27th 2020
Finance Committee meeting to order police
like everyone to know
the meeting is being recorded.
We could start with Roll Call.
Just indicate your name
and whether you represent the administration
you're a citizen advisor or a school board member.
Could start with you. Readers.
Readers.
Borrowing Administration.
Odd Style.
Labyrinth Citizen Advisor.
Kip Shaw. School Board.
Terry Singer. School Board.
Kathy Sick School Board.
Joe McFarland. Administration.
Lindsay Drew School Board and
Mike French Administration.
Okay, thank you everyone.
Darby Vallejo had advised us she's a citizen advisor.
She wouldn't be able to join us this evening.
And I, I didn't hear anything from Jeff.
Jeff King Unless you did, Mike.
So we may still hear from him.
Next item is the minutes which were attached to the agenda.
Anybody has any comments or questions?
If not, I can take a motion to approve them.
So moved.
Second
on favor
by any opposed.
Okay.
Thank you.
Minutes have been accepted.
Mike, I don't see we have any unfinished business.
Right.
So we're going to
go right into the
into the audit prep oral presentation. Yep.
You want to introduce Matt Boyd?
Sure.
With us tonight is Matt Wilderson with the firm of Boyer and Ritter,
who completed our audit
we've been working with directly for him there for the last two fiscal years.
So we completed the audit
in December and here to present
some of the good information that they found during that process that
the excuse me, just the audit report was attached to the agenda.
So I did not hand out
paper copies of that
as well as we have Matt's presentation attached to the agenda,
which will live up there for public consumption as well.
Okay. Thank you, Mark, and welcome, Matt.
Thank you. Glad to be here.
As Mike said, we completed
the audit process last month.
I think our report date
for the financial audit was, I think the around the 24th
is when we got the last
piece of information that we could.
We completed every last one of our reviews that we were able
to assess a year audited financial statements.
So as as Mike shared, there's the copy of the audit
report out there with the agenda and then also a copy of the PowerPoint
that I'm just going to quickly go through this evening for your review.
Primarily going to adhere to the
the PowerPoint
because, okay, we kind of designed it just to get a high level overview
as to the audit process, what we're thinking about in the process,
what we're thinking about during the audit, the results
and other interesting things about the audit.
So I touched on this the first time we kind of went through this last year.
Just, you know, for those who are not familiar necessarily
with the audit process, the question would be, well, first of all, why,
why, why are we even going through and doing this going through this process?
First, the school district has over $30 million of bonds outstanding.
That in the continuing disclosure requirements for those bonds,
you're required to have the annual audit
of your financial external financial statements.
Secondly, you're receiving over
$1.7 million of federal awards.
And along with the receipt of that money, you're required
to have a compliance audit.
Part of the compliance audit requires that you're not you must have
a financial statement audit.
And then finally, Department of Education requires it.
Finally, in your role as
citizens, as well as Board
and board of directors, you know, there's a there's an element of public trust.
You want to have an external firm come in and
look through and make sure that the information you're being provided
as the final books of record is audited and scrubbed and you have
somebody else putting an opinion on it beyond that of just your management team.
So a little bit about the process.
The audit process starts generally in the summer right after you guys
at the end of your year, your year end, which is June 30th,
Boyer and Rivera will come out many times in the September timeframe,
sometimes August, depending on the available to your staff.
And every year what we're required to do as part of our audit
process is we start asking the questions about what could go wrong,
what could go
wrong in this document that, you know, a lot of times
close to 100 pages, years is probably years is in the eighties.
But what Boyer and Ridder's job is to do is issue
our opinion on your financial statements.
So we only ask the question about what could go wrong.
It could be, you know, it could be any case,
it could be it could be errors in the financial statements
due to you know, it could be due to misappropriation of assets.
It could be due to accounting errors,
you know, application of accounting estimates that have gone wrong.
So we step back and we kind of look at that
and look at that question and we say what could what could go wrong
in this process where they take a right when they should have taken a left.
And then we do an evaluation of risks.
And then as part of that, we step back and we look at the internal controls.
You know, the way the school district receives money,
the way the school district pays out money,
whether it be through payroll, whether it be through bond payments,
whether it be through just regular, you know, cash
disbursements, whether it be through construction projects.
And then we turn around and we go through and get an understanding
of that of each of the processes and the initiation of those transactions
all the way through authorization
to the final check being cut and the money going out the door.
