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Board Meeting 7-30-18

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Board Meeting 7-30-18 - Budget

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Regarding Federal Budget tonight and a regular meeting on Monday August 13th for the trustees will consider a recommendation to approve the proposed budget and a vote will be taken. if you wish to address the board concerning the proposed budget we ask that you sign the registration form provided for that purpose we had it at the door.  Do you have it Mr. {  } I do.  okay everyone who wishes to speak will be given the opportunity but we ask that you keep your remarks as brief and concise as possible. & concise as possible in the interest of time.  If you wish to ask a question concerning the budget, request that you put the budget in writing on the forms provided in order that our staff have time to provide a proper response to your question. An answer to your question will be answer to your question will be developed & mailed to you soon as possible This hearing is for the proposed budget.   at this time I declare the public hearing regarding Proposed 18-19 budget for the Pascagoula-Gautier School District to be open. I'll make some general remarks, we'll have a slideshow & then declare the floor open for comments from the audience. So if you will turn out the lights, we can proceed from here. One of the things you need to be aware of as we go through this, we really have three coinciding years that happens to us.   There's our school year & fiscal year one July,  30 June thru tax collections June the effective tax year from appraisal thru tax collections as April to March and the government fiscal year of October to September. at reports and dates all have to match in there if that's a fluid motion through the year.  The important point to know is your tax collections occurred in January thru March, generally, with minor things for vehicles & what have the rest of the year, we got our paycheck in January to March to last thru the calendar year December. Thus any number taken on the 30th of January or 30th of June is almost "moot" because there's another half of year to occur. so that's consider students, personnel, facilities, vehicles, these are all sections coming up and then the real budget. we have a "B" rated District.  Both high schools are "A" got 87% graduation rate We're in the top 10 of SPED graduation, which is an extra challenge for our SPED group. Kids that were SPED were determined to be special child in getting their education and to graduate. they must pass graduation requirements including Algebra II so some of them take a little longer so they don't get counted for our graduation rate cause it took them 5 yrs to get through. That counts against us. We also, 4 years ago, implemented  the district Pre-K for 4 yr olds. so we're gradually getting to the point that those Pre-K students now began to take the 4 yr old tests. that those Pre-K students now began to take the 4 yr old tests. for fourth grade test and we'll see what happens there.  So far our test results, local test results, have been promising. and doing pretty great. We also implemented Project Lead the Way which is the STEM derived  curriculum in all of our schools, K through 12. attendance as you see on the screen is 6982 that's just above what we were Post Katrina in 2006. We've since come up, back down we have in our district in that school building we have a rough capacity of 7500 students.  Above that then the story feels crowded but we have room for 7500  We've been at 7450 --7460 before. Significant finds our  demographics have shifted significantly in the last 10 yrs-13 yrs we had 2% Hispanic we now have roughly 13% Hispanic. Increasing our number of ELL students which causes us to hire extra specialized people We're second in the state for the number of ELL. DeSoto beats us out and they're next to Memphis so when you get down to it we are majority-minority district. minorities are greater than what's suppose to be a majority. We look up keep going The big number up there is 639 teachers assistance teachers. and that's all hands on for our kids The way we teach kids now is you got to get their attention.   you basically have to touch them to get there attention and that just takes people.  Those numbers have grown I think when I came on the board the total employee numbers were 1100-1150 and it's not wrong don't have very many more students but we got a different population. we have a goal of 22 students per teacher per classroom in the elementary grade, elementary schools. high schools and middle schools, middle schools pretty well follow that rule because that's how we get there but the high schools vary. our student teacher ratio is 15th best in the state. our strong Elementary program. {and  } we only had 3 that failed third grade reading test two of them really didn't want to pass that was an unfortunate part of that Both of our high school's are A rated and our CCTI is the third, well, when you look at the secondary level, you have two high schools, two middle schools, and one ATC or VOTECH, CCTI in the business of calling we get good ratings out of CCTI.  