Clark County school trustees get first look at 2019 budget
Clark County school trustees took the first step toward passing a fiscal year 2019 budget on Wednesday, once again voting not to put 2 percent of the total budget into a reserve fund as required by law.
Chief financial officer Jason Goudie presented the tentative budget, based on estimated revenue of nearly $2.47 billion, during a School Board work session, with quite a few caveats. The largest revenue piece of the budget — the local school support tax — has not yet been finalized and neither has the largest expense — salaries and benefits for employees.
Goudie and trustees lamented that the district would again have to operate with a low “unassigned ending fund balance,” which factors into its credit rating and has landed the nation’s fifth-largest school district on “fiscal watch status” by the state. The reserve fund balance hasn’t hit the 2 percent mark since the 2009 fiscal year, according to materials presented Wednesday.
The unassigned ending fund balance for fiscal year 2018 was lowered to 0.78 percent to help the district deal with $60 million in budget cuts. The good news, Goudie said, is that the percentage of the budget going to the fund will go up. But it’s not enough.
“It’s still an extremely low safety net for us to have,” he said.
The first look at the budget came a day after an arbitration decision between the district and the teacher’s union was announced, which affects the fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2019 budgets.
Trustees expressed disappointment that arbitrators who settle disputes between the district and various bargaining units see the unassigned ending fund balance money as fair game in salary and benefits negotiations.
“Until we can assure that our unassigned ending fund balance is protected, I’m not willing to continue to put money in that pot for an arbitrator to just come in and say ‘take it out of that,’” said Trustee Deanna Wright.
There is another option, countered Trustee Chris Garvey. The board could pull money from individual school budgets to cover the arbitration decisions because the increased costs are coming from those employed at schools.
“It is this board’s decision to say where this money comes from,” she said. “It’s a really horrible place to put people in.”
Goudie said the district was still analyzing the decision and had not factored those decisions into the budget presented Wednesday. He said options will be brought to the board once the analysis is completed for a decision on how to deal with the monetary implications of the decision.
The board also could decide to appeal the decision.
Contact Meghin Delaney at 702-383-0281 or mdelaney@reviewjournal.com. Follow @MeghinDelaney on Twitter.