So every year we go through and evaluate that and we try to identify
as to whether or not there's any kind of there's any gaps in your internal controls
that could lead to an error occurring and not having it be detected.
So we go through and we document
payroll, cash receipts, cash disbursements, and then we come around
and we develop our audit plan, understanding,
you know, what are the big areas in your financial statements
that we would, you know, classify as material significant?
You know, we certainly don't
do a redo of all the transactions of the school district for the year.
We do audit sampling,
but we there are some areas that we look at pretty much 100% of the population.
We verify, for example, all of your cash and investment accounts.
When you look at this, there's enough detail in here that you say, hey, well,
we went through and audited and verify we do confirmations
with all of your banks,
everybody that holds the cash and investments of the of the school district.
We go through and we verify that through independent letters
that we're sending to them to verify the accuracy of the amounts
that have been represented by your management team.
So we apply that approach to basically all the balance sheet accounts
that you'll see in your financial statements
as well as from a revenue and expense standpoint.
We move our way up and down that your income statement, so to speak,
whether it be your federal revenues, we verify those through
external audit confirmations.
Same thing with your state revenues,
whether it be your basic subsidy to your transportation subsidies
and your Social Security retirement, so on and so forth.
We verify all that with the Commonwealth of Pay.
And then when it gets down to the local tax revenues, we turn around and we,
you know, make we have confirmations and we and we perform test there
to make sure that you know what the score district assessed
and what has been remitted
has been has
been properly reflected in your books.
And then finally, the last step is obviously the reporting process
where these financial reports are the year that they're
your responsibility, responsibility of the school district.
You know, we have about six pages in here.
That is Boyer and Ritter's reports.
So we go through and work with Mike and his his team to put this
put to put the final put the final document together.
What's included in the scope of our audit general fund,
capital reserve capital projects, funds
that are in the face of the statements, you know, which is you know, post
starts around page 16, you'll see a capital project finance
merge of the capital reserve
and capital projects, the required reporting that we do it that way.
Certainly any kind of debt service fund, food service, permanent fund,
as well as any kind of trust in agency funds are included in the scope.
Also something that you typically don't see throughout the course of the year
is what we call the government wide financial statements.
And this takes more of a macro view of the school district
and pulls in the, you know, some of the longer term view
financial items such
as capital assets, bonds, long term debt
and pension and OPEB liabilities.
So but in that that's those statements are on pages
13 through 15 and they're there to the guy.
The Government Accounting Standards Board wanted to make sure we weren't
just focusing on the short term next year's budget,
which is many times what drives a lot of the conversations
at the local government level, whether it be townships or school
districts or, you know, boroughs or counties.
It's the management of that fund balance, but it's trying to get everybody
to take a long term view on the
fiscal affairs of the school district.
For example,
the capital asset accounts have approximately a net book value of,
you know, $76 million
notes payable, as I mentioned earlier, is about $32 million.
Right.
And then the pension and OPEB liabilities
that came and got put on your balance sheet a several years ago.
But that's around $98 million for the pension and another $14 million
for the OPEB.
And I say OPEB, its other other post-employment benefits,
which is basically any kind of continuing payments to retirees
for medical or health, some kind of health insurance.
But this
forces organizations to look at long term
with regard to their finances.
So there's there's essentially two documents that you've been
provided, ones the financial report, ones that require a communication letter.
I'll call it a required communication letter.
It's intended to have four, four board members to look over so that
and as they go through and review the financial audit
and they turn around and look through the required communication letter,
they they look at those two in tandem,
they kind of get a sense for how the audit went,
what the document entails, and then they can properly discharge
their oversight over the over the conduct of the audit.
A couple of things that are identified, you know, responsibility
and management kind of went over that we talked about in here.
We talk about the fact
that there were adjustments made to the trial balances that Mike provided to us,
but we
in here that none of these adjustments had significant effect
on the board, on the district's financial reporting processes.
And what does that mean?
You know, so I look at some of the adjustments that were made.
And so Mike's financial reporting to you on a routine basis is going to have
to give me largely cash basis.
So when you know, if you are owed if you're sitting here in March
and you're in your ROA and you receive $100,000 check for earned income tax,
But we know there's more coming throughout the end of the year
when Mike can't isn't going to go and record what's coming down the pike.
He's going to record what you have and he's going to put that in front of you.
When we hit June 30th, though, as part of the audit, Mike's
required to go in there and put in there what we ultimately expect to collect.
