e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e here okay all right it's after 6 so we're going to call the work session to order I have a roll call please um Mr GL Miss Brock here Mr samaga miss colani here Mr Cantina here Mr cruss here miss pellet Mr Sweeny here Mr Zimmerman we have a quorum we have a quorum so we will continue item C SL will you please do the honors of swearing in our new board member we finally make this a full board something over here it's over here that um so I have this right here I so the state of New Jersey person with the njs 18a 12- 2.1 and NJ sa41 1-1 and 1-3 requires us oath for school board members uh will we please read use your right hand uh State your right sorry state your name and then repeat after me Carolyn Ross do solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments establish in the United States and the State and to the governments established in the United States and this state under the authority of the people so help me God under the authority of the people so help me God I I Carolyn Ross do solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear or affirm that I have possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of a member of Board of Education that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of member of a board of education and I will faithfully and partially and justly perform and that I will faithfully and partially and justly perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability so help me God all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability so help me God congratulations and then your binder there'll be the oath if you please sign that just give it to me at the end of the meeting and also of Ethics I pictures thank you okay congratulations now and welcome thank you you welcome congratulations you know everybody do you know Mrs Kiani I introduce everybody carollyn Ross Mrs Ela Kiani hi great to see I introduce everybody else before the meeting yes so far Ray said he'll be here shortly Ray z okay uh Mr slam item e roll call the newly elected board Miss Brock here Mr samaga miss colani here Mr cantino here Mr Krauss here miss pellet Dr Ross here Mr Sweeney here Mr zurin we have a qu okay so uh item two it is recommended that the board enter Clos session for the disc for the purposes of discussing legal personnel and student matters and may I have that in form of a motion so moved second a move by Mr Krauss seconded by Mr uh cantino all in favor I opposed okay we are enclosed and we will go into the other room e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e okay item three Open session we recommend that the board return to the public session and I have that in form of a motion this Maga oh my goodness and seconded by elain kyani thank you all in favor we are back in open Mr slam item M Miss Brock roll call Mr smaga miss colani here Mr cantino here Mr Krauss here miss pallet here Dr Ross here Mr Sweeney here Mr zimman here miss federici here we have a quorum please join me ining the pledge of aledge Ali to the flag United States of America na thank you item Mr SL meeting of the meeting notice the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of the ACT Vernon Township Board of Education has cause notice of this meeting to be published an adequate notice has been provided and notice this meeting has been properly posted in accordance to the New Jersey open public meeting law uh just a quick note the next uh public board meeting will be held on Thursday March 21st next Thursday okay tonight we have the presentation of the preliminary budget that we will be submitting to the county this is not a final budget it is still up for a lot of our uh discussion and massaging if you will but uh the floor is yours Mr slam should we move or you gotta use this uh yeah I have a PowerPoint presentation yeah I made I made one probably walk around good evening everybody um well let's just final but this is preliminary budget that's that's on me preliminary budget presentation um so uh as we know and I think I provided some information in January on this um we are in um a difficult situation uh with the cut of State we'll get into that a little bit uh farther Ong into the presentation uh so first I just want to start off I have our mission statement here um I'm sure everyone is with it so to everybody but I think it's important that when we're creating the budget remember that the budget is to support this this statement uh and the goals of the board so understanding a budget a budget consists of planned and expected revenues uh similar what I just said it's a financial expression of District needs ands and it's a living doc so essentially we're looking into a future year from now to say you know what do we think we're going to need we operated the districts and trying to anticipate what some of those challenges might be a year from now uh in terms of you know what something cost today even what it's going to cost in the future right um one of the examples I always use um when I was at ba Mountain I was right when the pandemic started my budget was done my budget was done for the next year and and Happ every B mate no one could anticipate in that happen so you have to be able to be flexible and you need to be able to make adjustments and that's why I say it's a living Doc and that's why during the year you'll see budget transfers have to this slide I talk a little bit about here so the start of the process first you want to gather information on the prior year uh and the current year so you can try to reject what you think next year may look play you want to make sure you're verifying your personnel information you're validating that's all correct that includes you know salaries uh benefits making sure your position control r is is accurate you want to look at your fixed costs um those are things that you're going to have every every year and you want to try to anticipate what some of those increases in those cost might be good example might be electricity right we electricity uh oil U those are things you're going to have to look at along with many other fixed cost District would have and then you want to actually meet with Administration uh you know the school principls um supervisors they should be meeting with teachers to get feedback in terms of you know what what do they need or anticipate needing in the next year right that's how we gather our information uh and we discuss that information put it all in one place um I believe in zerob based budgeting so we started out with requests saying what do you anticipate meting next year is it similar to this year do you anticipate any changes uh as we need all that information and then we have to review it and figure out a way to make it work and then I always say this is the boring part no one's interested in with that's just assigning the the money to accounts uh and the part everyone probably is interested is is determining the revenue so with balancing the budget um there are limited types of Revenue that a school district has access to right um here I believe it's I'll see it on a later slide a large percentage of our Revenue is from property taxes I want to say it's about maybe 65% um state aid is about is now about 25% it used to be a larger percentage but as everyone knows with the S2 funding formula we have uh seen a pretty drastic cut with this year's updated number I believe it's around 30% of our seed has been caught since I was the 17 18th school year I then you have access to Grants uh and then Surplus which is we've talked about a number of times that's excess Surplus from the prior year so essentially you're ending the year uh with a balance and then using that balance as a revenue in your next year and if you don't end that year with a high enough balance you then start off your next year uh with a a lower amount of potential Revenue than you had in the current year and then local revenues those are things uh such as tuition we have preschool tuition here that we receive um we're able to get a nice increase in interest is year uh based off of getting a higher interest rate with the bank things along those lines expenses kind of talked about a little little bit already um we got to make sure we have appropriate Staffing make sure that we're in compliance you know there's always an eye towards making sure that you know class sizes don't get too large we're in a difficult situation where you know there were a lot of requests I received that we just could not fulfill um because the reality of the financial situation in the district which again ties back to that large cut saving so effectively and you'll see it later um we're getting about $7.5 million less a year uh in state aid than we had received uh the first year before S2 was implemented I want to make sure we're supporting those District initiatives um and then the part that you know really comes into play after we get that information is trying to control cost right um there are ways to do that co-ops um doing more research before purchase is made and one of the things we're looking into pretty closely now uh with the town are shared services so that's something that we're working on uh the try attain savings for the district and also the town um there's right there so history State um updated version from what I had in my last presentation uh because thankfully um instead of a cut this year we actually received SL back we actually received an increase right um so before we received that increase um we were in a very difficult position um we were in a position where one of our few paths forward was going to include looking at Staffing um and based off of what had happened in the past with the cuts previously there aren't a lot of places uh to look at that point uh so it's difficult so uh we did get an increase in state aid uh which shows right there to 7.5 $5 million less in state aid we're receiving per year now um than in 1617 and at the bottom you'll see if they had remained flat uh we would have received about 39 million more dollars in that time frame which would have been great because then we could have could have bought a couple grooves or something so um I'd also want to find a history of our fund balance uh so you'll notice and I'll kind of go back and show you the years where the fund balance utilization goes up pretty high are also coincide with years where we had some of the larger state cuts here see if I go back real quick I see we got 2.1 one 1.7 and then the cuts lessened and then this year thankfully we had an increase but you'll see we had 2.9 and 2122 went all the way up to over 5.7 2223 3.1 and then this year we're just under 2.8 um so in terms of the financial path for District we should be working on utilizing less of this right because when we're utilizing these numbers that means that each year we need to end with at least that amount of money in our basically in in our balance at the end of the budget and if we don't then you either need to find additional revenue or you need to make more Cuts in order to balance the budget uh so this year we did lessen the amount we're using a little bit uh you don't want to do it too quickly you want to lessen a little bit at a time and then the other benefit of that we'll talk a little bit about it later on when I talk about um capital reserve is that if you're not putting all your money towards funding your next budget you can replenish your capital reserve which is important because there are going to be a number of facility projects that I would say in the next three to seven years we're gonna have to look we're GNA have to look at and find a way to fund uh so I just want to provide a little bit of an overview of fund balance related to uh the last slide so you'll this is actually from our 3023 audit uh so you'll see excess Surplus restrict for 2425 that 2.81 million is going to be funding the 2425 budget right under that you'll see 899,000 that funded this year's budget and so it's that number right there EXs Surplus 2324 899 325 plus if you go down to the bottom you'll see designated subsequent years expenditures is about 2.2 million so that's that $2.2 Million number and that 8.99 number is what funded the 2324 budget so that money is it's on paper at 6:30 but that's because our year starts 71 so on 71 that money is gone it's in this budget the 21 is going into 2425 budget and that number comes directly from the audit of the 2223 year so essentially that's the the balance they ended with um at the end of the 2223 school year you'll see a reserve there is a little bit over 2.5 million for Capital reserves that's included in that fund balance number uh projects were taken out this year um some of those projects have not been completed yet uh due to waiting for uh the state in terms of sea projects so some of that money will go back in but based off of money going back in and then additional money coming back out for some projects we need to address in the upcoming year which I'll talk about later um I project that we'll have about 725 ,000 in our capital reserve at that money which is very low for our district our size and then you see our maintenance Reserve is about $2,500 which is low I believe last year they withdrew um from maintenance Reserve unemployment compensation required to have that and then year end encumbrances so essentially that means that at the end of the year there was purchase holders that were encumbered that were rolled over into the new year uh so those funds are in this budget year as a PO either because we haven't been invoiced yet uh or we were invoiced but the service wasn't completed yet and then that last number you'll see there is the 1.6 million we'll over 1.6 and that is actually our um unassigned fund balance for this year so that's a combination of things we have our 2% which is what we're allowed to have 2% of our expenses that's approximately 1,350,000 believe I say approxim because that's not the exact number you know off the top my head um and then there are a couple of revenues that were received last year that were not budgeted that are allowable to go on top of that number of 2% so that will be a supplemental stabilization Aid which is approximately $211,000 um non-public Transportation Aid which is about 25 or $27,000 and then additional extraordinary Aid which is about $55,000 so later on you'll see that we're gonna be using fund balance this year although less than the previous years to fund this 2425 budget so that's going to be a combination of our 2% or less it's not going be full 2% ption 2% plus those additional revenues we're allowed to carry on top of that 2% and then our excess Surplus which is that 2.1 million at the top almost 2.2 million and we're using those as revenues in order uh to balance the budget but long term you want to walk you want to work towards not having to rely on that excess surus and that gives us our total fund Balan is of $8.8 million I mentioned it before um last for this current year uh a little bit over $3.1 million uh was utilized um as revenue from the prior year um we started this year with it was two mil1 180,000 approximately so we started out with less Revenue um and you'll see some of the ways that we address that as we go through this presentation I want to talk about some approximate projected increases because again we're projecting out a year use information and estimate what you think that will be right um some of the information is very easily attainable like Transportation well it isn't it is so Transportation can renew at 5.81% that's a CPI uh each year you're told the CPI and that Transportation contract that vendor could renew it 5.81% or they could turn around say that's not enough money um and then we'll have to go back out the bid and then if they're not r at 5.81% you know they're gonna propose a higher increase than that 5.1% right um so right now we checked about a 9% increase um we're hoping that a lot of our uh vendors we have good relationship with them we're hoping that a lot of them will go for that 5.1% because that's a fairly High CPI uh higher than I've seen in the past uh distri liability insurance so for this one uh we're part of safe uh which is basically we're grouping together with other school districts to get liability insurance right um their goal was 10% so I I budgeted about 10% a little bit over for one of the lines um they they had initially said the budget quite a bit more than that uh but it's just not feasible um I spoke to some other bees to see what they were doing and surrounding districts um and then went with uh the 10% and then property I had uh actually projected a little bit higher just because that's one of the larger um portions of our bill energy objective about maybe a 2.6% increase in energy um and then for salaries about 3.9% that's a combination of the contractual increase horizontal movement and movement on steps of guide and just to kind of put a little bit of this into perspective with dollar values so for health benefits that 7.6% equates to about $831,000 hours uh Transportation about 653,000 hours liabil uh liability insurance is about $150,000 energy about $125,000 and then salaries is just under $1.5 million right so you see we're starting with less Revenue everything goes up in costs um so you see at the bottom tax levy is C to 2% with few exceptions that 2% kind of makes up that LE that Revenue we lost through the lower amount of excess Surplus um and then on top of all that as we all know inflation has been a reoccurring issue uh probably since the pandemic um logistical costs have gone up so day-to-day supplies and services are also going up costs um so one of the few exceptions that would be available to go over 2% is a health