001All right. At this time, we'll call our meeting of the whole for June 16th to order. Let us stand for our pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance 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. First up, we will have um Director Morales do her legislative report. One second, please. I I would just I'll just run through the highlights because I posted it. It's It's posted on Facebook underneath my school board um account and it's also posted via email. So, the biggest thing is just that The biggest thing is that House Bill 1500 has passed the House and is on it is is in the Senate. And so House Bill 1500 is a cyber
002charter reform um bill that would among many things cap the tuition rate at $8,000 um per student. What that would mean for Chester Upland is a $7.4 million savings next year. Um, so really really really really hoping that that goes through. If you see an email from me asking you to send a letter to your senator, please just click the link. Like you don't have to write anything. Just click the link, put your name in there, and send it. Um, so that we can put the pressure on them. We might end up at like a $10,000 cap, but anything is better than where we're at right now. Anything will produce savings. at a federal level, um there was a action to block the dismantling of the Department of Education. So like please please when you
003see things happening in the news, just wait till it's finite because there's no reason to get up in arms about things until we know that you have to get up in arms about it. So, the Department of Education is still intact as we sit here today. And that's about all the things that I want to highlight tonight because we have the budget meeting, but please don't ignore my emails when you see them as it relates to House Bill 1500. Beautiful. All right. So, now we will have a budget presentation by Miss GS. Good evening everyone. Good evening. I will be doing a u review of the final budget presentation and it's a reision a revision or update from our previous uh proposed budget. So where are we now? The agenda is where are we now?
004So, I'll talk about what has happened since the last um since the proposed budget and then what has changed. I'll go over the new millage um rates and then also just a recap of where the revenues are and expenses are and then a summary. So, where are we now? So, before we on our proposed budget last month, we had a deficit of $1.579 million, right? And as of now, the final budget is balanced, so there's no longer a deficit. [Applause] And then also the proposed maximum tax millage rate on the proposed budget was uh at this at the maximum that the index indicated, which was 6.3. Now we're at an aggregate of 3.26. So we were able to balance the budget and lower the uh recommended uh millage rate. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And then also
005uh prior to last month, so we are uh we signed a one-year contract with um um the uh test upland education. So association. So the factf finding results were came in. So, um, you'll hear about that, uh, probably at the receivers meeting, but that also stabilized some of our numbers as well. So, now we know what our increase for our personnel, uh, was was going to be as well as our benefits and what that was going to look like. So, some good things have happened since the proposed uh, budget came out. So, I'm just going to go through the good things that have happened. So um before as as previously mentioned the proposed budget had a deficit of 1.5 um our new uh final budget is 177,500 57,000 and so that's a variance in our
006revenue size of about 6.4 uh 4.6 6 million which is an increase and I'll but I'll go through how that happened as well as our expenditures uh were increased as well. However, if you look at the second section of this the proposed budget the millage rate was uh suggested that the max at for Chester city was going to be 15.27 and then for the township and burrow 14.26 26. Right now with the final budget, the millage rate is going to be uh for Chester City 14.49 and then for the Barrow and Township uh 13.68. What does that look like as far as your annual um increase in your real estate taxes? Prior to the on our proposed budget, we were at $113 annually for Chester City. So now it moved to $15 um annually. And
007then also for the burrow and township, we were at $150.78. Now we're at um $75, which is almost half of where we uh started when we started doing the proposed budget. So what has happened since then? The revenue changed for several reasons. one the the proposed budget for this for the final budget we considered that the budget that would be passed the scenario that we selected was that basic education we assumed that we would get 100% of that we also assumed that we would get 100% of special education and then for the ready tolearn uh we assumed that we would get 65% and again the ready to learn the reason why we didn't assume 100% because that is the probably the most volatile portion of the state budget. So, we we we capped that at
00865% of the total ready to learn, which is about 20% of that $5 million increase. Um, we also uh increased the real estate tax which also bought bought about $1.1 uh million dollars in revenue and as a result of some of our personnel changes that also equated to state assistance for the social security and peasers which that increased as well. And then for our delinquent taxes um we adjusted the delinquent tax revenue for CROER. We we relooked at that and it's it's definitely going to have an impact. So the original numbers in the proposed budget, we adjusted that um we reduced our delinquent taxes down for about $800,000. And then on our also what impacted the revenue was that we had a grant money that was not listed on our previous on the proposed budget
009of uh for title 4 which was $661,000. What changed on our expenditure side? We added into our PTE debt loan which was not on the original budget. We also added in um expenditures relating to the grant dollars for um for title four and then we made some changes to the personnel budget. So um one as previously mentioned we have the agreement so we had some solid numbers now and some solid rates. Last year's budget um included some duplicate positions so we took those out. We also removed some needed positions that were not filled in 2024. um and that were non-school staff, but we delayed filling those positions for 2526. Uh we also added some needed staff. Uh assistant principal for Main uh Main Street. Yes. Hallelujah. Good. Good. Um several special education teachers, um ESCA
010middle school teachers, and some needed custodians for the maintenance department. Glory. as well as uh in the personnel um budget there were also we updated the Pasers rate from the from the proposed we also updated the unemployment rate and the workers compensation rate. So it was a lot of dynamics changing with the personnel um definitely worked with um this the the cabinet as well as Dr. P and we kind of walked through uh line by line um reviewing the the personnel budget. All right. So the this is just a recap of the millillage again. Um the the millillage rate change will equate to $15 for Chester City U residents and then uh $75 for uh the township. This the annual increase. And if from the the the proposed budget this this uh ratio did not