So through the audit process, you know, we get an initial trial balance and Mike
and his team were working to kind of close everything down.
So some of the adjustments that we get through
the audit process are akin to more of us really
nailing everything down and giving a final fiscal view of what
the financial statements look like, what your final what they call an accrual basis
picture looks like at the end of the year.
The the required communication
would also disclose any kind of disagreements
or anything that we had with the management team
or any other kind of difficulties we encountered during the audit.
And then there were there were none this year with
great
change in accounting policies.
So there's a the standard setter is the Government
Accounting Standards Board that the school district follows.
All state and local governments are required to follow it,
and pretty much every year without fail or implementing new
Gatsby's or Government Accounting Standards Board statements,
this year there were two that
neither of them really had any kind of an impact on you
because they weren't really applicable to your district.
It had certain retirement obligations that had to do with
if you had assets that you're required to dispose of,
and it's going to cost you a lot of money down the road.
If you had an empty school sitting somewhere, for example,
it was going to cost you, you know, a significant
amount of money to kind of put the thing to rest, so to speak.
And then the other one has to do with direct borrowings.
If you're making negotiating, you're in negotiations with a bank
or other organizations for financing.
There's some enhanced disclosures that would have been required.
But again, no, no impact in the in the current year to either of those.
But the school district did technically adopt them.
So looking at 2020 in terms of what's coming down the pike
fiduciary activities, there's going to be a change in your statements
on the way that your your fiduciary funds are laid
out in your financial statements next year, especially in the area
of like any kind of agency funds, student activity funds.
Right now, the district just shows an asset and a liability number.
They're going to require us to move
some of that over and show like a profit and loss, so to speak.
But at the end of the day, you know,
these are all the student monies is just in a presentation change.
The other one's a majority equity interests
and that's again
that that really doesn't apply to schools or we thought we put it in there for your
just for your benefit and knowing that it's part of our job
and Mike's job to kind of try to stay on top of this stuff every year
and make sure we figure out what's applicable, what isn't.
The year after that, there's a pretty significant lease standard
that's coming up.
So there's basically going to pull
any kind of leases that you have and put them on your balance sheet,
showing the net present value of the liability.
And then also there's going to be an asset
on your balance sheet with regard to the interest that you have
and leases
the the financial, the required communication letter.
Again, going back to that, we talk about financial statement disclosures.
You know, as we kind of go through and look at it, I
our our job and with regard to disclosure is to make sure
they're you know, they're consistent, they're clear.
And that's part of the scope of our audit.
So we're auditing, you know, the notes.
So in my mind, as I if I'm on your side of the table,
I've looked down through
and here are some of the significant notes that I see as important.
You can flip through and look at those.
But deposits and investments as on page 40
and in there you'll see, you know
well where does the where does the school district have its funds
and it doesn't have that many places or they have money with Fulton,
FMB, I believe Bryn
Mawr as well, and making sure And what we do is
we make sure, first of all, that we're confirming the balances.
And then secondly, we're making sure that you're properly
collateralized and secured either with FDIC
or if it's over and above the FDIC limits,
you're you have proper collateralization in accordance with Act 72,
which is the EPA rule that basically makes sure that,
you know, public funds are not at risk.
Capital assets
is back at page page 45.
And we kind of roll through any of the any of the activity that you have
this past year.
And we had some construction progress related to the Granada building.
And you had some changes there, but not a lot of activity for the year.
Page 47 Your long term obligations
and that would be largely your your notes payable, it
kind of walks you through the
the series of 2019 bond changes that you had.
You had two issues, I believe in A and ab11
is for the refunding of some some older debt.
I think you guys had to make some moves to kind of level out your
your your debt service schedules.
So from a budgetary standpoint.
And then you also had, I think, about a million bucks of new money
on the current year.
But that that schedule will kind of walk you all through what walk
you I'll walk you through that.
The defined benefit plans
and the OPEB plans are on page
53 is the Peters plan.
Earlier on I described the the $98 million liability
that's
there that Peters has allocated to the
the school district based on your wages in relation to everybody else's wages.
Now, one thing I always like to point out in
this is while that seems like a very big number and it is
the thing that they
that you have to realize is that every year that the
that the the state kicks in for approximately half
of your contributions into the Peters plan.
But because the Commonwealth is not necessarily required
to kick half of that money in every year, they budget for it every year.