We  send them off to competition and  our instructors have done a great job with them. You look at our buildings and you'll find our buildings are find the average age of our building is 52.7 years. We've got old buildings but we've renovated them We've put coming out of a hundred million dollars in renovations to our buildings. We're through with 1970's color schemes they were in the schools and if you look at our  schools now on the inside I think we have I think real pretty schools. we got a bus fleet because we been handed the the transportation task and 40 years ago it's up to you to get to school but now we've been handed the Transportation task and  are charged with security and safety portal-to-portal from the time they leave their front door to the time they get to school. Transportation safety issue so you got to keep that bus fleet up-to-date and safety issues of the Swing arm to keep kids from walking out in front of the bus are a major piece of the decision of when do we replace a bus. The upcoming issue is when do you renovate no, what do we call it? retrofit all your buses to put on seatbelts. major job. So do you buy new buses  or do you retrofit the bus. And When that rule comes down, it's going to cause a lot of conservation. When you build a budget, same as you do from at your house, you implement your priorities. We implement district priorities. there's also the state laws that we have to comply with, so that happens and then we use it. We really do use it. We get budget reports, the board gets a budget report, every month, what our bank balance is, how much we spent, you with regarding to our accounts. It's a detail budget and & Ms Grenn has done a really good job on that part. The other part is we're along the coast, all of us, are in the unique situation that you got to restart school quickly after a hurricane. With Katrinia we got up in 6 weeks.  A beautiful job. $8 million in front money to our contractors to clean up the schools and getting ready for start that you have to maintain that as a fund balance,or we don't have that money to spend FEMA and insurance money didn't come along real quick there a list of our meetings that we have those are the Public Works sessions {   } Our administration is sensitive to the desires of the board and as we hold sessions that various sundries other work sessions for education purposes they take our desires of our priorities and blend them into, build them into the budget. When we propose something it's always with the idea sooner or later is going to be a money issue and so in the March and April time frame they work all those issues for us. And we had a regular board meeting where we considered a resolution to get shortfall our because we were short on money shorter on money this last fall so we announced these meetings all of them on Facebook and this meeting was three times in the newspaper. State law says you've got to have a special notification to your levying authority and we included Gautier with this part of it so you got a letter that said special notice, this is what we're doing State Revenue 34 million dollars as composed to thirty two point seven instructional purposes and one and half million for votech the Feds at 10.3 is title title programs, Title 1, Title 3, Title 4 and Child Nutrition is on there so thats Our local operations 49.8 million go to the next the graphic 49.8 million for operations and four million for debt service should be 4.2 54.7 of our budget is Derived locally Chevron of course is the largest taxpayer and Pascagoula and Gautier split approximately 30% of the tax levy 34.8% is from the state and that's the second lowest in the state When you do our salaries as 85% operations budget is spent on salaries. has been for years we don't control salaries to any significant extent our supplement is roughly in the $2500 to $3,500 range We also have a what I think is a very good number considering the state requirement for 2% for administration State average is up around three and a half so we're sixth lowest in the state for that. Our construction budget most of our budget is derived from either education requirements for our kids or our strategic plan. we did a strategic plan in '12 250 residents came together separated on over 12 different areas and decided these are the things these are the priorities that the public thinks you should be taken care of one of the items that has been on there for years I'm looking back in my notes 2008 I saw a five year plan for construction for a performing arts center was then at $5 million 2012 it was $8 million It came in this year 2018 at 15 plus so delaying just increased the price another one that came up with emphasis this year is safety on campus how do you change the campus? what modifications do you need your campus to your school provide security well I'm security guy in my navy days and the way you provide security is you set your perimeter and then put a watch on your high-value asset. the high-value asset in this case is the school so that's what we do. we found we had doors that don't lock. You know years ago it was almost redundant to have a lock on a classroom door Well if you could close the door, you had to have a window like we have on the board room, now they find out you can't