St. Charles school district OKs budget with surplus

In St. Charles Unit District 303, it’s not a deficit ceiling that worries school board member Jim Gaffney, but a deficit on the horizon.

The gloomy future for the district’s finances fueled Gaffney’s lone “no” vote on a 2011-12 budget that actually predicts a small surplus to end the fiscal year.

District 303’s finances are secure in the short term, district officials said Monday night. That’s thanks in large part to the current districtwide pay freeze teachers and most staffers agreed to. But financial forecasts show the district hitting a negative cash balance of $5.7 million by 2016, at which point the district would not be able to meet its payroll.

“Of course, we’d never allow that to happen,” said Brad Cauffman, the district’s chief financial officer.

Like any school district that sees costs increase over time, District 303 will eventually need new revenue or spending cuts to balance its budget. Gaffney said he couldn’t vote for a 2011-12 budget, even though it’s balanced, with no discussion of how to address the problem in the future.

“It’s only four years from now,” Gaffney said. “That’s not a lot of time.”

Overall the new budget calls for about $193.2 million in revenue. That compares to about $193 million in expenses. If the budget plays out as expected, the district should have a small surplus of about $158,000.

The largest single expense in the budget is the contractual salaries line at about $77 million. The only employees in the district receiving pay raises in the 2011-12 budget are transportation and maintenance staffers who are in the final year of a 4-year contract. Those employees will receive raises between 3 percent and 5.25 percent depending on their position.

There are still some potential pitfalls for the district’s budget plan. Money from the state is one of those somewhat unpredictable factors.

For instance, last year the state missed two payments to school districts in Illinois. That sparked District 303 to keep a running tab on money the state owed it for several weeks. At one point, the state owed about $4 million to District 303, and it never fully paid up, according to District 303 Superintendent Don Schlomann.

“They keep saying they’re going to make that up, but I don’t know that that will ever happen,” Schlomann said. “Over time, everyone just kind of gave up on that.”

Schlomann said the state has made its regular payments to the district for several months in a row and seems to be keeping up with what it owes school districts at this point. However, there are still cuts on the table at the state level that could affect the district’s transportation budget. District staffers said they are waiting to see what happens in the next couple of months regarding that money before they feel secure in their projections.