benefit cost adjustment um so basically that's an adjustment that allows you to increase over the 2% tax levy if your costs are certain percentage over the State Health Benefit costs right so the State Health Benefit costs right now are or for the PRI year were 6.3% so we were able to they take that 6.3% they take out 2% because they assume everything's going to go by 2% which is the tax levy which I wish everything just went by 2% make my job a lot easier but uh uh they take they subtract that from that and they say okay well you can add an additional full. 3% of your health benefit cost where that number is and then you could and add that to the top of the tax levy to help fund those increases in healthcare um so that's the the general gist of that which in our instance would be an allowable adjustment of additional $337,450 per is the local tax levy um that's about $46 million uh our state aid is about 25% obviously it used to be a larger percentage um before the cuts went into place we're getting about 17.5 million right now and then 4% is budgeted fund balance um which is a combination of the 2,473 638 um which is essentially that excess Surplus I mentioned earlier which is about just under 2.2 million plus some of those extra number um funding amounts I had also mentioned the stabilization which is 211,000 approximately the uh not Transportation was approximately 25 27,000 and then there was um the extraordinary eight which is approximately 55,000 so you add those up you get the 2.4 just under 2.5 million and then on top of that we're looking to use um fund balance which is a part of our 2% and then those last I see there extraordinary Aid which are all from capital reserve um and other Revenue under 500k those all make up less than 1% of our Revenue each uh so other Revenue under 500k that would be uh Bank interest right um prior year there was Zero Bank interest uh budgeted because our interest rate was under 1% was very low uh we're at 4.85% now um which has helped a lot with this year's uh managing this year's balance uh and also allowed uh us to budget interest as a revenue in a year to offset some of these costs um then you would also see preschool tuition U but again these are lower numbers um that while helpful and important um kind of pale comparison to state aid and local tax levy in terms of revenues that are available for the district um this is just what I mentioned before uh we're at 4.85% now um budgeted around $250,000 of that you have to be care when you're budgeting revenues um because there's a couple things that are happening right now uh the feds are looking at cut rates they're going to cut rates multiple times next year most likely um I think the general consensus right now is that people are surprised they haven't already cut rates they thought it was going to happen I think there's been a little bit of a little bit of resistance inflation I'll say uh that has caused them to pause a little bit so in terms of inflation generally that's not great but in terms of the interest rate that does generate additional revenue for the district um so we're able to budget $250,000 with the hope of that being slightly more which would help us with that balance at the end of the year and also you always want to avoid so over budgeting a revenue because over budgeting a revenue is essentially the same thing as under budgeting expense right so it's going to make your budget go into the red either way at the end of the year once all the numbers are uh audited so it was originally a PowerPoint but we transferred it over to uh Google Slides um so anyway this is just a breakdown of the general expenditures so instruction is just under 28 million um employee benefits is just under 12 uh Transportation just under eight facility security just over seven uh students Ser Support Services now these are all services directly support the students just under seven Central Services admin and information technology it's under 4.3 and then special education tuition uh just under 2.8 and then Capital outlay which are some projects I'll talk about at the end uh of the presentation um that's coming directly out of capital reserve $926,000 um generally what you want to see when you see a SL like this is you want to see most of the money going towards either instruction um uh combination instruction and support services and then obviously uh with you know the size of Vernon a lot of money is going to go towards Transportation as well um because our our transportation is contracted out we don't have our own buses um and the transportation industry uh has been seeing quite a lot of increases since covid with shortages of drivers increases in fuel uh and eventually we feel that um in the price of those contracts so these some examples of way ways that we have uh saved or reduced budget costs um so we did zerob based budgeting uh I cut just under $900,000 out the transportation budget based off what was requested um I looked at Social Security um for the current year what was budgeted what we spent so far um and felt comfortable reducing that number um based off what I think next year uh payments will be um because I don't want to over budget something if I know that we're we're safe in the amount that I would be budgeting I want to under budget but I don't don't want to over budget either um facilities Cuts so we did initially have um some more money for some local projects and things like that in the budget um not feasible uh I think I mentioned a few times before one of our main goals with this budget was not to cut additional staff um so you know when it came to some of those projects that didn't necessar need to happen exactly right now we cutting staff potentially making you know classes bigger or impacting the students in that way uh we decide to try to maintain the staff um see with technology cuts um so with technology Cuts uh we did receive some stabilization Aid this year um we had appli for over $4 million stabilization Aid uh we received 44,000 um which we're like oh we got the letter and then we open it like ah that was not quite what we're hoping for um but we have telephone systems that need to be replaced they're no longer going to be supported uh so we're going to use that the funding um and some of the balance this year to replace those telephone systems so I was able to take that out of the future budget and have that work we're G have that work completed during this year um that way we still are supporting the district in the needs of the district but also reducing the impact on on the next year's budget and then there was also some other items that we had to cut out like you know new bank keyboards and things of that like that of that nature um so that's a combination of the numbers I mentioned before um that's an addition of a revenue we used excess Surplus and approximately 0 47% of our fund balance so we're allowed to have 2% we're using one point we're using 47% and essentially what would happen is reg balance we end this year with um that 47% will be refilled first before excess Surplus is calculated uh so hypothetically say we end this year with $3 million right and then after the audit they say okay you have $3 million they would take out the uh 47% of fund balance uh and refill that so we would subtract that number from that 3 million and that's what our actual number would be and then we would decide at that point access Surplus deposit and Reserve based off our situation most likely access Surplus um the long-term goal is to start putting money into the reserves that's projects that are going to need to happen um but also we want to maintain obligations of the district and then obviously as much as we can we want we want to put that first um while try to be mindful of the future there's something I'm going to mention later on the facility slide it's kind of an alternative that we're looking at that uh may help provide lead with some those projects and then we got that increase in state aid uh little bit over a million dollars um again before that um we were running out of uh basically budget moves there's you know a certain number of moves you can make in a budget that make they work um that's all I think of it in my mind uh and then you start to run out of moves and then the remaining moves are more painful and not mov you want to make if you don't have to um and then we had some updates so there was Personnel requests that were made um we had some reassessment of those requests and we thought just about $450,000 out of those requests um all process being uh if we're worried about losing staff we have uh we can't you know get additional staff right the staff we have to come first bud and then also you try to get creative to find ways to address the needs that those are requests initially um initially started those requests or inspired those requests there you go so I'll go through there some actions taking the contain cost I mentioned some of them before Cooperative purchasing is pretty common among school districts uh where Ines for electricity natural gas there's also e- rate reimbursements for internet and it infrastructure um we just recently had our pre- reduced lunch percentage go up which actually increased our percentage reimbursement from 50% uh to 60% for the upcoming year um so that was helpful that means more money back uh into the taxpayers C um we also have property purchasing of property insurance workers comp compensation which I mentioned before that's safe that we're part of um we'll shared services with Township of Vernon um and then also we participate in semi and we get a reimbursement for services provided that would otherwise be eligible uh for reimbursement through Medicaid uh so this just a breakdown of 2024 2025 general fund tax levy so the general tax levies is going up would be proposed to go up about one point little over $1.2 million um you'll see the bottom Levy is Debt Service um so that was approved at the last referendum that was passed I believe that was the last action on that was I believe a refunding that happened in 2015 maybe probably to save money on the interest um so that will be running out uh within the next few years but but essentially that Authority was approved when that referendum was voted on uh so here's the tax analysis so ratables are very very important when determining what the tax impact uh will be of the budget um again we're a portion of the budget so it's basically the school district and the town uh it differs a little bit um from 10 of town what the split is on that percentage uh you probably all see it on your when you get your estimates it'll probably give you a percentage breakdown um so ratables are essentially the total tax base for the township um as ratables grow on value they help reduce the TA any impact of tax increase would have on individual taxpayer so basically as rbls grow you'd have more people paying in so then get more people paying in each person's portion get a little bit smaller um so there's a very large increase in ratables uh just about 300 million doll it's almost 10% increase um so very large increase which is generally positive um so and we have to format issues when it when it converted over um so basically it would be a 2.74 one% increase to the tax levy for the district it split over two years um so that would be a slightly less increase on a calendar year because essentially the way it works is we run from July um to June the town runs from January to December so our years intersect in the middle so half of our year is in one tax year and then the other half of our year is in their other the town's other tax year now with that ratables um I'll go more into this on the next page so the local average assessed home value is $289,000 approximately um so with a rateable increase and Apples to Apples comparison so if your home was $289,000 last year and it's $289,000 this year you would actually see a decrease in your taxes so with that being said my understanding is that there's at least some re reevaluations done in town um so I can't really predict necessarily what someone's home value would do but essentially I can say is if your home value went up then you would you know you would see an increase in most cases in taxes but it would depend obviously on the effect of that large increase in ratables and then what happened individually um to your assessment right so the average value last year was $262,000 so if you're Apples to Apples you would see a decrease however if you were one if you were say a lower lower value and you went up in value uh then you may still see an increase but you may still see a decrease I have talked to a couple of people in town that did have a reassessment had their estimate and the estimate showed a decrease in taxes but I wouldn't be able to estimate individually so I can only really give you that apples the apples comparison of same value last year same value this year down um but I want to make sure that that was clear so it didn't think I was trying to make the numbers look pretty you know um so interesting article was shared with me uh so came out new jersey.com that it's basically Sussex County average uh taxes ranked uh so Vernon's 19 out of 24 uh the average in New Jersey is about 9,800 and the average according to this report in Vernon was about 6,800 now that's off the average to assessed value um you'll notice the average fa in the previous slide was slightly different that's because I got that from the tax assessor for the prior here um looks like new jersey.com is all five about thousand doll but uh in terms of the home the assess value um but out of Sussex County um we are 19th out of 24 uh with one being the highest in 19 24 being the lowest so facility improvements I had talked a little bit or referenced that a little bit earlier uh so there's a couple of things uh that based off my Limited District so far I thought were safety issues uh that need to be addressed so the first one is at the high school uh the cosmetology building um the ramp and stairs there uh need repair and replacement um they've settled um to me it's just something that needs to be addressed I don't want someone to get hurt um Cedar Mountain Primary School um there's a stairway there and our Waring retaining wall there uh again the stairs uh are need of replacement I don't know if anyone in the room has have seen them uh and then the loing routin was actually bending in so we make sure that's addressed before we come to safety issue um and then one of the other items is the sa window project which was actually budgeted for this year uh but again due to the delays uh with basically the review everyone that submitted an application the state had to review it took a long time to get through all that um we just finally got an SD agreement maybe about a week or two ago um so most most likely that project would fall into next year because obviously you can't do a window replacement you know during the school year so that's one instance where some money would flow back in the cap Reserve where that money would flow back out in the new budget uh which leaves that around $725,000 projected amount that I think that we will see once all the inflows and outflows have occurred uh and then the alternative that we're looking at right now it's pretty early what we're looking at esip the district currently has an esip um that was put in place for the solar panels there solar field actually right back out there down the hill there Sol solar field um so there e for solar panels um and then I believe it was also upgrades to boilers uh so essentially need to they look for Energy savings the idea being that you reduce what you're budgeting for energy costs uh and then you place that towards uh financing of projects right so one of the things that we're particularly interested in and again very early in the process we'd have to an uh an energy audit from the state and there's a pretty long line uh it's it's the audit is free but it's a pretty long line to wait in um but one of the things we're interested in would be the possibility of replacing some roofs through an E7 where they go through they do the audit if there's enough energy savings you could replace a roof potentially uh in that way rather than having to rely on capital reserve or or other methods so just an i one of the an idea to try to make some Headway there um without uh you know having everything occur all at once and having a an impact on the taxpayer and then uh the budget information uh we will be putting that up on uh the website after the next presentation which will be in April uh at this point what we have to do is send it out first it would I have to be approved tonight to be submitted to the county and then once it wents to the county I'd have to see if during the review there any changes and then if there were any changes uh that along with the information I provided tonight will be provided again at the public hearing uh in April believe it's there is April 25th uh but once that is all complete uh that that would be posted to the business office web page uh which currently has probably the last couple months has been redone we've been adding a lot more information to that so it's easily accessible to the public be on the website um I've shared it so I I I could Pro let let me check with the county county ba just to make sure because I know there's some pretty um the law for advertising the budget and I don't know if this would necessarily count basically would state that you have to put it the only shortened version of the budget could be in the paper essentially um so for example I couldn't post short version of the budget in the paper theing public he more information yeah so I'll it um and