We're in the midst of March Madness (weather-wise as well as basketball-wise).
Dontcha think we should be talking budget?
We may hear something at the next Finance Committee meeting.
But just to whet your appetites....and to perhaps to initiate an incendiary flare beneath district administration's derrieres....we offer you an in-depth budget analysis of just ONE budget line.
Our forecast calls for....surplus...and a surplus of it.
Nope...nothing new here. That's pretty typical.
Let's just focus on electricity (line 337) ...shall we?
That's an easy one...right?
In fairness, let's begin by saying that the original budget (July 2011) was for $1.261M and it was subsequently reduced to $1.209M in August.
- For FY2010-11, there was a budget line surplus of $194K (15.5% of total budget)
- For FY2011-12, this line budget has been DEcreased by 3% ($43 K)
- So…despite a $194K surplus last year, we only DEcreased the budget by $43K?
- With 58% of the year in, we have spent only 32.6% of this budget line …
- ...and in FY 2010-11, the last 5 months of the year accounted for 47% of spending
We're budgeting $101,000/month, yet only spending $93,000/month.
That alone suggests a surplus of at least $96,000.
For the remaining 5 months of the year, we have $651,000 budgeted for electricity usage.
At a budgeted rate of $101K/month, that would indicate a surplus of $146,000.
Looking at actual expenditures to-date and even using last year's real costs from February through June, a surplus of $157,000 is anticipated.Three different ways to analyze it, and we see projected surpluses of $96,000- $157,000.
Anyway you slice it, we have significant surplus in just this one budget line item.
Now that we've outed it, anyone wanna bet that the budget for this line item gets adjusted downward and the "surplus" sprinkled throughout a ton of other budget lines as part of the "March Budget Adjustments"?
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