And I think things would break
loose in Harrisburg if they didn't make those payments.
But because they're not legally required to make that, you have
to report the 100% liability on your books.
So theoretically, you know, as this plays out, the liability is half of that.
But from a financial reporting standpoint,
the GASB folks say that we're not allowed to record half of it.
We have to. What, with record all of it.
And then you have the other post-employment benefit plans on page 36.
There's a summary of the OPEB plans.
There's a plan that the school district holds,
and then there's a Peters plan that has some OPEB
benefits in it.
And we go through on page 36 and summarize those
for your four year review and really try to show you
how Roy shows you how they're kind of
fits into the financial statements.
So the the other significant points
on the required communication letter has to do with, you know,
I mentioned this earlier, there was was no, you know, significant issues,
you know, that we talked about prior to our retention or through the process.
The oh, the audit process was, you know, relatively smooth.
There were no disagreements with management and there were
no significant difficulties encountered during the conduct of the audit this year.
So moving
on to the independent auditors opinion
certainly pleased the report
that the district received an unqualified or a clean opinion
and, you know,
over the financial statements is certainly the expectation of the
the bond underwriters and the and the financial community
as well as you as the board and the public,
that the school district receives this level of opinion.
So congratulations, my team to you and your team and
to the school district for that.
So the next area that we kind of
look at is, you know, we the first audit was the financial audit.
We issue an opinion there and then we move on to the compliance audit
and in there were required to go through and on a rotating basis,
look at the various federal programs that the school district receives
funding for this year.
We we look at the child nutrition cluster, the school lunch program
and the idea funding last year we looked at Title one.
So, you know,
we're we're kind of moving down through and we're required to issue an opinion
on whether or not the school district was compliant with the requirements
that Uncle Sam has for the, you know, the school lunch program.
You know, certainly as you think about the school lunch program
or what do you we would Uncle Sam be most concerned about
and it would be, you know, that eligibility making sure the children that
need the meet, the people that benefit from the program
are properly going through the channels to apply and are provided
benefits by the school through the national school lunch program.
And then certainly from a from the idea, which is your special education funding,
making sure that the costs that the district paid are,
you know, compliant with the rules and regulations
for the IDA program.
So two things there.
The first is the district's received an unmodified opinion or a clean
opinion, again,
with regard to the
federal regulations over their major federal programs.
And then the second area is we also look at the underlying,
you know, internal controls and say, hey, you know,
our is the school
district properly kind of keeping up with the laws and regulations
and what are they doing to make sure they're staying informed of changes
and processes in the federal programs so that theoretically, you know,
they would be on the cutting edge and not have future future violations.
So this kind of goes to try to head off any potential future issues
as well as if we would have findings in the program.
Both of these would be littered with comments, material weaknesses
and significant deficiencies.
The independent auditors on internal control
as part of our Yellow Book audit or our Government Accounting Standards Audit,
we're required to evaluate the internal control processes that they share.
We do that in the very beginning of the audit.
Also pleased to report here that material weaknesses
and significant
deficiencies were not identified throughout the course of the audit.
So that's another positive report
received by the school or to be provided to the school district.
So that's all part of the reporting packet.
The other significant points
of interest through the audit, as I as I the one thing I'll point out that's not on
here is on page 75, we do a consolidation, we do a schedule in the back
that shows the break out of the two different capital project funds.
You have a capital reserve fund that this the school district will put money into
when it has excess funds and is trying to save kind of for,
I would say for the rainy day
when you have additional projects that are coming up on the horizon.
So this year there were some funds that were transferred
from the general fund into the into the Capital Reserve Fund.
And then there's also
a capital project fund that has the money that you guys borrowed
and as well as some other funds that will be set.
It's set aside just for capital projects, you know, whether it's the,
you know, roof improvement or other other CapEx items
that you're going to need to spend money on in the future.
But it is a savings account that you guys are taking measures
and you don't have to turn around and borrow every time you have
a capital project that comes up.
Another interesting
note that I would point out to you on page 71,
there's a schedule of district pension contributions.
And the part that's interesting is when I when I look back, I think it's it's
it's it's a ten year schedule and pull this thing up here real quick.
But it goes back to 2010
and it lays out the contractually required contributions
under your business plan and the year you're in 2010.
Your piece was contribution rate was $1.1 million
for the FBI.
19 Your piece was contribution rate was $9.3 million.
So it's just one other piece of the puzzle When you're
putting together, you know where, where, where the resources go.
