Geneva schools budget talks start with busing

The Geneva school district started releasing information about the upcoming 2012-13 fiscal year budget, discussing the transportation and operations and maintenance portions this week.

For transportation, the district expects revenues of $3.38 million, including $1.96 in property taxes. It projects spending $3.24 million on salaries, benefits, supplies and purchased services.

That amount does not include the $4.4 million the district will spend buying new school buses. The district buys school buses every two years, then sells them back to the vendor. The district will sell the current buses back in June for $3.731 million. It paid $76,147 per 71-passenger bus; it will get back $63,582 per bus.

The Geneva school district will continue with a two-year cycle for purchasing and selling back the school buses. Before 2010, it did so annually.

In the preliminary operations and maintenance budget, the district projects revenues of $10.18 million and expenditures of $12.52 million. Salaries will go up 2.2 percent and benefits 1.5 percent over what was budgeted for last year, according to a report supplied by Donna Oberg, the assistant superintendent for business services. Actual projected expenditures for the 2011-12 fiscal year were not supplied.

The expenditures are 16 percent more than this year’s budget. It includes spending $107,817 to replace the 38-year-old seats in the Geneva High School auditorium, and some of the bills for replacing the turf at Burgess Field. Turf replacement began last week. An anonymous donor has given $500,000 for the artificial turf project, with the All-Sports Booster Club and the school district paying the other half.

The fiscal year starts July 1, but the district has until Sept. 30 to approve a budget.