is the long-term balance sheet for reporting compensated absences, which is the vacation and sick time that
013the employees earn. and when they retire, they get paid out for those days. So, you're able to set monies aside in a reserve for that purpose. This is really representing what you put on your long-term balance sheet. So, the one change this year was not only including what you're actually going to pay out, but it also includes an estimate of use of PTO days. So, it was an additional criteria that we had to um you know, establish. Marie did a great job. It was a really involved analysis that she had to do and she did a great job.