You know, there's nothing really that the school district can do about that.
Aside from pay the obligations you gave you, you have that liability.
You're they tell you what the bill is every year.
You can't pay in advance.
You can't set additional money aside
that would go to them that would relieve that liability.
It's just something you have to plan for in the future.
But it is a somewhat of a recognition
in terms of where how far things have come.
Page 43 There's a note,
there's an uncollected tax note, and there's a you'll see that
there's a uncollected tax amount of around $2.2 million.
That has to do with a lot of the basically the occupational assessment taxes
that probably go back to how far they go back, like,
yeah yeah now so
but but we fully allow for
or you guys fully allow for that amount
knowing that a lot of that money will never be collected primarily
because the not just take a minute with with those
this is these are taxes that are for our
the $250 tax
that each individual making over at the time, $10,000.
Now it's to anybody over $12,000 gets issued the tax
think what was happening over a period of time and admittedly I'm
continuing this while we're here
is there are people that the tax bill gets issued to everybody
but they get an exoneration either through being under the income level.
Many of them are exonerated because they're not they're removed by
the time the bills come out.
We have not properly come back to the school
board is the only one that can release anybody from their tax obligation.
And so on a yearly basis, we have not come back to the school board
and said, here are all the
taxes or here's all the people that should have been exonerated.
And essentially those taxes taken off our books as uncollectible.
They're currently in as uncollectible taxes.
This has this is no real estate taxes at all.
And these are items that the individuals
would have been properly exonerated going through.
We're not pulling these off or accounting for somebody's uncollectible.
If it's been turned over to a
collection agency or something like that, these would have been dollars.
And just to give you a kind of an understanding that that tax we we issue about
just a little
under $3 million every year in tax bills,
we only collect about one and a half million dollars of that.
Most of the rest of it people are exonerated through either
moving or that type of process that that happens.
There is a clean up that Matt and I talked
about during the audit process and it will be a new item once again.
That's something that I brought forward
for the school board, but something we will include yearly.
But we will also have to make a look back to clear everything up off the books
that has been there historically for for those taxes.
We'll get into a lot more detail for that.
I would not bring forth an item to the school board and just say
exonerate these without everybody having that understanding.
But obviously we probably start that conversation again here
at the Finance Committee meeting
and make sure everybody is comfortable with that before we move on.
And a lot of times what we see when we look at these different schools
is they have these they have these old occupation taxes that are out there
and they have an outside organization that's helping them try to collect them.
But the dollars that are coming in, they're you know,
they're trickling in over time.
And, you know, for, quite frankly, the people who are supposed to be
collecting them,
they've they've already applied a lot of efforts to try to collect them.
And the amount of the economics is such that,
you know, most of where they're leading on these things is a lot of that ends.
So, you know, from a district resource standpoint,
it doesn't you know, it's hard to take your your staff away
from what they're currently doing
to keep the district running, to try to figure out what happened to
a occupational tax from five, ten years ago
as to whether or not a person moved in or out of the district.
So a lot of times what happens is these these taxes just grow over over time.
And it's doesn't get a lot of organizational resources
because it doesn't result in more money
for the organization or much more money.
So just Mr.
Friends is not something that the Derry Township Tax Office would do for us. No.
So once the tax association for us at Derry Township only collects current taxes
once they become delinquent,
in the case of real estate tax, that gets to turned over to the county
and the county takes on the responsibility
collecting the income tax there for our occupational tax.
Those taxes get turned over currently to the J.p Harris.
So a private firm that we contract with
is responsible for collecting those taxes there.
Going back though, the 15 years there was jp
Harris didn't always do that work for us and there was a group called Birkhimer
tax collection that did it for a while.
They're still on our books, so.
Berks Yeah, we'll get maybe $100 a year that they'll trickle in
as they're still collecting for some of those.
But we have, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars
sitting out there as uncollectible.
We probably should do something about that.
It being 15 years old,
there's very little,
you know, realization that any more dollars would be would be seen from those.
But so, no, only our tax association just collects current taxes.
And then depending on where that goes for for delinquent,
there's also delinquent earned income tax.
But that's done by Keystone
of collecting the income tax as well.
Thank you.
Another point of interest in your financial statements is on page 42.
There's a beneficial interest in a perpetual trust.
It's the Milton Hershey Trust that's
administered by Fulton Bank.