add any questions uh go back to the tax relation chart there yep maybe three or four back could you explain that again yeah the average ass value last year was 26264 the average value this year is $289,000 um so when I when I'm looking at this right so if your value if you were reassessed and the value of your house went up depending on how much it went up I provided this information so you could look at this information and say well my dollar value is year this amount and then you could basically determine what what the objective increase or decrease would be right so impact of the School portion of impact of the School portion down 6.7% for some of these if your assist value last year was the same as your assist value this year then yes you would go down but if your assessed value goes up you don't know yet for sure if your assess value went up you'd have to look to see what your assess value with last year um then your Val is this year and then you can look here and see essentially relatively because I Gap and the increases you see 2 200,000 289 and 35475 trying to get a range in there a pretty good idea of what might be you need know your ass value B portion of our tax bill would be proportionately less than it was this year if if it went on depending on your individual situation because usually um the assess most usually the assess value is pretty consistent right uh so the fact that went up leads me to believe that there were reassessments the average go reassessments or right add R um but normally it's pretty consistent so I could stay sit here and say well last year was 262 640 this year was 262 640 Therefore your taxes is they you know they went down by this amount but because I'm seeing a difference in the average assessed value then I assuming that people are going to have uh at least some people have increases in their assessments me some people that mean the same I don't know assess now if you want to kind of make an assumption that the average assess value is going to be the average assess value right so your average assist value last year is going to still call average ass value value assumtion that would probably be about $100 incase on the School portion on the School portion but it really depends on what you if you reassess and you that last so my tax is my I have a 26640 ass set value yeah in 2023 the school ption of my taxes are 3,822 yes for 2023 the school 3,824 value was so then based on your proposed budget a preliminary y next year be 3566 if you're value that's projection now if your assist value changed though that's why I put two charts here I yeah so if it went up so if it went up from 262 640 and this year went up to 289 which is also highlighted in green that it will go the tax increase will go from 3824 yep to 3924 yep okay I understand that thank you uh any other questions from the board I'm gonna open it up to the public in a second okay does any board member have any question Melissa I got I got a question if I understood correctly it sounds like the tax levy was increased by 1.25 million and approximately 365,000 of that was due to an exception in the 2% cap so our employee health benefits 337 approximately 337,000 will be gotcha okay so out of the $1.25 million difference between the tax levy last year and this year $337,000 of that was due to an exception in the law which allows you to push not push but to to basically um put that on the tab it allows you to go over two% it's really um not the entire a certain percentage of it% yeah so there's only a few ways to go over the 2% U one would be if you had Bank cap which we have no Bank cap uh so essentially Bank cap for anyone that doesn't know is spending Authority from a prior year that was not utilized uh you then have the ability to use that for three years moving forward it wouldn't be the percentage that you didn't use it would be the exact dollar amount that the school district did not use right so say um couple years ago didn't do 2% and say they could have raised another $200,000 right that would be Bank cap so hypothetically you could then this year say we really need additional $200,000 so add additional $200,000 on top of the 2% uh District does not have any Bank cap it expires after three years if you don't use it uh and then it's basically gone forever so uh we have a zero bank that another oh sorry I was one more and then I that's see it sorry another uh potential would be if you had enrollment adjustment so essentially if your enrollment goes up enough and it's not a one for one basis uh you could then have the authority to go over 2% in order to fund an increase enrollment uh so right now that is not something that be available to us uh we're not seeing increases in enrollment and then the third will be the healthcare indust which is benchmarked back to the state health plan thank you on the health plan uh what was the increase to those who were involved with the health plan to the employee uh so the projected increase is going to be about 10% um but when I put it up there I also included the entire uh basically employee benefits line so our entire employee employee benefits Line's going up about 7.6% um so it would be a 10% projected 10% increase and we won't know probably till July or August what the actual increase will be because that's generally when the report comes out from the state you know with their recommendations of what they would increase the cost of healthare and then for individual employes um that would depend on if they're in Chapter 70 chapter 78 plan or chapter 44 plan because the way their contributions work um are completely based which type of plan they're under based off the change in law for chapter 44 so again with the help benefits um this is based off of increase increase of of the benefits that we projecting not changes benefits ore so it's a projected 10% increase um there are three positions that we would need to rehire that either not filled right now or won't be filled at the end of the year which will then need to be refilled so essentially whenever I'm budgeting for health benefits you always want a budget for family right so right now anyone that would be coming into a district would fall under chapter 44 which would be either New Jersey Educators plan or the Garden State Plan um so you would want to assume probably family New Jersey Educators plan because what happens is if you say budget everyone at single and then everyone comes in at Family yeah need to find the difference right um so that's best practice in terms of budgeting for health benefits um then also uh there are um see changes in open enrollment so I I include a small amount for any Chang in open enrollment so that could be during an open enrollment or it could be due to um life events right so someone has a child someone gets married they move may move from a single plan uh to a um either a parent child plan or a family plan or or a married plan so that would obviously be an increase in cost for the district um generally with chapter 44 the contributions that employees make are are barely less than what chapter 78 contributions would be um so depending on where that employee may fall on the scale there's a Scale based off the percentage of the salary um could be a pretty big swing cost for district so it's like what we projected change and action you said it's like five positions that are not open so if those five positions get filled we don't budget for them we're going to be out of deficit then yes sorry you want to make sure that you have it for family and essentially have say they someone comes in you don't know say they come in you have budget family any wave well that's good for the district right because that means that if something else happens you can then move that money to the the other unfunded issue right say someone else move moves from symbol to family then that could help offset that or say uh there's a program that is really needed or another uh student needs additional services that would have an additional cost that wasn't budgeted so it just provides that's why I say it's a living document and you want to make sure that you're flexible um because you're GNA have to do those monthly transfers as new things come up uh what I say I I predict a year from now I predicting the one in Lottery you know so or I you don't really good in the stock one probably the second one that'd be more interesting but you have life events where people will opt out of our insurance and go with their it could happen um it could better are provided somewhere else yeah what would end up happening in that case would be if they had coverage here they would wave and they pay their uh the cost for health benefits we pay four, we to open the meeting after all the board member have board members have their questions answer then I'll open the but again it's something that can't really predict but you need to make sure that we're putting the district in a financially stable position uh you never want to run the risk of ending well first risk would be ending the year with too small BS and then when you're creating budget in the next year a real big problem because you're too low on Revenue essentially and you CL your Revenue cuts and thing you never ever ever want to have happen is you know hit a deficit um when U somebody opts out of being covered and goes with the spouse uh is a compensation given to that employee to offset not costing us anything uh they get a $4,000 waiver they have to fill out our waiver for and provide proof that they have coverage uh through their spouse and then they would get a $4,000 waiver payment uh wow everybody yep I believe so I'll double check on that just because again it's different part of contract yes contract John quick I just off of this topic we me talk about the windows you mentioned that we're not going to do the windows or we are going to do the windows well the plan is to do the windows okay I we just we can't do them during the school year do them in the summer yeah we would have well we have we have to see how long the process take how long they bring with the SDA okay I'm not sure what timeline would be to get that back to us essentially once we had the SDA agreement uh signed by both parties we could then at that point go out the bed yeah I thought the way you presented it that we weren't doing I thought we decided we going to do yeah we couldn't do the construction this year right unless we were able to get through a bit very quickly the SE was very uh conscious uh timeline and then we were May able to maybe able to start um in June after the students have left but even then I believe uh this is I believe the amount that was budgeted this year um no it would probably work out because there was two projects bued for Windows um one of them we can't do because we don't have enough Reserve to do both uh so if for some reason the Stars aligned I would then move funds because that was another project to approve the budget to this window project and then we would have enough to start that window project this year and then that would just lessen the amount of money that would go back into the capital reserve which in turn uh would lessen either lessen the amount that would be coming out or increase the amount that would be coming back in next year Charles right can you just explain the SDA just for people not have heard yeah so School uh so School Development Authority um essentially they have Rod grants which applications were available uh last year to apply for Rod grants they had a tiered system of projects in terms of how they um rated them in terms of importance uh with there being a limited amount of funding they reviewed the applications and they went based off that tier they try to decide who they're in front right U so the district had applied for two windows projects one for the high school one for the Middle School uh we received both of them however unfortunately we don't have enough money in our capital reserve to fund our portion of both them and when I say our portion basically how it works is when you get an A ra Grant the state will pay for about 40% of the project but the district needs to pay for the other 60% um and then the other time that you're going to uh School District would interact with the SDA would be if uh for example in 2 was before 2015 because 2015 I believe is when the district refunded their bonds but the last time they went off a referendum uh the district would get Debt Service Aid right um and then you would receive that Debt Service Aid each year uh usually they say it's 40% but really it ends up being a little bit less than that and it also depends on the district's it's called the District apply percent percentage and it's different District by District it would be calculated when you applied because you project approved um but then they would fund that percentage uh of the eligible costs and that would differ depending on whether it's new construction or if you are essentially remediating or repairing or or renovating a new building you get more if you're renovating you get less if you're doing the construction um just just curiosity fund balance so if you it's basically money that's you know we have left over right we're using it in in the next budget or our two budgets see cycle right I'll go back to what if hypothetically what what if we went the zero I mean what would that do would that because if I said we said oh we have 2,000 $2 million left in our budget why didn't we spend it for something good what so if we toit zero at the end of the school year that would mean let me go back to the chart sorry I'm clicking but it's think in the beginning yeah we got in there um so let's go to the one before this so that shows fun balance utilization so for example any one of these years if we went to zero then the a year right so this year we're making a 2425 budget but we're using the excess Surplus from the 2223 sco year which have to wait for the audit to be completed so there's always a year lapse right so if we had ended 2223 with zero that means that we either need to find about 2.8 million more dollars in Revenue uh H and it's a little bit more compc than that because we have some extra money there from stabiliz s stabilization but I'm assuming at that point for going to zero we probably would have appropriated all that and 23 and spent that as well we going to true zero um so yeah you would have to either find that much in Cuts or that much in um Revenue limited way you can get Revenue discussed before um so it's kind of like or you have to find savings that's a lot of savings to find you look at a number like that that's staff so the money is kind of there so we we have ex extra expenditures new staff or insurance goes up higher right yeah we have that money in that budget year but it's also planning for our future because it's been part of our budget for so long right so if we ever lost it it's almost like we have it's it's another cut we would have to come up with so basically if you spent to zero or budgeted the zero you would basically have to hope that you have budgeted every single thing for the next year absolutely correct there will be no changes um there will be no facilities issues there would be no additional out of District students there would be no changes in healthcare so everything the same right um and then there would be cuts off of that too so you would have because all those things I just said don't add up to that number right so you would have to figure out a way to operate with probably significantly less staff uh which based off of what we are right now doesn't seem realistic and I wouldn't happy that any other board question this can be you know fund balance it's not something everyone hears about on day-to-day basis my house doesn't have fun balance okay open thank you Mr slam there'll be lots of questions from the board and I we have a booklets we have all all kinds of budget information in it I I would like everybody to take their time read through everything ask as many questions as you want there'll be many other opportunities at board meetings and just call Mr slam we keep you're keeping that so I'm gonna open a meeting to the public and this is the preliminary budget anybody can ask questions there'll be more opportunities but please come to the mic and ask questions we not and uh we'll try to we have Ray try to answer them the meeting is the now open to the public hi Bill Higgins from Vernon good to see everybody again R nice job this the presentation compared to previous presentation with her pie charts and explanations and words it meant nothing to the audience you did a good job getting through that so that part is good yeah just a couple small things I always criticize it's not a zero based constructive comments constru not a zerob based budget you have fixed costs you're you're not starting at zero that's number one and secondly Joe this this preliminary budget being that it's on the table that's public information that it is public information yes it is that could be so so if you analyze everything and uh you know you got 80 82% of your costs are Personnel made up healthcare costs it's made up of people and uh and salaries that's really the cruxer problem and uh going back to so my question to you Reay on health care costs in 2012 it was Governor Christie and state senator Sweeney came up with the plan that the teachers had to join the regular population for the 25 years the regular population was paying part of their health care cost and the teachers were paying 1.5% and you can see it's an $1,000 plan and it was high at the time so there was a six-year period where they phased in more of the cost of the teachers paying those hitting $100,000 in salary were