D214 taxpayers still owed $40 million
District 214 Trustee Miriam (Mimi) Cooper’s alleges that my letter printed March 28 contained “inaccuracies and misstatements.” I was unable to respond sooner due to travel commitments.
1. I stated that District 214 had over $100 million in cash and investments on June 30, 2010 (about five months expenses). Their month-end balance during last year was never lower than $87 million. Ms. Cooper states that “Auditors recommend any business have a minimum 4-6 months of operating cash to cover unanticipated expenses” and that is all District 214 is doing. As a former auditor for 35 years I said that was grossly excessive and that District 214 owes its taxpayers at least a $40 million refund. She is clearly wrong about what auditors recommend. She is also wrong to compare school districts, which have a fairly dependable flow of revenue, to private sector businesses that often have a very volatile cash flow and need all the reserves they can accumulate. Schools should not be banks and if on rare occasions they run out of money they can easily use tax anticipation warrants.
2. Ms. Cooper sates “The average salary of a District 214 employee is about $65,000, not $120,000 as in Mr. Ley’s letter.” I said the average salaries were about $90,000, not $120,000. According to the annual Northern Illinois University and State Board of Education study published at http://iirc.niu.edu/District.aspx?districtID=05016214017 the average salary for teachers in District 214 was $91,997.
3. Ms. Cooper states the “tax rate dropped from 2.2562 in 2001-2002 to 1.5862 this past year.” The implication here is that this is due to fiscal management by the district. All taxpayers either know or should know that this drop was mainly due to property assessments in District 214 going up, not the district’s expenses going down.
Bottom line still is that District 214 owes the taxpayers a refund of about $40 million. We will use whatever means we can to get that money refunded to the taxpayers.
Roland G. Ley
Arlington Heights