We do provide a there's a half page
there showing the roll forward of the beginning balance
to the ending balance, starting at approximately
4044 million and approximately 40 formerly
and for the year ended June 30, 2019, with,
you know, $1.8 million being transferred to the to the general fund
of the school district.
So it's another point of interest.
And the final thing that I would point out would be the schedule
of expenditure of federal awards, which is on page
83 and 84.
And as I mentioned earlier, your total federal expenditures
recognized for the year was 1,000,001
$1,667,000.
But this is kind of provide you an insight as to where they where the funds are
coming from, who they're being passed through at the state level.
Usually the federal government will issue the funds, they pass it to the state,
and then the state passes it further out to the out
to the school districts, with exception of the
with the exception of the idea money
which is passed out through your local IU.
So what kind of questions do you have?
I just want to say congratulations to Mr.
Friends in the business office for a clean and healthy audit.
So another year and I saw you send us an email
about the surplus surplus and the transfer to capital.
Yes, we did.
I think when I was last presented some of those figures to the Finance
Committee, I thought we would end the year about 3 to $400000 to the positive.
We ended up ending the year little over $1,000,000 to the positive
850,000 of that we transferred over to the Capital Reserve Fund,
left the additional amount in there
as it kept our 8% fund balance in the general fund,
which is per our policy, was the amount to leave in there. So
the year did finish
a lot better than I had hoped, that I'd assumed some of the revenue
that we weren't quite sure of as we were heading into the end of the year.
It was it was very, very strong.
And that's really what pushed us over.
Our expenditures are right on par
and revenue continues to be above budget,
which is exactly the way we want it to, to continue to operate if possible.
Thank you.
Quick question.
So congratulation on the on the clean water day.
Just a quick question.
I'm still learning, you know, but the financial is here.
So a quick question about the perpetual trust, sir.
My understanding is that the amount that's becomes available
there on an annual basis is
is contingent
upon how well those funds are managed. And
so Fulton Bank is managing those.
Is that the credit? Okay.
So it's to what extent does
your audit get into how well those are managed?
We are our primary job again, goes back to these financial statements
and we are looking at, you know, the organization is recording the process,
the organization is recording the transactions, the,
you know, the interest in dividends throughout the year.
We get confirmation from the bank at the very end
to make sure that what we're presenting in these financial statements is accurate,
not necessarily getting into any kind of I would say,
you know, benchmarking of financial returns
or investment returns throughout the year or anything like that.
We're getting verification with with the bank to make sure
that the financial statements are accurately presented that make sense.
Where we are having the benchmark proposal that was done
we should be getting that probably by our next I was thinking
it was like a two month process and we approved it at the end of October.
Yeah, I'm not quite certain how I have provided them
with some of the initial information they requested.
We haven't been able to touch base since the holiday break,
so I'm not sure what the date is for that upcoming.
I hope to have that update or I will have that update
for our next Finance Committee meeting.
Could you explain to ARD what what we've done there?
Mike So I understand so Sure.
So the the Finance Committee recommended
the school district ultimately approved a contract with
I pleaded I don't remember the name.
It's the public financial management and who we're working through
to provide the over or to look into the process
of the investments and everything going on with that there.
To that note, as just answering Lindsay's question, I've just provided them
some of the initial information to look into
that benchmarking approach.
Are they doing
what they say they're doing and are they doing it?
You know, could they be doing it a little bit better?
So we've determined to bring in the
professional resource to take a look at that
and then provide a report back to us,
hopefully in the next two months
that will let us know how that is doing based on
benchmarking and if there's other
better money managers out there
that we may be able to to use.
I think one of the things that we have to to keep in mind here,
while the money that is coming to us, it
obviously matters how much is in the the trust fund.
It is a formula that's it's 4%
of the ending balance of the fund split over a five year period.
So it's not necessarily
here's how much interest was generated, here's
how much goes to the school district.
It is a much more guaranteed approach or process.
So that on our side we have budget certainty
about what those amounts will be.
It is Fulton's responsibility as the trustee to make sure
that they are protecting the professional nature of that trust,
to make sure that it is ongoing so they have a vested interest to ensure that this
amount continues to grow
because as we went through that negotiation process with them
in which they've changed before, we were taking 5% of a three year average
and Fulton had did come back to us
with the conversation saying, I don't believe that this is
something that we can sustain into the future.
