September 21, 2010
To the Electors and Citizens of the Sun Prairie Area School District:
This year, ...due to diligent attention to federal programs and carefully timed borrowing, we were able to lower the financing costs for [Sun Prairie High School and Cardinal Heights Upper Middle School] by $2.4 million this year and $39.9 million over the life of the bonds!
That's laying it on a little thick....don't you think? Uh....hello...recession? President Obama's Stimulus Funds? Ringing a bell here? It required "diligent attention"? Please! Even Tim Culver had to cringe when he wrote this. Carefully timed borrowing? Again...PLEASE! You're charged with borrowing responsibly. That means you don't borrow $100M out of the chute for a 2-year project. You do it in stages. Any idiot that just rolled off a turnip truck knows that. It just so happened that your borrowing "stages" coincided with the biggest recession since the Great Depression. Now, if Dr. Culver wants to claim that he created the recession in order for these stars to align so perfectly, then...yeah...we'd call that "diligent attention.... and carefully timed". Stop taking credit where none is due.
At last year’s annual meeting, by a vote of 124 to 60, electors unexpectedly lowered the tax levy proposed in the planning budget under which we had operated since the previous July.
Again...HELLO! YOU want to hold the Elector's meeting in October. Many residents feel that the Annual Elector's Meeting should be held in July (like it used to be as recently as 2004!) so the Electors can approve a tax levy BEFORE you start a new fiscal year of spending...instead of midway through the 4th month!
...to lower the levy to the greatest extent possible, we have taken some calculated risks against future years in this proposed budget. We used the surplus we were able to meticulously achieve last year to lower this year’s levy. This means our ‘rainy day fund’ or fund reserve will remain flat and become a lesser percentage of our entire budget.
OK, there's stretttttccccchhhhing the truth...and then there's ripping it to shreds. The school board "policy" is to maintain a fund balance equal to 10% of the annual expenditures. Since your budget calls for expenditures of $72.3M, then your fund balance needs to be at $7.3M. At the start of this fiscal year, fund balance was at $8.5M, and even after using $700K this year, it will close out at AT LEAST $7.8M. That means there's $500K MORE in your rainy day fund than--by school board policy---you need. And please...no more campfire scary stories about spending fund balance will ruin our bond rating. It plain and simply never happened. And across the state, many districts are taking money from their "rainy day" fund. As we told you last October....it was a downpour then, and it remains so now. Finally, last year the projection was for fund balance to dip down to $7.2M and ...HEY!....you might remember that at the end of this 'difficult year' you had a $1.3M surplus and fund balance ROSE to $8.5M. Meticulously? We don't think so.
The School Board has taken a hard line on employee raises, granting just a 1% increase coupled with reduced health care benefits for two employee groups (administrators and administrative support) and is entering into negotiations with the two largest employee groups with similar resolve to hold the line on costs.
Do we think this was a good move? Absolutely. But calling it a hard line is a tad disingenuous, dontcha think? Newsflash...state employees and county employees have been under wage REDUCTIONS and FURLOUGHS (16 days, not 1 day) for over a year. That will continue at least until July 2011. And, very likely, state employees won't see raises till beyond 2013. Oh...and people on fixed Social Security incomes? They really DID become fixed in 2010 with NO increase....and all signs point to NO INCREASE for 2011 as well. So we're not spilling any tears over the board issuing "only" 1% raises. And let's not even discuss the ridiculously small amount school district employees STILL pay for health and dental (what are those?) benefits.
The bottom line for me is that our children's education, the basis of their economic futures, should not be placed at risk during our present economic down cycle. To continue to provide excellent education there needs to be a tax levy increase of at least 3.6% just to maintain our schools and programs and pay for voter-approved debt.
Yes, we absolutely agree that a 3.6% levy increase is far better than the 8% you told us back in March. But don't even BEGIN to tell us that a 3.6% increase is the absolute bottom line. We know about the district's "our dough" pants. There's plenty of money still in those pockets and you know it. Let's just start with the $500K in fund balance. Do you REALLY want us to call it all out for you? We don't think so. Not that we're advocating "taking it" at the Elector's meeting, mind you, but you need to come to grips with the reality that the people of this community are alert and getting rapidly in touch with the crazy school district spending. We support a quality education. We don't support a few fat cats getting rich at the expense of taxpayers.
We do not mean this as a personal attack, but the simple reality is that $88,000 for an elementary school librarian or high school language teacher is a little hard to swallow. This closing comment from Dr. Culver can be interpreted as a thinly veiled threat that if the Electors vote to reduce the tax levy one penny, then the school board is prepared to take action to override the levy decision. That would be a mistake, people, because this community can prove beyond a shred of doubt that there are still a lot of empty calories in the school district budgetary "diet".
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