The Newton Municipal School District will be living off a balanced budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year.
At a special called meeting, the Newton Municipal School Board passed a “cautious” and “conservative” $10,385,838.72 million budget to prevent the district from having to dip into its fund balance.
Nester, who is consulting the school district on its financial bookkeeping while the new business manager is being trained, said the goal of this year’s budget was to prevent the district from having to use its current fund balance to balance the budget at year’s end.
She said they have worked with all departments to cut as much as possible to make ends meet. One area of concern for FY 2020 was whether projected revenues that were discussed at the initial board hearing would come in. At the budget hearing earlier this month, the district was projecting nearly $11.6 million in revenues, but the final budget decreased anticipated revenues by nearly $1.2 million.
Part of that was an adjustment due to agreements that were reached by the board of supervisors and Newton Board of Aldermen with companies to make in lieu of tax payments once the developments such as Biewer Sawmill reached a certain level of investment. Those in lieu of tax payments will prevent the school district from receiving full funding for the taxes until the agreements expire.
Nester said the district was also concerned about the flow of federal funds into the district.
“Until revenues materialize, this is a plan,” Nester said. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid Dr. (Glenda) Nickson has the uncomfortable position of saying no an awful lot until these revenues materialize. We’ve done our best to trim it down so that her no is backed up with the fact that there’s no money to give.”
One thing that school officials were concerned about was what the fund balance is, as the district is behind on its audit for FY 2018. Nester said they are working toward getting that fund balance verified so that they can be able to roll it forward and begin the FY 2019 audit.
“The most encouraging part that I can tell you, your fund balance does seem to be intact,” Nester said. “There doesn’t appear that coming from the 2018 audit to be a big shakeup. So if we can continue to roll easy down the road, you’re going to be just fine.”
