A funny thing happened during this week's Finance Committee meeting.During the check approval segment of the agenda, citizen rep Rick Mealy asked why check # 98047 to Klinke Cleaners for $594 ---for cleaning of band uniforms--appeared on the high school construction charges log.
Check# 98047
Vendor: Klinke Cleaners
Amount: $594
Comment: HS Band uniform dry cleaning
All members of the committee--and all meeting attendees-- got quite a chuckle. "It's an error", suggested committee chair Terry Shimek. Phil Frei agreed, "That's probably just an error and we'll clean that up."
End of story right? We got a good chuckle and the joke is over...right?
Wrong.
Phil Frei sent the following e-mail out Tuesday afternoon:
Subject: Klinke Cleaner check question
From: Phil Frei [pfrei@spasd.k12.wi.us]
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 2:38 PM
To: Al Slane [aaslane@spasd.k12.wi.us]; Caren Diedrich [crdiedr@spasd.k12.wi.us]; David Stackhouse [dastack@spasd.k12.wi.us]; Jill Camber Davidson [jacambe@spasd.k12.wi.us]; John Whalen [jewhale@spasd.k12.wi.us]; James McCourt [jrmccou@spasd.k12.wi.us]; Tim Culver [tculver@spasd.k12.wi.us]; Terry Shimek [twshime@spasd.k12.wi.us]
Cc: Roger Fetterly [fetterly@charter.net]; Rick Mealy [rmealy@charter.net]; pastorrayford@fhlfamily.com; Rhonda Page [rspage@spasd.k12.wi.us]
.......................................................
Last night at the Finance Meeting there was a question why a Kilnke Cleaner bill showed up on the construction related bills.
Last summer during construction (at the current HS) some band uniforms (tuxedos) got dirty and needed to be dry cleaned. Since this occurred because of the construction, the bill was coded to the construction account.
Hmmm... so it happened during the summer. We only received an invoice on Hallowe'en (of all dates!). We're just paying it in mid-December?
CHECK#_VENDOR___________INVOICE DATE___AMOUNT
98047__KLINKE CLEANERS___10/31/2009_____$594.00
Hold the phone, Tyrone!
Even if the uniforms got a little dusty from construction, is it REALLY appropriate to charge this to the construction fund, which was earmarked for costs due to the construction and equipping of the high school and upper middle school?
Now that the budget is tight are we going to finagle some way of charging every little thing to the construction account...that $100M checkbook funded by John Q. Taxpayer?
We don't think so.
What's next? A little construction dust finds its way into 250 PCs --which just so happen to be at the 5-yr replacement date---and then you'll want to charge the replacement cost (plus 1400 NEW PCs) to the construction account????
Kinda sounds like a game of tit for tat. You mean taxpayers cut our tax levy by $2M so by gosh, by golly, we are going to spend every red cent of that $100M referendum money.
This district just gets crazier by the minute.
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