then made in year six to pay 35% of their cost those making 55,000 were paying a lesser percentage and so that got them close to the average person who is a public worker I mean a non-public worker in industry and they were livid they did everything they could to get Sweeney unelected and uh then it was up the the state said okay that's that's it it's the end of the six years now if you as a local board want to keep that in place it's in place so Magnus board from Vernon on on the negotiations the person who was the president at the time got it pass that we were going to start giving the teacher back part of that 35% so my question to you is how much of the increase in your health care cost now this is year four of giving back some of that 35 so the taxpayers are actually absorbing some of the how much how much of it is that um okay so like if somebody was making 100,000 or more who listening right now they would know the answer because they could look at their paycheck and say and maybe it's 31% or 30% they would know but it's it's a it's a sizable dollar amount that's been rebated back over the years in every one of the contracts in the last six years so it took all kinds of of political uh cooperation to get to that point and now Vernon it's not just all the districts there was a decision here locally so when you negotiate the next contract you really have to say enough is enough I mean everybody has to pay their fair share so that's part of your cost that you can control that you haven't the second thing is you've got a 3.9% increase in salaries your salary expense that's because you gave a three-year contracts at 3.2% raise which was one of the highest in the county or the highest and now that's compounded 3 years later it's now 3.4% so you add those two numbers up that's the bulk of your problem here because you're now asking the taxpayer to take that cost that I just identified and raise their taxes instead of at 2% you're asking you go to 2.74% and they those were controllable cost there are costs you can't control you know the cost of all the things you mentioned from light and heat and and the rest of it you did get more state aid you you're you're you're getting your capital projects back underway because you had money in capital reserve you froze it when you had the money problems a year and a half ago now you're finishing up some of those projects so that was a delay and now you've got a and if if this goes through your reserve will be 5% 5% of your budget you got $69 million budget and you'll have 5% of it in reserve correct what capital reserve no total reserves so it's not no you in other words your $3 million fund balance is about a surplus yes that's about 5% of your budget um I don't that's so it's not a reserve so it's ex make right so the terminology I'm using Dr but you it's 5.6% of the total overall budget which isn't bad that's pretty good I mean you know the sky is not going to fall you got $3 million there so again I wouldn't I wouldn't call it a reserve but only for the reason that it's funding the next budget so it's not it's not just super example my the expenses in the budget equal the revenue with that amount in so if I had not used that ex Surplus one zero about 2 2 million 2.8 million of other revenue or cut 2.8 million out of the budget and in order to make that kind of cut be kind of set so it's not a reserve it's being it's being utilize as a revenue for the 2425 budget in order to fund the expenses that requ to oper seeing this you may be referring to the fund bounds um which if you look at the unassigned fund balance at the bottom that's 1.6 um generally that's about one little over 1.3 it's 2% of our expenses in the prior year um it's a little bit higher I'm actually using um the not over the 1.3 plus a little bit of that 1.3 also the fund this budget that's how we got to the two little under 2.8 um because normally you only end last year with 281,000 281 200 sorry 2,000 um and that 2 2.8 number is the difference of the4 7% of fund balance that we're utilizing about 2% and then also the supp stabilization a the extra EXT so you generated the Surplus last year $2.1 million you've got state aid of a million dollars on top of it correct so if you generated 2.1 million last year with this budget same mentality you'll generate 2.1 million again and add to it we have to generate that or we have to cut so would have that far your revenue and if we didn't end the year with enough to fund 2.8 next year would have say we ended this year with right after un revenues that W that W budged analysis of we million so we would be. million off cre this budg so the next largee which I T typic the typical year you go back history wise you've always had a fund balance of $2 million I can't remember it ever being smaller it was much higher many times and usually what funds that extra money is over budgeting on health care costs and typically what happens is there's a 15% increase coming we got to panic we got to add for the health care cost then when it gets close to the budget oh it's going to be 7% and then when the budget passed hey great news there was no no per so what happens is then you have a fund balance because you've over budgeted on Healthcare that could happen again this year it's not going to go up it would Beal however they're saying 10% right now right our right so we say bud that's 10% Bud five right and then it comes in 15 right in July and AUST but historically my point is for the last 15 years it's always gone down from the budget amount and it's always produced a tremendous amount of Revenue so my next question is you're cutting Transportation $877,000 where did this come how how were you able to do that bud I what year after re the initial budget request yes but uh we predicted that future and based off of% CPI potential that we may have additional routes and that we may have addition students I to transport right so so it's combination so you don't feel you're you're risky by saying you're going to reduce it that much you're a high risk uh I don't think that it's high risk uh but again everything is a projection and the first side of that is if I went forward with that amount of money in there I wouldn't I I didn't feel that that was large percentage increase see I hope you can do it in order to have that in the budget we would have to boost that okay and then I see I see another thing in here it's uh it says resolved that the Vern Township Board of Education hereby establishes a maximum Professional Service expenditures amount of $1.3 million I I guess this is in reference to the problems we've had with special students or it special needs and stuff it it limits to 1.3 million the amount of money that's going to be spent on items such as the big political discussion here with students being sent to special schools special services all that was actually now the reason that also right so you're putting basically a cap on it yeah I last year okay no growth that's a positive that's good so so my last comment is last year I said the same thing I said if we really want to help the local taxpayers and I'm in the union and I'm getting these raises and I said you know one way to to solve it or to help is to give up part of this year's raise figure out what that would be and then the local taxpayers would be left with a 2% raise instead of a 2.74 and uh I made that offer I didn't hear anything back from the vtea president but I did hear back from superintendent Rogers and he gave up his raise last year and that was a that was that's leadership that was something that was positive he gave it up and I think the amount of money that we need can easily be gotten from that because we do have a uh a union that's in the top 35% of the salaries of the state and Mr Higgins that was going into probably one of the roughest years in Burton history as far as Cuts yeah where I think it was approximately uh 40 cuts to staff last year when that decision was made right but it was good leadership and I still remember it so right right it wouldn't it wouldn't be your decision it's just something that the uh the VTA may decide to surprise everybody and say hey we're going to pitch in so Mr Higgins while you're here I just want to say thank you as a representative of the Town Council for the uh the way the tax valuation has increased tremendously thank you very much so now let's get to that the the slide you put up there accurate in a lot of ways but not accurate in others if you take a home that was valued at $300,000 and the house across the street was sold at $450 and maybe it's been valued at 300 your valuation is going up so your valuation may go up to 375 that doesn't mean your taxes are going to go up 25% so uh sorry should have made it clear uh so it's assessed value so it only be assessed not market right but the but they they count the market value is one of the drivers to come up with the assess value because they research out what's being sold in the area and they then they look at the home so my personal house was now reassessed for $73,000 more this year my taxes went up $146 so the assess everybody says Hey the assessment 73,000 it's really the mill rate the percentage rate went down when you multiply the tax rate by the new value so it if if your house is going up $100,000 in value you're not going to get a $2,000 tax race right that's that's the result and that's a part A lot of people don't understand it's monkey essenti M thank you thank you Mr Higgins anybody else would like to say anything there'll be other opportunities you don't have to say you know you're not going to be held I'd like to make a comment yeah uh yes please I work for major corporations and my husband had fantastic health insurance and they took it all the way for me when I married my husband they took and every corporation I worked at if my husband had coverage I didn't get any I did not get a stien back for it and those were big money corporations and we're not a big money Corporation I'm having a problem that I don't have anything against teachers but what about the parents that have to pay these taxes and would love to stay in town give a very good point I believe it's a contractual issue well that that's a good thing but still the waer um I never got a waiver from any of these corporations that and I was a valued employee I was always assistant to Major controllers and controllers myself I didn't get it cuz my husband had it yeah sorry I will say that is that's really to encourage it's signicantly cheaper for the district somewhere say take the wa Asos to I can understand the waiver but four grand that's a lot of money contract that's where it's decided you're paying out 4,000 at the minimum you're getting 11 you're saving 11,000 to the board of a so it's to get when your the board is reaping a lot of savings doing all let's I'm sorry I believe your Mr Clarkin is lining up ready to go as we we have to have it we're streaming live so we want people to speak at the microphone so Sean Clarken is that correct Sean par I live up in Barry laks uh so you calculate that the vendors who do work for the school their services are going to go up by 9% is that what I heard you say earlier uh Transportation I understood was across the board so for transportation that's [Music] just each and essentially that comes out Transportation sh% if a vendor Transportation vendor would like to r with us we would not need to go back out they could up 5% however if they were to see the 5.8% and say hey my cost went up L more than that that's not going to work for me then they they have the option not wish Cas we would have to go back out the bid the Assumption at that point would be that whoever will come in there limited vendors not there lied CPI Ral um and then if one or two routes don't the CPI and then also okay I apologize the last time I spoke because I don't know a lot of the people here I don't know who you are your name is I'm the school business administrator you're the school business administ and how long have you been the business administrator uh to 2017 okay uh I'm G to try to keep my questions just to the budget okay because I have a lot of questions we had a meeting last week or the week before and there was a lot of things discussed that the taxpayers don't know and that the building administrator could be able to answer but we're not here to discuss those I hope to be discussing them in the future uh so the Vernon give give me just one second sure sure as the business administrator when you're budgeting out the payroll you have access to what the payroll is yes so we have contrer it's always export that and so and and you had access to the payroll for almost every year that you're the business administrator yes you to go back okay excuse me one second I think there's a Mis how long have you been here oh how long have I been here yes yes yes yes October started in October start October okay that's unfortunate okay all right uhal so did did were you able to look at previous years's pay payrolls when figuring out this payroll uh so you could do that but there wouldn't be a lot of information gain from that other than when you're look at things like substitutes right some of those less defined items roster is essentially a list every staff number currently employed by the districts right contracts to see what Contra in would be if there contract in place um and then if there's not contract in place you have to project out based on what other organizations and other districts have negotiate what that and then project that out for the next year and then you would see if that no needed obviously so October November December January February we're in March so you're here less than a year is it safe to assume you mentioned a few minutes ago uh moving funds making a transfer you had mentioned that during your presentation uh you're now meeting the required documentation for making transfers from an accounting point of view and to state regulations whenever you transfer money or you pay something you are making sure that the documentation meets every standard there is that needs to be met is that correct okay need County approval for those transf send documentation and essentially why they were made right so I think that happened maybe right before I started and that um in terms of beyond that um not a lot best practi best practi absolutely absolutely when you're doing transfers and friend but also U not whooping a transfer movement funds between say like 50 right um so that would be something that we're not doing right and then also making sure that it's track so a lot of times based off the system is set up but we see you some do is go say well I have money in this line it's um say I have $300,000 in this line but then I have 15 other lines that are in red right and you're taking this line all lines but how certain accounts mixed in the middle it's hard to track right so if it is lar transfer the transfers should follow order right so, from here to here use the right starting in October being here for six months did you have an opportunity to go back and look at the way things were transferred prior to your arrival uh so theit um the way the trans being then or so the way I tracks right there should be essentially a description if transfer should get description why there transfer because the one thing I'll say is that there's transfers every month and every school district because Pro year out so if we were to sit there and say well we want a separate document for every transfer that's $500 we need to hire someone that's all do right so if we have a higher value and that makes more sense then you put the description in the actual transfer report that way do it okay so the problems that not necessar beneficial $100 the problems that the forensic audit pointed out you don't see those happening at all moving into the future so so as was happening right I was already working October and I'm very exact that's exact you right right people that retire that you don't know about right there many those sorts of changes you can't predict um but you should have every single Curr District what the projected B contract what you think and then we should make sure also have important things like we should have some money budgeted for horizontal right or how how how many which is when I start backi years they this much this year this year this year this year this is where we are this year you know and trying to look at some those factors obviously there are certain years especially couple years there's a lot how much how much money did the school district save during covid uh have to go back and look at that so essentially and I think was actually brought up by the annual the right uh you mentioned that the fund balance yeah basically time right so what we'll see the reason put that that up there back one yeah so be a gra Surplus we're at 8.8 money right now so obviously we're going down B right and and this is this number is a little see some of that money already spent and the year bu right so out of that 8.8 million you got $3.1 million that spent in this year's budget you got so we're taking money that we saved from covid and we're spending that money now to cover our budget uh yes go back one more to the state so you'll notice a correlation uh so as the cuts increase more than the next page you'll see more money was utilized um to cover those cuts right uh with that bound and that would have been the savings or the remaining balance as a surplus that we had that year right a budget but that that basically was putting that was basically covering cuts that the district had the state two in place that was a way to continue to operate but the fact of that is with Co a lot of districts so our