So we need to take a look at this a little bit
differently in how those dollars come out so that the district can get
what they need to operate, but also ensuring that that trust is
protected on an ongoing basis.
And that's Fulton's responsible city in this whole negotiation.
Obviously, we want it to be there as well.
But as the trustee, that's their legal responsibility.
They've taken off.
I think you. Well, that's useful.
That's helpful information.
That was my follow up question.
If there was some type of a third party review that that's done to
that, does the performance benchmark and that seems to be the case, then
that's great.
If like if you could update on what the status of that as I pulled up the thing
and I think part of the idea on the time frame was so if there was anything
that was a
strong take away or that would, you know, potentially
create us to want to make a change, that we would want to do that.
And I think it would be
important to include those
in our goal planning for next year as we start that process.
Sure.
Like you said, that's the only update I have
is is the information they requested has been provided.
We've been playing a
pretty good game of phone tag over the last two weeks, but
I haven't been able to have the discussion about what the exact next steps were.
The the deadlines.
Okay.
Yeah, we will put it on the agendas for next next month's meeting.
Does anybody have any additional questions for Matt?
Matt, thanks very much for the report and for your work on our behalf.
At the most recent meeting of the Dauphin County Tax Collection Committee,
your organization's services were discussed
and the taxing entities that were there all had the highest praise for your group.
So thanks much.
In the County Tax committee, we've re-upped for with board and river
but here that
that's a nice nice note to end on.
So thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
So for tonight's
board meeting, will Terry just give a brief summary
and then ask the board members of this to listen to the audio of or
what we did last time.
I sent all the board members a an email with the report attached,
inviting them to this evening's meeting and note if they had any questions.
Also, if they couldn't attend, let me know.
So we didn't get any questions from there.
So yeah, the assumption is Terry would note we had this presentation.
You know, thankfully there were
no in-depth questions or anything, any concerns,
I should say, coming out of this and that the Finance Committee,
what I'm hearing, would recommend that the board
approve the audit report at the next meeting,
if anybody has anything, as they read through that for the next meeting.
Once again, they and Terry, you can review this with them
more than welcome to ask me questions which I'll you know,
if I don't have the answer, well, we'll get Matt involved.
Okay.
Watch the copies of this PowerPoint.
Now, we do think that.
Okay.
Thanks again. Thank you.
The next item on the agenda and the next
and only item on the agenda is
any further discussion
we have as a committee regarding
20 2021 board budget priorities.
And Mike, could you remind us when the
your preference and maybe it's a calendar requirement
that we have our board priorities completely expressed?
Sure.
Normally, we'll
we'll try to finish this up here.
Last year at our February Finance Committee meeting.
So, you know, today we have the item on for discussion.
I will have it on one more opportunity or if we get to the end of today
and we've feel like we've had as much discussion as needed
at that point, we would make the recommendation
after the February meeting to the full board that whether or not
the committee has developed budget priorities
to communicate that as well
and ask board members
by the end of March to identify any that they have.
So last year, I think at our March
regular board meetings, we had time in each of those
for board members to bring up anything they had to discuss.
If we don't have anything, there's there's no need to spend time on that.
But then by the end of March, that's when we would have
expected to receive all of the the budget
priorities we're obtaining the budget priorities from.
We've already
obtained the need for additional staff,
the budget priorities for the additional services and things
they need are due to my office on February the third.
So we'll have gathered all the needs by February 3rd
from all of our departments, buildings and then by the end of March.
If we can get that from the school board, we can make sure that we've identified
all the necessary needs and then all the discussions
we'll be having April through June are focused on those needs.
We do kind of put that hard, stop that.
If anybody else has any other great ideas or things that they'd like to put in,
we asked them to hold that for the next budget cycle
because we've already gone through the plan for 4 hours
and in the minutes we just approved earlier
today, it indicates the priority is safe
safety measures.
And then also if there's anything,
I guess, any resources left, once those issues are addressed,
I think it was mentioned in the minutes
you said you would take a look at the concession stand.
Correct.
And those are the only two that I know that have been articulated
and that you haven't addressed in some other way.
So with that, as a
yeah, I was just going to mention the school board as a whole
and we have been
that we'll be receiving an update from the safety and security
not only on it but the work we've been doing
with Warehouse that will done at the February 10th meeting
for the entire school board to hear that.
So that safety and security piece,
you'll have a lot of pieces I think filled in after that meeting
but as well I think after that then bringing forward any concerns
that maybe things you didn't hear or some of those things we can
we'll have those discussions as well.