because they will shoot through the window so we are gradually making changes to increase our security When we took the three mil note year-and-a-half Ago by { } It was 22 and a half million that we drew down this year we're going to use $10 million of that for the Performing Arts Center. $2.7 million for the gym that is behind us here at TLA $2 and half million for the welding upgrades at CCTI and we just completed a $1 million renovation for Central and Eastlawn on their lobby and entrance the $4.2 million that we will see on the debt is 2.6 to payoff the second of nine payments for the three mil note $1.4 million for the shortfall note for up to 3 years and we have a point 2 million EEf pledge the state thing says you get money for EEF We took that and said we'll pledge that as repayment for our 3 mill note. So thats where you get your $4.2 million there's the numbers numbers 16.9 for construction That non-instructional number can be of interest that mostly is Child Nutrition and that 10 million dollars that comes in from the fed that pays for that Child Nutrition numbers The Support Services counselors nurses all those things that are quote not touching kids instructional so then you get next line then you are getting down to materials part of its instructional materials we don't cause the principals to pay their copy machine bill. We have that as a composite contract in the school but paper and manipulatives and educational programs that's what your materials budget line covers next as I close here, I want to bring up the mill levy history in from Katrina on right after Katrina, we had to 52.39 mil levy, we use that as the Baseline and years 9 through 12, those are calendar years not school years, calendar years 9-12 we reduced that mil levy to 48.39 what that amounted to was $9, 9 million that we didn't collect 13-14 we reduced it again and this was primarily due to increases in valuation reduce the mil levy again to 46.39 and saved $11 million Now we collected, along there we collected money to do our renovations with too In 15 we reduced it to 46.88 increased it that would have saved $5.4 million that year. In 16-18, we were back down to 45.88 and saved $20 million. Total of these numbers $46.3    another # over here $48.5 so I'm going to give a reasonable accord. we don't know what our  valuation is  for 19, we have no estimate of what levy is, has to  be. Now, Mr. Rodolfich, you have the letter? you have the  list yes one speaker signed up   (yes)---- that was Mr. Burrows?  (yes) OK the {      }floors open for comments. Mr. Burrows you have the floor. thank you.  I would like you to let us go home for supper sometime.  Don't worry,  I'm not being paid, my comments will be {      } and to the point. I appreciate ya'll listening to me tonight I want to start by telling a short story and it actually does lead to why  I'm here tonight.   No one should have to come up here and pronounce their bona fides but I almost feel obligated to just because I'm totally busting I'm a proud 1984 graduate of Pascagoula High School and I went on to college at Georgetown University in Washington DC and I remember my first week there on my dorm floor the people asked me where you from? " I'm from Mississippi". I quickly found out I was the only kid in my class from Mississippi. where'd you go to school? Pascagoula High School.   Where? nobody could believe it that I gone there from Pascagoula High School. from a public school in Mississippi so fast forward to 1988 and I graduate with distinction of My Chosen field of study German studies and my name is up there at top of the commencement program along with Exeter Choate Amherst Stuyvesant High Manhattan Balsam Country Day Jesuit High School with LA and there's Pascagoula High School right up there with all those guys who graduated near the top as well I'm really really, really proud to be a graduate of Pascagoula High School and I tell people all the time what what a steller education I got here. I was one of the few kids in my class economics was required I was one of the few kids in my class that actually had an economics course before I walked on that campus I learned about the supply and demand, Laffer Curve the relationship between inflation and unemployment, and that was astonishing to my professor and to my classmates and part of the success of the school whether it's teaching kids who may be wanting to go to the junior college or Ingalls or going to a main National University is the quality the quality education they received from top to bottom and I'm proud and I'm glad to say I got an outstanding education at Pascagoula High School in large part not only because of its faculty but because of the community support that's always been there for both of these schools.   if you ever thought the Pascagoula High School had great tremendous Community Support all you had to do is wait till Gautier High School came online and boy that was community support that has never been seen before It took it to a new level. I think that support remains to this day.  