fun balance go up we have Cuts here right so now we're seeing our fund balance draw down okay we're talking about spending a lot of money all right uh it would be really great if the Board of Ed could have you come back for another meeting to discuss uh ways you are planning to save money and cut costs because we can't keep swallowing every increase that comes uh my families was members of the Union my mother is currently 96 years old and the Union that my father belonged to he died like 30 years ago is still taking very very good care of my mother uh that was the local power company all right those days are gone that doesn't happen anymore my health coverage isn't going to take care of me when I'm 96 without me shelling out a lot of money and so the world has changed and when the contract expires with the union we need to negotiate and the people that we have negotiate for us have to have proven track records of success in negotiations uh there's one thing that we learned in Vernon is that if you don't have the right people negotiating they're gonna fleece you and they're going to take every dime you got and we've had real estate businesses that and and in town businesses that made commitments and we did infrastructure and then those commitments weren't maintained and now the town is stuck with this infrastructure that it can't support but it's paying for all right we can't do that all right we really have to pull things together uh you're only here from October you did a great presentation I was very impressed you were very clear all right I wish people who worked for the town were as clear with money issues as you are all right so if you're sharing Services you know that the town is helping you maybe you can go over there and help the town explain what they do to the citizens because they don't do a very good job all right all right so we spoke about the union moving funds we had a major problem and the audit that we did did not cover payroll and as a property taxpayer I'm furious about that that payroll was overlooked because records weren't available That's Not Gon to stand and all I'm simply saying to you is please whatever the regular practice was here in Vernon it's not gonna stand I'm not gonna let it stand I'm gonna be a big mouth I'm gonna cause trouble I want things run right and I want our children to get the best possible education and I'm not really concerned about paying people to take f or early retirement or anything like that okay I'm interested in educating kids I have three children they all went to kindergarten to 12th grade here in Vernon uh my the Vernon School District was extremely good to my children all right my children walked out of here with a worldclass education honestly uh my both two or two of my children if you're familiar with Key Club two of my children were the governors for the state of New Jersey and they came from Vernon okay and Vernon opened up a lot of doors one of my children was so deeply involved in Key Club that her schoolwork lacked off when I made a phone call to the school the school put all 12 of her teachers in the same room as me and we worked out all the problems we adjusted her schedule and my daughter went to college without any issues because of her distraction with Key Club so Vernon schools have been very good to me and my family I was working remotely down in the city I was never available I'm now retired or semi-retired it's my turn to contribute okay there's a lot of there's a lot of members of the public who want to contribute they want to volunteer they want to help rning get back on their feet and make it a desirable place to live without getting crushed by property taxes and if there's retired people with skills that we can apply whether it's in the town or in the Board of Ed we need to do that all right so all right I'm going to finish up because I I'm sure there's people online who want to speak just give me one quick second uh in addition to you coming back with the Board of Ed and helping us taxpayers understand things we also need the firm that does our annual audit to come back if you can arrange for the company that does our annual audit to come in at to a board of ed meeting and do a presentation I'm a little bit concerned because the annual audit is a sample they don't audit everything they only do a sample we don't need to go into that right now I'm confused about why you would only sample and who decided what the samples were so I'm a little confused about that but that I think that's for another night payroll is definitely an issue and give me one second all right I have a lot of forensic audit questions which don't apply here but I need a format to be able to talk about these questions that we have property taxpayers have questions we can't just close the book on the audit and say we're done at the end of the meeting that I attended last week or a week and a half ago there was an underlying statement at the end of that meeting that okay well we're we're done now we can pass the budget next week and we're moving on we're not moving on there's questions about payroll so we need to address those thank you very much I appreciate it if I may address that I I'll give you my email address and we can sit down and meet and I'll write down every question my name is Joe Sweeney Joe Sweeney I tried to email you earlier today I actually responded to you I just got I went to the Board of Ed and I looked up all your email addresses I responded to you and I clicked on it okay all right uh thank you so you did I actually emailed you directly not through the website because the links on the websites weren't working one of the addresses had a name that was misspelled that's why she didn't get okay no problem but I'll be happy to sit down and get all these questions at least attent to them let Set another meeting for another meeting and let go through these issues at every board meeting at the end of the meeting there's an open forum for a public to address any questions that they may have at every board I haven't been here since I think his name was Justin and uh there was another realtor that was on the board so I haven't been here all of these people are brand new faces so I I apologize for not being more familiar okay it's okay thank you thank you want the floor War yeah just got couple questions hello Warren sural live up in uh bur section Williamsville Estates uh I had two questions on present by the way congratulations on your birth of your child you you look good though um you mentioned three position three new positions in the budget could you elaborate on what they are physics position yeah most of the positions are where the teachers are on leave and we're covering with six perience and it's been difficult to do that so instead of covering with six period to hire a full-time position I think we're even lacking in in the foreign language field I put that I put that out to everyone at every board meeting you have a Spanish teacher you're looking for for a job please click on our employment website and put in your resume we we much appreciate that and physics as well right so two positions the SEC second question question is saying that the transportation costs have been decreased uh one would conclude that the uh after school buses are not included for next year we were looking to maintain this year within the budget and weren't able to add anything back so a lot of the cuts that we made in the uh in last year told I know how many Cuts we made um uh we were able to break to break even with with this year's budget to to maintain what we currently have yeah I'm yeah I I appreciate that because you can go back a number of years ago Mr Sweeny I think was on the board at the time where and it was actually it was a recommendation in the annual audit that there was uh probably about a fiveyear period where there were monies put in the budget to maintain and develop a surplus in a magnitude of over 500,000 a year and the order said you have to get off that habit of of doing that and so I I think uh we finally reached that point where we're not in that neighborhood of doing that yeah things that's well yeah I appreciate that because uh yeah I remember one time uh in doing interim work I was called in uh to a district that had $65,000 in their bank account and behold it was and it was a nightmare in the district and I finally uh put it on with the county superintendent uh a three-year plan to increase that that fund balance was well below the 2% but thank you uh and I want to just clarify something I one one of the one of the class sizes was going to be over 30 so I think a person was added in that grade to make sure we didn't have class sizes over 30 in elementary school is that a policy of the district um it's it's best practice for class size like some some other schools do have policy I don't want to create policy because when I set a limit there and I'm one person over it puts us in physical uh risk of uh I had that experience right one person over you had to split the class up and then you're one to 13 right right so last week at the forensic a you asked a question about the transfers I never asked Ray the question so you want to ask him now we talked about that yeah a little bit ear or essentially there shouldn't be a transfer that's account transfer description wouldn't be something where values is have explanation that time but we'll discuss what basically I think the uh yeah I think the compelling uh remarks were in that that there were somewhere in neighhood of 1500 item line items that were uh transferred to and they couldn't track it all that was outrageous to hear that and and Warr what a lot of the challenges were is the last Bas we had is the Bas that were um reconciling at the end of the month were not the ones that created the budget that they were Rec that's always a problem that's been a challenge last year well you have the distinction 2020 yes you have the distinction that this will be your budget you've inherited the current years's budget yeah yeah and I know I and I'm sure you share the same is the last thing you want to do is come up short if you do have an emergency and uh where that you didn't anticipate in the budget for and have a plan that's our concerns right now which is why they've been investigating some of the EF projects yeah that came and were able to address of those for Bas [Music] repairs yeah yeah that will let you in the building I said if you a fire alarm system went out they won't let you occupy it right even if it's mid year so yeah chall I do have a friend that got it question but going to leave it till later that's fine if you don't mind I think there might be some people I'm sorry sure is there anybody else in the audience who has anything I know um Angela can we see if there's anybody online with a hand rais have maryn incarn Mrs Inc carnado hi good evening how are you good good evening um Mr slam I just want to mention mention um that we cannot hear you on Zoom very well you sound like you're underwater a little bit so I just want to mention I don't know if there's something wrong with your mic so I and I know you're the person we want to talk [Music] to I I've returned to the mic sorry oh that is is much better much better sorry about that no that's okay that's that's great um I want to congratulate you first on your baby boy congratulations to you thank you and I ALS I also um really want commend you for uh an incredible presentation tonight I don't recall ever having a presentation that was this clear concise and easy to understand and I think you did a great job with your slides and your explanation and I I really appreciate it um so I I wanted to thank you for that apprciate uh no thank you so I just have um a few questions for you one there was an item you list unemploy employment for about 365,000 my understanding is so many of our employees are on on contracts um where does that where does that number come from and have we historically been spending 365,000 or thereabouts in recent years for unemployment uh so that was so this is that slide's kind of um budget adjacent right um so I know there were had been some questions on fund balance um so that 364,000 isn't what is budgeted uh for unemployment compensation that number will be rolled in with our safe coverage uh which off the top of my head I don't remember the exact numbers um but uh that is part of our fund balance each year uh so it's essentially part of money that we have put us that we H are required to put aside to fund unemployment compensation So when you say it's not part of the budget itself this is just basically an overview of fund balance since excess plus and our 2% are both being used uh as Revenue to fund the 2425 budget I thought it might be a good opportunity to to go over our fund balance uh since it's it's interconnected is that a state requirement that we have to set aside that amount of money for unemployment compensation um through the audit process uh I'd have to check because I was coming on the tail end of that uh I'm pretty I'm pretty certain that we're required to have money to fund that um I don't know the exact wall off the top of my head I think the teachers to and have unemployment deducted even though a 10- month contract and I can't collect them the sum That's the Law yeah yeah uh but I can get some clarification repeat that for the the people online uh so essentially uh what was stated was that it's the law that it's coming out of the uh employees paychecks uh even though they're unable to collect over the summer okay I understand so it's it's not a dist it's not really a district expense it's it's uh derived from the employees paychecks okay all right that's what I was unsure about thank you very much for that explanation okay yeah there are mat emper funds okay okay great thank you and so then um in some of the expenses that you talked about um that have gone up a lot uh one of them is you mentioned transportation is listed right on that slide mention transportation is going up 9% but then you also discussed that you just decreased it by over 800,000 so I'm confused so essentially the way that I start each budget process um is basically kind of the discussion portion of I think one of the beginning slides is going out to supervisors and administrators uh to gain information on information on what they believe they need for the next year right um so I took what was proposed uh I reviewed it myself I reviewed it uh with Transportation director I looked at past years in terms of what the spend has been uh I took into account the 5.81% CPI uh which is if if these contracts are renewed they would renew at that amount um and then I determined that I was able to cut some of the requests uh out essentially so it's still an increase over the transportation budget last year um in an ideal sit situation every single one of our contracts would renew at 5.81% um which would be great uh but if they decide not to renew the percentage increase will be higher um and then also uh we have to account for the fact that essentially when there's a homeless student uh depending on the situations of that uh based on mcken vento we have to provide transportation in some of those situations so that's you know another cost to the district depending on the situation of that individual student um and then also the fact that if say uh student were to go uh in an out of District placement or a student were to move in that's already in an out of District placement um then we would have to uh provide that Transportation as well okay okay I I understand thank you for that explanation um you also list District liability insurance going up 10% is is your expected increase is that due to many claims or is that basically has been going up 10% every year how do you base that 10% uh so I spoke with our insurance broker um and they said essentially their goal is 10% uh so for the smaller lines uh I budget a 10 and then for the property casualty which is the largest expense for insurance it's 133% um now when I spoke with them they recommended to be super safe to quote them to budget a higher amount um but based off of discussions with other business women administrators I felt that that amount uh was a little outlandish uh and it wasn't honestly something that would be affordable uh they were talking 15 20% to be super wow wow that's dramatic yeah and based off of what I've seen um we're part of safe so it's not just our experience uh it's the experience of every District in safe uh which provides us um more stability right um so so I I've seen closer to 10% on renewals and they said that their goal is 10% in an idea World they come in less but right right but that's the number you're using um okay and you've heard it could have even be more okay um okay so um I wanted to ask you we're talking about 2% cap would put us at 900 thou about 900,000 yeah and we we got a nice surprise of getting 1.1 million in in additional funding that we didn't expect I I don't think you probably expected that so that gives us round numbers two two million when you look at this um slide that you have up here you know health and employee benefits up 76 7.6 Transportation 9% and so forth that two million um that will not cover those projected increases uh no it will not so there's a combination of things here uh one is that last year they used used a little bit over $3.1 million a combination excess Surplus and fund balance um this year uh so to be frank before we got our state a numbers we were using a full 1% of our fund balance uh which would mean we only had 1% essentially mean that end of this year we would lose a pretty big portion of this anying balance which would put the next budget in danger right um and even with