By ‘Underground Weatherman’
At a recent BOF meeting the question was raised on what to do with the excess funds from an overcount of Woodstock students attending Woodstock Academy this past fiscal year. The sum total excess amounted to approx. $500K. This overcount was due to students moving, overestimation, ect. Woodstock Academy returned the amount to the WBOE.
Should the funds be spent? Should they be returned to the taxpayers? Should they be placed in a rainy day fund? These are questions that will need to be answered.
According to Barbara Rich, it seems the right process is to return the funds to the town. If the funds are needed the BOE would have to go through the proper channels (20k requires a town meeting, 100K requires a referendum).
So with this in mind I read with little surprise in yesterdays Villager the following:
“The Board of Selectmen read a letter recently submitted by the Board of Finance, stating that the 2009-’10 budget adhere flat to the current fiscal year budget, without any increases.”
My first thought was concern for the BOE who just signed a contract with the Teacher’s Union. I tried to find the contract on the Woodstockschools.net website, but it was no longer posted. The Cafe posted some information recently but there was no information as to the dollar sum amount of the increase this contract will pose to the BOE 09-10 budget. So I went back to this last year’s budget to get a rough estimate. According to the 08-09 BOE budget, salary increases due to contracts was $400,102. I assume then that the 09-10 budget increase will be the about the same approximately. Well this seems to create a little problem now for the BOE if the BOF is intent on keeping the 09-10 budget flat. I suppose a flat budget shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone (except to the teacher’s union) considering the state of the nation’s economy. The storm clouds were heard last year and the sky is getting a little bit darker now. Read the rest of this entry »