I think its always been true that what's been good for Pascagoula and Gautier High School is good for their respective cities too and vice versa. what's good for Pascagoula and Gautier is good for Gautier and Pascagoula high school and that's why I come here to say this tonight I don't think I need  to tell anyone of you the details of what has been reported extensively in the media in the last 7 Days.  The city of Pascagoula finds itself with a $14 million dollar short fall.  The short fall may, quite frankly, may in fact be higher we do not have our numbers yet complete for the set the 18 fiscal year but it may in fact be more than $14 million dollars. That short fall was caused in large part due to use of bond proceeds in general funds to cover expenses in our general fund and is also due to excessive revenue expectations that were budgeted on a multi-year basis. The plan now is to try to fix this as expeditiously as possible but we can only do so much in any given period of time due to many of the same statutory requirements they you yourselves find yourself as a governmental entity. right now staff is proposing at a  minimum an 8 mill increase on the citizens of Pascagoula. That will result in a $200 increase per $100,000 of home value I don't need to tell all of you that is that's not just significant that's extremely large that will end up being the largest in our history. as I said it may in fact be larger.  We're not sure yet. we have not had a tax increase for Pascagoula in terms of ad velorem  taxes since 2015 and before that it was 2004 so tax increases you may debate the necessity of them and how they should be dispersed, whether it's a little bit over time or a whole lot at once but regardless we've been very reluctant to raise taxes on our citizens. And tonight among things that you're going to consider is going to be a millage increase and I listen to Mr. Concanon's explanation of your budgetary issues and a lot of your budget probably like a lot of our budget does not have a lot of wiggle room there are many things that you were mandated to spend on that do not change even if you wanted to change them I understand that I even understand it more now being the public official; however, what I'm asking this body to do is to consider whether or not some capital projects can be put off whether some expenditures can be delayed to Simply lessen the impact upon the citizens Pascagoula. I'm not here as an official representative of the city I'm just sitting here with my capacity as a councilman for Ward 3 but I think that everyone in Pascagoula including the three of you who are citizens of the town would like to be able to see your taxes go up by the absolute minimum amount and I think in order to do that it's going to take some collaborative effort on our parts to try to work together and come up with a mechanism whereby perhaps some tax increases are delayed by this body in anticipation of either our taxes no tax increase by us next year or perhaps even hopefully knock on wood,  a slight decrease. I say this again because it does need to be cooperative and it's not about the city of Pascagoula and its problems I'm not asking for the sympathy pity that's problem that I and Mrs. Colmer whose here tonight, and the other elected officials and staff will have to deal with in due course.   what I'm asking you to do is put on your hats not only as taxpayers but as the appointed and elected representative of the taxpayers of this school district and see what you could do, put forth every effort that can be done to minimize the hit that is coming upon the residents of Pascagoula, City of Pascagoula, and the Pascagoula-Gautier School District at large. If you have any questions I'll do my best to answer them but that's really what I came inside. Thank you sir thank you for being brief, certainly to the point, and we'll certainly consider your comments and desires cause you say you do 8, 4 or 5, my pocket hurts.  (mind does too) You know it really does. and we'll consider your comments and see if we have any minor resolution to make. As you know with 85% of  your budget fixed by salaries, you understand it more than us, in fact than you did before. if there's not much we don't have much that we can delay, we have a 3 mill note we have to spend we have a three-year requirement to spend that And that's a large part when your millage increase that we have forthcoming.    Our debt was you can't get rid of that. {                    } Thank you sir Mr. Rodolfich, is it anybody else? what was that Any body else? public hearing the list budget to be closed if anybody had any specific questions we would ask if you write them down and Let's see Kelly would you pick up do any question sheets that we have out here in the audience? Anybody have questions written down that we need specific resolution for us I think I wrote down two, Mike But I don't know where they wound up Oh where did your sheet went? I don't you passed it all around? who has who has his questions? {laughing} See what that $80,000 Georgetown education {Laughter} okay with that I make the motion we adjourn Thank you sir, Do I hear a second? second Motion made and second that we adjourn this budget hearing all in favor say aye aye, meeting is adjourned somebody Thank you {audible} from the city councils

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Board Meeting 7-30-18

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