that we were probably about $800,000 short of balancing the budget um because we uh we we just we weren't there yet so at that point we would have had to look at Steph and that's really the last resort um so when we got that state aid increase we were all very relieved because we were about to have to make some really tough decisions after a year where many tough decisions had already been made um and there weren't a lot of really good Solutions at that point right um so uh we were very happily surprised um but essentially when you account for that difference in excess Surplus um and you look at some of these increases so basically that that 7.6% is basically about $831,000 that increase right uh for health and other employee benefits uh transportation that 9% is about $653,000 uh liability insurance is about $150,000 um energy is about $125,000 and then salaries is about one just under 1 $1.5 million right so you're looking at all these increases in costs you're looking at starting the year with a lower amount of revenue from your prior year budget um and then you're limited at $910,000 increase in your revenues which I was I was able to offset it a little bit based off of the interest that we're anticipating getting um but part of that is I anticipate the fed's going to cut rates multiple times in 2024 I'm just not sure when that first Cut's going to happen Okay okay I appreciate that I was trying to follow these bullets to see how they would add up in dollars um with these increases it's it's it's over it's definitely over two million okay 831k 653k and these are all approximate numbers 150k 125k and just under 1.5 million are the increases just for this area of the budget this does not include increases for General kind of goods and services for classrooms um and then on top of that you have that that decrease in starting Revenue so basically the I guess the easier way to look at is you have that decrease in starting Revenue 2% basically covers that but it doesn't cover all the increases that happen in the budget from one year to the next and as you see these these items up here a lot of these items are items that we don't have a lot of control over right right right I I appreciate your thorough explanation very much it's it's it's very easy to understand and it's very concise and I I do appreciate your I do appreciate it thank you very much Mr slam thank you Jessie palini Mrs paladini good evening good evening um just a couple of things I want to reiterate that others said first I want to say congratulations on the birth of your child um Mr and may God richly bless him um so I also want to say you did an excellent job on the presentation and I also don't remember so good a job in a prior years so I commend you for that also we could not hear you at all when you were sitting at the table so thank you for coming forward to the microphone um hopefully in future meetings though when you won't have that presentation microphone set up you can um do something about your microphone at the table Yeah was sorry about that because I was I was wandering as I was presenting I kind tend to Pace a little bit but I'll keep that in mind and make sure that I stay within the radius uh moving forward of the microphone all right no problem um so I see that uh salaries are increasing 3.9% and transportation 9% um I also know that you got an extra million in state aid is it possible that you will now use some of that money to reinstate the activity bus you said something about it before but unfortunately I couldn't quite hear you uh so right now um this budget doesn't include the activity bus uh essentially before we received that increase in state aid um we were about 800 approximately $800,000 short of balancing the budget um we had really made a lot of the moves that you could potentially make both on the revenue expenditure side without cutting additional staff um and that included us using a full 1% of our 2% fund balance which is approximately so approximately $670,000 is about what 1% of our fund balances um so you figure we were if you had 800,000 600,000 we were about $1.5 million dollars off without using that 1% um so essentially it's a situation where even with that state aid we're still using um a portion of our 2% I believe it's approximately 0 47% uh it's around $300,000 of our fund balance um it's it's really not a good practice to continue to do that uh because that fund balance is really meant for uh an unforeseen you know emergency during the year um you know a roof or you know something stops working that you need to work um especially with where we are with our cap Reserve uh we don't have a lot of flexibility there um and again I think I mentioned earlier that's really the first step uh on the path to better Financial stability which is not using that 2% so you don't have to keep refilling that 2% then lessening uh Reliance on excess Surplus uh so then you can start putting money in those cap reserves um because there there are going to be major projects that need to happen um I would say in the next you know five to seven years so was that a yes or a no in putting the activity buses back uh no it's it's not included in the budget um right unfortunately it's one of those things where there were a lot of decisions where we had to say you know we'd really like to you know get something into the budget uh but the alternative would have been to lose a staff member um with the number of Staff me Members we've already lost uh in Prior years uh we really Tred to focus on maintaining the staff members that we have uh and and making and also making sure we're in compliance okay on what day does the new budget begin is it the first day of school around September or is it after the last day of this current school year uh July 1 July 1 okay we run from July 1 to June 30th that's our financial year and then the town runs from January 1 to December the regular calendar year corre so that's why our impact on the tax levy is basically split between two of their um tax years correct so do you suppose that since you were surprised with the $1 million extra in state aid you might reinstate 6,000 for the summer sat pep [Music] program uh I believe that was we had to explored you know whether there would be some kind of possibility based off of maybe a change in the cost uh but I I'd have to defer on that because it's not necessarily right under you know the it's not under business portion of the office SP curricular item all right I wonder if anybody not to belabor that particular issue but I wonder if anybody even investigated the fact that you can open that course to other schools and get more revenue and get more students coming in to where it might be a zero you know cost for the district but I'll I'll let that one go for now um the last last time we ran that in the summer and I I was a proponent of trying to run it in in the summer and make it self-funded last time we ran that in the summer there were six students from Vernon and two two students from Sussex Ville Tech um and and it in talking with you the last time it was a little bit of my disappointment that we weren't able to get the students in the class to fund it because originally years ago when it was started was it was to be self-funded to provide that that opportunity for students okay was that Mr Roger speaking or Mr Krauss it was Mr Roger speaking Mr thank you Mr Rogers okay so here's the um million dooll question that nobody seems to have asked what will the tax what is the current tax rate and what will be the new tax rate with the new budget um I don't have the calculated tax rate uh I have the ratables from the town um I don't recall it off the top of my head I generally present a uh range of tax impacts depending on what values would be let me go to the yes but nothing nothing you have do you mean the increase in the district's tax levy no no you gave us increase in tax levy I have never done a budget when I worked as a reporter I have never done a school budget article and I've never done a town budget article without giving the tax rate everything you presented tonight basically could mean nothing until we know what that tax rate is so let's start what the current current tax rate is yeah so I wouldn't have that information until the budget information is entered into the system software and then that puts that into the e4f form which then goes to the county it gets approved and that's where they would say what the tax rate is well I don't understand why you wouldn't know that now but okay so then what is the current tax rate you you need to know that you should know that right so if you look at the top of this slide um I have my estimated tax rates and that's for the town sorry the uh District portion see County or tax rates there um so what I did was I took the ratables I took what our tax levy is uh and I calculated that okay when you come back and you do the budget for adoption Mr Slam please bring us the current tax rate for this tax year and the proposed tax rate because that is the only way we will know whether or not our taxes go up now you mentioned something about um well no let me not go there you said something about a minus 6.75 3% decrease and again you can't tell us that without knowing the tax rate so if you look on the screen right there I the calend of your tax rates that I calculated and then I use that to multiply by the assessed value of the home and that's how I get the projected tax portion of the school's tax levy which is the blue column so so that that's the tax rate that I'm projecting based off of the ratables I received from the tax assessor that's not a tax rate that's the amount of taxes depending on how much your home is valued at that's the amount of taxes that's not a tax rate a tax rate will be like 3.72% per $100 of assessed valuation that's the number I'm looking for it's very that would I'll reach out to the tax assessor uh haven't provided that or seen that provided um in other districts but I can reach out to the tax sessor and see if they can give me an estimate uh because obviously I don't have access to their portion uh of the tax levy which I believe is around maybe 44 to 40% of the tax levy I think we're around 50 to 5 50 to 56% of the tax levy um so the only thing I'm discussing on this slide is the schools uh you know impact and the effect that the school would have on the overall Town tax levy because I don't have the town's information and Mrs paladini I live in town as well you're talking about tax rate if your assessment went up and the rate went down your taxes could still go up y so I think a lot of yeah okay it all depends on the tax rate that's why tax rate up there yeah that that's so I'm a little I'm a little confused uh so so I'm see counter your tax rate is that not what you're looking for Miss paladini um well let me take a look I'm looking at you I'm not looking at that okay which one are you talking about will they they can't hear you though so if you look at the second row from the top it says counter your tax rates so that's what I'm multiplying by the Yeah but that can't be the tax rate there's no way it's for the schools that's for the schools yeah there no way there's no way it's 0.1 there's no way it's 0. Z1 35771 I'll I'll move on from there if it was if it would be if you multiply it to a percentage you would move the decimal two points let let's say let's say um oh you're gonna move it over two points so so that's that's a decimal number so if you if you said you were looking for a percentage right then that would be the school portion of the the tax rate which would be 1.35% right so whatever the town would be could then potentially add up to whatever the district's tax rate would be yeah no the district the town's overall tax rate no no the tax rate is something different I'm not sure of the town's tax rate at this second but let's say it's 3.72 per $100 of assessed value so that 3.72 for the school tax rate is probably about 65% of that number because we know that about 65% of our it's about 56% I believe in all right 56 okay but again I'll just you know forget about that for now but when you come back for the adoption we need to know that tax rate we need current and we need to know the proposed so I I'd have to talk to the town for that because again I'm I'm not resp I don't know if the town's increasing their portion of the taxes um the only thing that I can I can speak to is the school district's impact I can see if I can get that information but I'm pretty sure that the information that you're looking for at least for the school district is that second row which if you make it a percentage and then you try to extrapolate out what 56% might be you might be close to you know a little bit under 3% for the town but I don't know what the town's doing so because I don't have anything really to do with their budget but I if you're saying we were to move that decimal point over then the rate would be 1.35 and percent percent yeah because right now it's not a percent okay no I I understand it's just not possible that it would be that but we'll forget that for now um okay so um employees did you say that they pay about 35% toward their benefit uh no I believe there was a a member from the public that commented that at the top salaries of chapter 78 the top percentage was 35% for tier four um right yeah that's chapter 78 uh so that would only be anyone that was in District before July of I believe 2020 um because at this point you're not able to elect a chapter 78 plan uh that was when chapter 44 was put into place so the only options when you go uh you you get employment at a school district after that date would be the New Jersey Educators plan or the Garden State plan and essentially what that did was chapter 78 uh the way that they figured out your contribution there was a uh you can look it up online if you'd like to uh chapter 78 chart shows you tier four and they based off their salary they paid a certain percentage and that percentage was of the premium right this is important the percentage of the medical premium Now with chapter 44 the big difference is there's a different chart percentages are lower it's still based off salary but you're not paying a percentage of Premium you're paying a percentage of your salary which results in much lower contributions so that was chapter 44 uh which was a law put in place and I believe it was July of 2020 yeah I didn't realize that that had changed okay thank you um what were the cuts in technology uh so one of the things that we need uh due to end of life systems that are going going to no longer be supported uh or basically we need to replace the phones in the district um so about $80,000 of that was to replace the phones uh but you probably missed earlier because I was wandering around a little bit from the mic uh but essentially um we had applied for stabilization Aid we had applied for over $4 million uh we got a letter we're very excited we opened it up uh and it said I think it was either 44 or $46,000 um so yeah I guess something's better than nothing but it wasn't we're hoping for uh so based off of the constraints in next year's budget uh and the need uh for these phones uh basically the vendor said we're not going to support these anymore and that's a that's a very big problem uh because we need phones um so I was able to take that out of next year's budget uh by using that stabilization Aid towards those phones um and then we're able to uh negotiate for a better price right so that's part of it um the other part was there was uh Bend keyboards that were requested um that was probably about 90 or so thousand do um and when it comes to Ben Q boards or staff uh we choose staff um so those were cut out of the budget as well um and then there were a few uh software programs that were either uh not being utilized widely or being funded through Grant funds uh so that accounts for another portion of of of that difference okay I was just curious um a couple of really quick things um I keep hearing I keep hearing um everything is it's a contractual issue we know that it's a contractual issue but you make the contract you give the raises you give the benefits so please when when is your next negotiation period anyway so so I would I just want to add to that because I believe BTA just finished was it last year it was before I started so um so what I just want to add those we we don't make the contract we negotiate the contract right and if we during negotiations don't come to an agreement then you go to mediation and then a mediator decides right so negotiations are you know a delicate in any situation uh a delicate uh process right um because you want to you essentially the same thing with making a budget you have to balance um the needs of the uh the students you want to retain good staff um but also you want to balance that with the fact that you want to uh also make sure you're you're keeping the tax paay in mind right so if we were to go in very hard on negotiations and say no to everything uh then we're going to go to impass pretty quickly and then the mediator is going to tell us what we're going to do so okay we don't necessarily get I guess point I'm trying to make is we don't decide right uh we we have to negotiate and see what we can come to an agreement on uh and you want to there are sides of both sides looking out the taxpayer but also ensuring that you have a a quality staff um to provide a quality education to the students I understand that well because I was a teacher for many years and I was involved in many negotiations and I'll tell you right now we did not always get a lot of what we wanted so once again if it's the board that negotiates the contracts and I can tell you