011change much after we uh updated all the revenues. This percentage pretty much stayed the same. The local revenue uh 22. You see some slight changes but not any significant changes. 22 million. State revenue 146. Of course with the additional um uh the assumption of getting additional uh the grant the uh ready tolearn grant as well as uh the additional state assistant for the changes in personnel. and then the federal budget um the increase with the additional title four grant. So those those increases are captured in this revenue um ratio and this is what it looks like if um the state if you take the state and grant related revenue if you look at this pie the city's that's almost 80 like 76% 80% of the city's um revenue budget is state funded and grant related
012school district school district. I'm sorry, school district. The Chester school district. And so our total uh revenue uh components make up 170 $177 million. And this this is a demon. This uh is a this a table that shows what what has changed which we uh previously went over on other slides why they have changed the assumptions that we uh made and as a result of choosing the budget scenario with these assumptions in it we were able to close the gap the deficit we were able to uh pay for the debt and we were also able to um accommodate some personnel needed personnel changes. Um what changed in our uh major expenses? As you can see, charter schools did not. It's still the same and it's a large chunk of our um our expenditures. The debt
013obligation did change because we added the the loan with PTE, which is about $1.5 million. transportation about $7.6 million. Student support 19 uh.9 million and then others which is our uh utilities, legal fees, curriculum, general supplies, things like that. That's about $9 million. So again you can see that our expenditures the dominant players in our expenditures first and first place is charter schools making up about 42% of that and then our personnel and then um student services. So just combined again with personnel and uh charter schools you're talking about 60 73% 70% of 73 uh percent of our budget. So almost 25% goes to other services. And so that bill being passed is just going to make a big big significant significant impact on our budget. And this is a comparison from last year to
014this year. What has changed? Um as as you can see, charter schools have gone up 16%. The the the rate and again that's uh there's several things driving that. of course the rate itself but then it's also the the agreement with one of the larger charter schools will be expiring uh this at the end of this month and so they'll be paying the same rate that uh all the other charter schools pay uh personnel um again I want to say kudos to Dr. P even with all the changes that we made there was very like a 1% increase from last year so um again uh just a shout out to Dr. plus for helping me work that out. Um, student services, uh, pass through obligations, debt, and others, transportations, uh, all of those have declined.
015Our past, if you, if you notice, our pass through obligations are zero. This year, we're projecting that we'll be able to pay the majority of our pass through obligations, which is a big difference uh, from last year and the year before. So, uh, when we started it was $15 million. Yes. Yes. Wow. Beautiful. Oh, I'm not fine. I I'll see. So, when we started, it was $15 million. And so, we we're on a we're on a good track with that. We're on a great track with our debt. We're paying that on, paying our obligations on time. Um and so, and our transportation has been working out very well. We're managing that much better. Um and working with um Mr. Mosley with the transportation. So, we're doing doing excellent work. And then also what also is
016impacting here the the the um reductions is that there's no ESRE dollars out there. And so many of embedded in these numbers are capital projects and things like that that happened last year but are not happening this year. And that is due to um the ESSER dollars going away in 2025 2526. And here's the budget as a at a glance. Um, as you can see, we are in in balance. Um, we made some strides since since the proposed budget and um, so we're at we're at 170 million 177,500,000 and it's in balance with a slight increase in taxes. Any questions? The um, the $15.75 What's the house um value? 125 125,000. That was the example. So, it'll be even less if your assessment um assessment for your home is less than 125,000. It would be
017less. And the mean um the mean house value in the city in the district is 57,000. So, it it it may be even significantly less than that. Any other questions, comments, concerns? I just like to make a couple uh quick comments. So, uh thank you for this presentation, Miss Gathers. I'd also like to thank uh PFM and and Dear Absolutely. And all of our uh district and school leaders who uh made it possible for us to get to this point today working with the business office to present to the receiver and board. So, I'd like to thank everyone who was a part of this. the others. I just wanted to make a note on the other that you talked about. Uh that also includes professional development which speaks to our investment in our workforce. So
018I just want to point that out. Thank you Dr. Mo. Yep. So one last thing I would like to this is Mr. Paul Ammon sitting over there. He is Paul is our accounting specialist and Wednesday because myself and the assistant business manager will be unavailable um on out Mr. Paul will be presenting Mr. Ammon will be presenting on Wednesday. So I just wanted to introduce Mr. Ammon so it won't be your first time seeing him when he comes up here. Beautiful. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Miss GS, for presenting that final budget. So, the receiver will be having his meeting on Wednesday um at 6. So, that will be um have everybody tune in to watch that again because I know we made some changes this month. So, um this Wednesday at 6, the
019receiver will be having his meeting. And just as an announcement, um this will be we're on summer break after this meeting. So once we adjourn, uh we will not have our next committee of the whole until September. Again, that's just the committee of the whole. Check the calendar for the receivers need. So July and August, that's all. Mr. Arnold, just ourselves, just absolutely needed. July and August, but we still will be engaged. We're receiving. Okay. So, I just wanted to announce that because I know some people were wondering were we going to have meetings or not have meetings. Um, so that is our announcements. We will see you guys on Wednesday. And can I have a motion to adjourn? Motion. I second. Second. All right. Beautiful. Not today. They are good.