Is warehouse only reporting on safety?
Are they ready?
What's the elementary school? Yes,
that was part of it, too, for the the safety
and security portion of the elementary school has been done.
But that's part of the discussion we'll have to have from a renovations
standpoint, how that will all be included in the suitability study.
Will that be completed by that time? No, we didn't.
We have that as our shooting for June
when that information would be presented to the school board.
Although I learned in the meeting
today, we may shift that a little bit.
Just a lot of good work happening.
We need to make sure we allow enough time for talk to continue
and we still need to figure out how to finish this building. Yes,
the I
think the last General Services Committee meeting we had,
I do intend to be getting a proposal from warehouse.
We've met with them
what the construction
portion of this building would be moving that forward as well.
So a lot of a lot of pieces in the air that we're we're working towards
the the renovations for this building.
We're looking at, of course, not using any dollars of the operating budget.
So obviously finding that at source.
But we don't anticipate that having any impact on our operational budget
moving forward.
Same with the elementary school renovation project as a whole.
It obviously will impact what safety and security measures we do there and when.
But one that is the
renovation portion being in the future would not affect our operational budget
once again. So some of those are some of the things as we're working through,
it just won't hamper us from continuing
to make our decisions for our operational budget for 2021.
Mike, The safety and security,
I guess financial presentation, what it's what the costs associated with
that will be, you said at February 10th at the full board meeting, then it'll be,
I believe that'll be executive session, the February 10th executive session.
Okay.
Just the nature of the
obviously we'll talk about all the financial implications when
but in the regular meeting as part of that we can't get around those.
But the details are not something
we should be sharing in public.
Okay.
Does anybody have any anything
they want to offer regarding
board priorities?
Okay.
Well, that completes our agenda.
Thank you.
That's yes, one question. Sure.
I know I forgot to look up in the audit.
Is the University of Cincinnati Scholarship,
is that listed in here somewhere? Yes. Is it
because you have a full copy?
I do, yeah.
We have a he might have some extras.
I was just curious because I think we had a student go there this year.
Right. To their right now. To their right now.
Yeah. We have a
someone moving into their sophomore year and a freshman,
so we, we just made those two payments.
And as Todd noted, that is a very, very healthy
it's over $1,000,000 in that account currently.
So I think in our mind's eye when we looked in there,
ultimately we'd be about almost
close to $500,000 once we had
all four students going at the same time.
And at that time
we'll have to have a discussion about how long that will continue to last.
But in the interim, as we're filling students in,
that's more than healthy enough to
to support them.
Yeah, I was
just curious to see if it dipped at all or if like, what is the annual tuition?
And remember that University of Cincinnati is about $20,000 per semester.
Okay,
That's room and board and tuition
all all together.
I'm just so excited that we can offer students.
I just think that's the best.
We don't even know who donated it.
We was the Fillmore.
Fillmore family. Yep. We don't know why.
No, I'm assuming he really loved Hershey and was a graduate of.
But I'm only assuming that. Right. Right.
Okay. Thank you.
So the ability of this scholarship would be included in in the marketing
and promotion that our counseling department school does.
Yeah, absolutely. It is. Okay.
And there was one given last year, right?
Year before two years.
Now, two years ago there wasn't. But there was this year, Right.
17 July of 2018 was the first student.
July of 2019 was the second.
Yeah.
Okay.
There's no further questions, and I have a motion to adjourn, please.
So moved. Second,
all in favor.
Hi, buddy.
Opposed Meeting adjourned at 452.
Thank you,
Joe. If there ends up being an extra copy,
I think we had talked about it the other day.
I went to for hour.
I got five copies and they are all okay so I can
I just refer to it like in past years because we've gotten a copy in past years
and I it's easier to go back and forth than to try to find it
like the the way that it's scanned.
It doesn't search text very well.
So like when I go and look from year to year, it doesn't have that
state of difference. I
think you didn't get the favor ask.
I'd rather have the actual one.
See, I actually had at least one, you see.
Do you want it?
Well, no, I don't want to pick yours. I just.
I'll pick it up from here.
Okay? Yeah. You think recently about this?
You know, I just can't, like, I don't absorb information.
I don't absorb information like this.
When I read it on a screen, I have to be able to, like,
flip around.
It took me forever to, like,
switch to using just an electronic calendar.