that wherever I taught my colleagues all wanted to come to Vernon because they all said that Vernon was the highest paying so I'm just asking you to be mindful of that during your next negotiations because it's a little bit of a copout to say well there's nothing we could do that's a contractual issue and the very last thing I want to say is that a few minutes ago Mr Sweeney offered to give somebody his email address to discuss the forensic audit how could you do that being a conflicted member Mr Sweeney I I could be inter I don't want to speak for you Mr Sweeny but I was interpreting as you questions and pass on the that's exactly what I said okay I'm sorry I said that I would meet with him the gentleman in the audience and take his questions and get the answers to the questions I don't think you could even do that as a conflicted member well thank you for your opinion but I disagree it's not my opinion but you might want to ask New Jersey school boards Association thank you I will okay and lastly again I just want to reiterate thank you for a good job Mr slam thank you you're welcome anybody else online uh I do not see any more hand um Sean or waren did you guys have another question just on the forensic audit that's all oh okay sure you had another question about the the audit the the had a question I had a question about the uh the reference to only four Veron students coming for a summer program and two students from outside the district I was curious what year that was last summer two two summers ago I believe it was six Veron students and two sus PO for the SAT course okay I originally instituted that course and I was so the the main push at the time with other administrations was to try to fund that with the amount of money the kids are paying and we we had a very low turnning and my question is that timing forgive me I don't have it straight in my head was that before Co during Co or after Co after after after Co and when all the students were very accustomed to working from home okay and that transition to coming back to school after being home for what a year and a half I don't think that's a fair measurement that you're using looking at the summer after covid to not reinstitute a program that may have been very successful previously I believe that must have because I I'm brought it to the the brought it to the district I believe it was only the the second or third year and what we're working on right now is our enrollment in the courses throughout the school year is down and this it's it's I don't think it's quite covering I'm not not exact but not covering quite half the cost when it was originally instituted it was to provide to cover the cost of uh of providing instruction for do other school districts that we're competing with provide that are we doing something above and beyond what other school dist districts provide I'm not going to speak at a term I'd have to gather that information well I think that's part of the I think that's part of the equation to figuring out whether or not it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do the last thing we want is for burning schools to be inferior to other schools in northern New Jersey well and that's why I tried to like self- fund it because I I believe uh currently it's it's a, to ,000,000 to $2,000 a student to go out and take those courses on their own outside of the district okay all right so we're charging uh tuition for preschool in waln Ridge right can we charge for these extra classes over the summer because I know that when I was a parent I was paying for some courses for my children to get ready for college that something we we can yes the problem we had there was such a limited uh limited enrollment in the classes and based on the number of students that attended you you would almost need it would almost be back to the point where the kids are playing over $1,000 doll a piece in order to to break even with that sement all right well why don't we do this just from a business point of view it's a smart business decision to float what's called a test balloon and see how many responses you get for people that would be interested at this stage in time after Co after the trauma of covid and coming back to school just float a test balloon and see how many people bite and how many people are interested because maybe it will cover the cost I've talked to that with the with the people running it and maybe I'll do that next week that would be great thank you very much all right so any more questions on the budget okay we're going to close the meeting to the public and we're gonna move on to item J good job Mr slam thank you very much you did a nice job I just have a question on the uh resolution I guess we'll wait till the we get to that John had to leave you left at 912 John CS so did some of the bull h on there Ray was awake the entire time I know about that okay let's move on to uh item J which is uh J your your section Ray it's okay uh recommendations uh V resolved that the tenative budget be approved for the 2425 school year using the 2425 State 8 figures and the SEC uh and the secretary to the Board of Education be authorized to submit the executive County Superintendent for approval in accordance with njsa 18a uh col's SE 7 F-5 and 18a call 7 f-6 that's all you're going to read I AG read may I have that in the form of a motion please figured you heard enough of me already so M Mr cantino is a motion second I missed the smaga you roll C please oh I'm sorry questions or comments I actually I have one but go ahead Char yeah I have one comment uh question uh maximum travel expenditure I see it goes up from U 60,000 to 65,000 for this year could you just explain um like why we spending more money uh so basically I took a look at what was spent so far this year which was a little bit over um $30,000 has been spent to date when I formed the resolution um and then also there I believe was I don't maybe 5,35 yep exactly so figure 5,000 uh encumbered which means we intend to spend it um so I didn't want to end up in a situation where uh we went slightly over say 60,000 if you were to multiply out that that out for a full year extrapolate that out um and then have to you know cut a cut a PD um so that that that was that was the uh the process behind coming to that number essentially looking at what we spent so far what's been encumbered and then extrapolating that out and then honestly lowering it a little bit um because if you shol out by two you're talking $70,000 so I dropped it down the 65 last year was 60 um so was fairly reasonable increase just because the increase cost uh of everything but we only have three more months basically right March April uh April May and June um yep I looked at it uh in February okay so I can look to see what the other I could look see updated amount is um but it doesn't mean we're definitely spend I know this is tentative yeah well it also it also doesn't mean we're definitely spending that amount of money right setting our own limit essentially and just because the limit set at 65 doesn't mean that we would have to 65 right if we lower it to 60 we can start putting that somewhere else right and where those funds coming from oh yeah sorry that's another important aspect of this uh so they're all actually coming out majority are coming out of title two Grant funds um I believe the general fund portion of that was uh thank you Mr rers very important point that I did not include uh it was about two to three thousand of the general fund all right thank you Charles I'm sorry I took the floor go ahead my follow would anybody else like to answer ask a question I have a question uh about that $4,000 that's given to the teachers is that given to them once or annually annually it's uh annually uh because if they were to have a health care plan so for example uh they could there's open enrollment every year um so they could elect to come back to the health care plan uh and just to provide the you know a little bit of context like a family plan um off the top my head it's probably around $38,000 less contributions uh if it's chapter 44 the contributions aren't that high so majority of that's going to be District cost um so it's really the $4,000 uh at least from my point of view is really an investment trying to save costs I'd rather pay you know 4,000 than you know 25 to 30,000 a year well I had the benefit of my husband being in the union it was totally covered but when I did have coverage I had to pay half so things are oh yeah so if someone was on say a single plan the single plan is a lot is it's a lot cheaper than if they're on a family plan so their contributions would go up based on that well even with the family plan you know uh I had to pay half yeah that that's I mean that's important to know but that's something that we need to address when it negotiations open up so uh yeah well yeah I mean in terms of chapter 78 and chapter 44 we uh you know we can't change the law but if there are certain things um like I believe there is a I mentioned earlier uh and it's in the contract there's a you know a refund that something that could be back control but again negotiations and that would be something that we have to come to an agreement with right and absolutely and correct me if I'm wrong on Mr slam if people come in now they have to come in in the state plans uh yes anyone after July I think it was July of 2020 uh it should be July 2020 and then covid and the state being slow on things and I think that open rollment actually happened in January of 2021 uh but anyone basically that 2020 Point had to go into the New Jersey Educators plan or the guarany and and if they're both in that state plan um they don't get the 4,000 uh that's correct are you okay yeah anybody else roll call vote please SL Miss Brock yes Mr seaca yes Miss colani yes Mr cantino yes Mr Krauss had to leave yep uh Miss pellet yes Dr Ross yes Mr Sweeney yes Mr zerman yes motion carries good job right thank you what's that no on that I don't remember that of the policy we never um we didn't change the policy yet I don't think we did not change it yet keeping my camera off so as not to scare people because I have infection and it's really not attractive okay I'm I'm okay with that are you okay with that yes right uh board report summary item K so five Finance you know Mr slam pretty much covered all that anything else I might have building and grounds we talked about the two staircases which had mentioned in the in the ramp at the high school and doing the windows at Cedar Mountain so Glen sorry Glenn met my B Glen Med okay thank you great miss pet curriculum uh we did not meet this month but we are in the process of setting a meeting date so I will have a report next time thank you Miss Brock uh yes the liaison committee met in February on the 12th I believe with Mr Rogers and Mr slam and with mayor Rossy um we discussed early stages um some options where the town can save some money by sharing Services um we're kind of excited about there seems to be a lot of opportunity to make a difference and an impact there um the mayor is enthusiastic we're enthusiastic everything's in early stages just yet but we think that we might be able to identify some opportunities to save some money and really make a difference here very good thank you negotiations Mr Zimmerman you're up again um so I'm in the process of contacting with um the representative for the vtaa you know to start negotiations we just got the new lawyer you know bra had his baby so we'll be moving forward complication yes we will be moving forward that shortly thank you uh partnership uh we are scheduled to meet again on April 30th special services Mrs Ms Kiani um I still haven't gotten the numbers of the people involved with special services and uh I I would like to meet with them I haven't done anything yet okay the the people on the special services committee are on the left side of the binder yeah I oh okay special services okay okay plus I would like to speak to the people that are in part of that special services me Mr Fay and uh yes okay you can email him he sent out an email requesting a meeting yeah okay and he he's looking for some dates okay it'll probably be after Easter okay and student life um I don't have anything to report very good okay next item is review of the public meeting agenda we all have the public meeting agenda agenda proposed anybody have any questions about it that nobody has any questions I recommend that you take a look at it and let Russ or Ray know you have any questions um I don't we got electronically oh okay yeah um I have a question for you about this on the agenda it's mentions in the informational matters something about the vths girls wrestling and the bths boys basketball what's that all about well I don't want to spoil all the announcements I have for the success are that's why you it yes and there's some academic success as well all right so I don't want to be a spoiler and just mention one group and not another okay yes uh by the way another great Sports season and academic season and uh music season Force as well I don't see that you mentioned the play at all listen if you look at the superintendent report attached to that agenda you'll see all those things listed listed for the next meeting the play was phenomenal the students were just so talented right and I heard it was a great result with the senior I think it was one of the largest attended uh senior events as well how come we didn't get invited not the whole board but just r i you probably did but you forgot speaks for yourself all right thank you uh nobody have any questions please take a look at the agenda all right Mr Rogers you're up um reports discussion items number one harassment intimidation and bullying random drug testing and school safety reports attachment ws1 the enrollment report which was attachment WS2 and again I'm doing a preview and instead of a first reading a lot of these policies were changes as part of Strauss sm's policy alert um so that you have ample time to look them over uh this what Strauss SME uh recommended to change in in policies so you have all these policies regulations uh preview and we'll have two other meetings well the next meeting will be the first reading and then the meeting after that will be the second so you have plenty of time I haven't read them all read them all but some that I did read had just changed pronouns well feel free to ask me questions in between meetings as well to discuss the policies as well is this the per I'm sorry next meeting first I'm including I'm including a preview okay great um my recommendations it is recommended that a board approve the following faculty staff appointments assignment changes leaves resignations retirements uh and transfers as listed may have that in form of a motion please so moved moved by Mr cantino second second by Mr zerman roll call please oh comments or question questions sorry see none uh roll call please Mr slam Mr Saga yes Miss Kiani yes Mr cantino yes Miss pellet yes Dr Ross yes Mr Sweeney yes Mr Zimmerman yes Miss Brock yes motion carries thank you okay um going to item n we're going to open the meeting back up to the public for any item that they would like to discuss um meeting is now open to the public but the uh last meeting we at the open Forum on the forensic audit I asked the qu one of the questions I asked I didn't get an answer to was that uh former president uh directed The forensic Auditors to investigate the sale of the Walnut Bridge Elementary School and I'm wondering the only one sitting here now that hasn't been addressed that question is you Mr Sweeny do you have any idea while why the former president asked for that uh investigation to be done when it had no bearing on the goals and objectives of the foric order I I agree with you I don't know why that she asked for that so she's the only one that knows I think the auditor did he said said that he was directed by the president and it had no bearing on the objectives of the forensic order yeah we didn't authorize that see he it was directed by Kelly to do it um it's not clear I'm sorry to speak out but like it's I don't think it's clear who directed him to do it I I did ask and he he stated that it was brought to his attention by um she's not she not he Mrs Mitchell but he did not state that she directed him he did so in the meeting all right um I think you're right Mr cellus I think she did he did say that I will get get back to you I'll find out if you could I appreciate it and I'll talk to you about it I did reach out to M Mitchell and she hasn't returned a call so I don't know okay thank you thank you and I'll write that down thank you uh Mr Clarkin Mr Clarkin yes Barry Lakes the subject that was just brought up where the forensic audit firm is taking directions that changes the scope of work this is very very troubling to me and the reason why it's so troubling is because part of what they were investigating was transfers that weren't properly documented they were they were investigating because procedures were not followed all right and yet the forensic firm themselves enabled Vernon Board of Ed or the school to give them verbal instructions without a paperwork Trail they were awarded a service right it was documented in writing and then there were conversations between board members and the forensic firm that Chang that scope of work that aren't properly documented now not for nothing but three years isn't a very long time I personally would have done a forensic audit going back five or 10 years just to see what the pattern was leading up to where the trouble occurred and the fact that board members were involved with the school board while the During the period that was being investigated to have those board board members giving the audit firm verbal instructions brings the whole thing under the shadow of Suspicion I'm sorry to say and I'm a new guy here but I'm calling it the way I see it okay and I usually call it right you can't just close the books on that forensic audit I had a conversation today with somebody I said well how much more do you want to spend on a forensic audit 5,000 more 10,000 more 25,000 more we need to get to the bottom because I'm not going to be back here listening to all this money that nobody knows exactly where it went the forensic company at last meeting very clearly stated that they had to use their imagination to try to draw lines between transfers or deposits that were done and they tried to figure out where the money went there was no documentation we're not going through that again okay also during the last meeting I said this and I'm saying it now in front of everybody okay Vernon property taxpayers cleaned house over at the administration building okay we've made a lot of very very very positive moves and the township is in a much better place than they were and things are getting better okay the issues are being resolved things are being looked into Vernon's a small bounce back we have a long way to go but the Board of Ed embarrasses me this is embarrassing to have to do a a forensic audit and then when questioned about payroll they're acting like payroll it doesn't matter if I was a if if I was a person that was out to do no good and I was involved one of the easiest places there's only a few places to do bad Deeds you can it's in business it's merchandise you can sell it you can take it home with you okay in a school board where can you do bad Deeds financially where how do you gain a school district the easiest place to gain a school district or to do favors for friends or to pay back a favor that somebody did for you is through payroll how do you not include the payroll I want to know and I said in the last meeting the gentleman who ran the show Mr McKay was a very nice guy my children him he was a great teacher okay if Mr McKay did something wrong I want to know this is the guy that I had a few beers with we laughed he was in charge of my children I want to know if Mr McKay did something wrong I want to go back in time I want to know what happened where it went wrong because the previous history of what went wrong can teach us what to look out for in in the future okay and any board member who was awake while attending board meetings didn't see this bad behavior happening shame on you and how do I know you're going to see it if it comes up again anybody who works for the school district any employees who were either not doing their job properly and that's why we had this this this audit problem that again only went back three years that's ridiculous you got to go back further but if there were employees who took it upon themselves not to follow procedures and not to document things properly we need to clean house okay it'll come back if if if I get away with stealing a car on a Friday night and three weeks go by and I need a car guess what I got away with it once I'm gonna do it again okay this is not acceptable okay we need to clean house whether it's on the board we need to clean house thank you very much for all your years of service but if you were involved you shouldn't be telling the audit company what to do you shouldn't be voting on whether or not the audit company should do this that or the other thing you have relationships with past employees who no longer work for the school district and you have relationships with past members of the Board of Ed that are no longer involved okay you can't make a cleancut business decision without those emotions and those relationships coming into play okay and you're never going to convince me that that you can you're not going to hurt your friend outright all right it's GNA come back and hurt you some other way this has to stop okay so the I'm very happy we have so many board members that I don't know who they are and I've never seen them here before it's great because you have no blemishes I trust you more than I trust somebody who's been there for 12 years okay the new people are more trustworthy than the ones that we they may not know what they're doing but because they don't know the system they don't know how to get over okay so I trust the new ones better I don't want existing long-term board members making decisions about a forensic audit because it just creates a shadow and we can't have any Shadows all right thank you very much I appreciate you listening to me 27 years okay I don't and I don't know if we go back to not consecutively of course right okay all right all I'm simply saying is this I I don't want any Shady business going on I don't want to have any questions when we're done with the forensic I think somebody told me that this that the the report has been available for six weeks well we could get it wrapped up in four more weeks if we get payroll if we're able to see payroll if if this information is supplied to us we can put our questions to rest but the citizens of Vernon have a a lot of questions that the current audit does not address okay it's a little bit embarrassing you know this is slam so I just I just want to comment on on a couple of things um so uh obviously I came in in October right so pretty new um to the district that is uh so my understanding just for the forensic audit part that I took part in it uh is that payroll was included in a few different spots right it was included as part of the um analysis of how stabilization Aid was used um and it was also included as part of the analysis on how Grant funds were used um and in those two areas it was found that the you mentioned sampling earlier um the sampling they did everything was appropriately expended right last week's meeting they said that it wasn't that they requested payroll records and they were never supplied the audit company said that the that the they requested records and they weren't supplied and I I on taret it would it had to do with the uh this uh the sabatical that would offer and they were they were given the the they were given the analysis that was given in that session but they thought that they asked for things that they thought there was a more in-depth analysis provided and there wasn't so I think he misspoke a little bit saying when uh things weren't Prov provided he asked for documents that we didn't have yeah so because payroll companies put them in the archives and payroll companies can't Supply them is when I walked away that was that was a long ago uh long ago eight years long ago at the at I think there's been I think 120 opras this year there's I think it was before this year it was it was an Oprah request about um about payroll and we had switch systems go ahead so uh right when I first started there was a backlog of opras um that were all due of those opros was for approximately 10 years of salary information for various right for various St right uh yes we did there was a delay uh in the district providing it that came before I started and I answered it uh after I started right uh so part of that was at that time um that was requested part of that portion of time was they're using system 3000 for payroll right that is a system we use for accounting we still use it for accounting um at that time they were using it for personnel and payroll and what happens is if you don't pay them the annual fee after you switch to another user then you have to was a nice way to block it that was a good that was mentioned in in the last meeting yeah it was definitely provided just they had to pay them open it back up honestly honestly this is gonna cut right to the Bone okay you got a payroll company who can't provide something uh so it's it's I just want to clarify it's so it's not a payroll company we do our payroll inhouse but we use that software to process it right so we're doing all the processing but it's you know it's just it's a tool to process the software right but once they once you move on to another provider um then unless you're paying them annually to upkeep that repository uh you have to basically have them reopen it and pay them a fee to reopen it right so instead of paying an annual fee of I think it was a few thousand dollars just to keep it open in case there's an OP request right they they paid once they got the Oprah request to open it and then they pulled the information okay so those records are available to us now they were provided we paid they were provided uh they open to share those with the forensic company and the citizens of Vernon the franic auditor didn't ask for those documents that was an OA request he said in the meeting he did and they were never delivered no no every every payroll document that they requested every document that they requested was provided to them there was one I'll be on the phone with him tomorrow so I'm there there was one document that they basically felt should have existed that didn't exist so there was an analysis of a sidebar um that was essentially for I believe was announced this for basically like one year um and they were expecting or anticipating there would be a multi-year analysis so I can't provide them something that wasn't done right so that's I believe what they what you're referring to based off of what their comments were without actually being at the meeting as the business administrator right that's your title a business administrator you have you have access to 10 years of who got paid how much annually and you can show who got paid an extra $30,000 over the year before if there's any discrepancies about the amount of money being paid to individuals including sidebar agreements every payroll that would occur would be available in that repository how they paid for it to be open for one basically one month which I believe was it was either I was 1,200 to $2,000 opening for one month right to answer those OP requests rather than paying what probably would have been closer to 10 to $15,000 to have it open for the whole year because again this is an un- budget expense to answer an oper request but if we needed to open it again we could um it just it wouldn't be in my opinion fiscally responsible spend 10 to 15 grand on having a system you're not using open any here right but we could have the window opened back up for another, or $1,500 we could open it up for a month and answer the taxpayers problems the taxpayers paid the $75,000 to do the audit it was so it was it was more than that it was more than that itget the taxpayers paid a large sum of money to do an audit and now when we're looking at what what we paid for we have a lot of questions so if it's only $1,500 more to get those questions answered I would say we need to pay the $1,500 better than $155,000 yeah so I just want to I just want to reiterate though um the years that were part of that Oprah request is separate from the forensic audit because those years that was 10 years back so that's why we had to reopen it the years that the forensic audit was for we did we did not have to reopen that software they were providing the documentation the only thing that they did not get was a document that was never created which was an analysis of the sidebar that would have looked at it financially for more than one year okay how many sidebar Agreements are still in play today so I'll stop my head I don't know but just in general process so what happens is you have a sidebar and then the next time you go to negotiations it gets added to the contract right um so I don't know I've only again only been here since October I think you got in yeah so the last time they went out those sidebars would have been part of made part of the contct at that point so you make a side agreement is in between negotiations so you make a sidebar agreement to keep somebody on the payroll and then the next time their agreement comes up it gets added in so there's no way of knowing is that fair uh I should be able to see okay I should be able to see that employee a got paid $130,000 in two in the year 2010 and then in 2011 they got paid in 2012 I can see a record of how much employee a made over a long course of time correct via Oprah you could see their salary information not necessarily I'm looking I'm I'm looking for wrongdoers who would have given somebody a 20 or $330,000 raise from one year to the next so that that wouldn't be possible because everyone would work on the guide which has steps and everything needs to be board approved in order for any anyone to get paid side agreements also so the board the board heard about every side agreement that was done for for instance we talked about six periods early early today and they're going to be replaced with full-time employees with a six period their salary could have possibly possibly added anywhere from10 to $20,000 added to their salary that year or stien in positions as well but those stiens and six periods will be bor my final issue is simply this sorry there everybody the forensic auditor spoke about notes from executive meetings that notes from your executive meetings that aren't open to the public were not shared with the auditor they were shared my understanding is that they didn't F run enough detail however there's you know confidential information there so you generally don't want to provide too much detail right to the auditor to the forensic auditor uh at the time that though that the notes were taken generally there wouldn't be a lot of confidential information that you'd want to provide in specific detail in those notes they felt there should have been more detail and I think some executive notes from a during the time period of friends it was a few years ago my goal is in a Witch Hunt I'm not interested in it I just want everything to be clear out in the open see how we got to that bad place where things were done so we're sure we can avoid it in the future that's all and any cooperation that the board can provide would definitely be helpful and I'd rather if it was the new people who made big decisions because this way there's no Shadow on why something was done or he's been around too long or anything like that all right thank you very much thank you anybody else in the in the public online so we have two people um Carolyn Inc carnado Mrs Inc carnado hi thank you for taking me again um uh Mr slam I'm sorry there was a statement made after I spoke that I just wanted to clarify regarding the budget if you don't mind um you had made a statement that's I thought I heard you say before the state a we were $800,000 short of balancing the budget so I'm confused if we got a surprise of 1.1 million why we're short still and need to raise taxes 2.74% if if we were short 800,000 got 1.1 million why we short uh so the second part of that statement is that was with using 1% of our fund balance um which should be around 600 approx let me see if I have it in front of me uh I don't have in front of me so approximately $670,000 um so if you add that to the $800,000 that gets your probably around 1.4 1.5 um and then we're we got that state a which is a nice surprise because we would have been a very bad situation if we did not get it um but in addition to that we're also using 47% of our 2% fund balance to close that Gap and again that 2% is really not meant to sustain your budgets moving forward it's really meant in case there's an emergency situation uh you don't immediately go into deficit okay thank you for explaining that because I was trying to do the math there okay okay so um I have something else I I want to talk about here uh we are talking about the historic um payroll figures that we could not access I placed an Oprah request months ago Mr slam before you started with your predecessor who told me I believe I asked for five or six years of historic earnings I was told that everything was on paper uh that it would take many hours uh for the lowest paid employee in the district to access who makes uh over $40 an hour um and I was quoted a fee of over $200 to uh determine uh what the five years earnings were for two different employees who had rapid escalations in earnings we were told um what we had heard and we were trying to confirm that um unfortunately um after weeks of back and forth emails where Mr Rogers was copied on these emails and I was told it would cost over $200 to access this in uh this information further o requests showed that Mr Rogers in his inbox the following day after my initial request had those earnings they may not have been as clear and in a report form um in a payroll Report Form but those earnings were there in Mr Rogers in box so um any indication that there is no historic earnings and we couldn't get historic payroll earnings um concerns me and um I didn't pay the over $200 and I'm glad I didn't because that information was readily available so I want to set the record straight and um hoping that anyone else that requests historic earnings for public employees will not be charged uh a fee uh and be told that these earnings are not accessible and that's all I wanted to say about that Mrs incado I just wanted to comment on that um I was given that email as it was a partial data on what was requested I was not the custodian of records and I was trying to be as aggressive as possible uh on my end to get access to those uh computer files and I and I know it took an extremely long time and I apologize for that but uh I wanted to let you know uh the custodian of Records Was was required to provide those detailed analysis and event it eventually it was given but it did take much longer than I anticipated Mr Rogers it took a lot longer it took many weeks and you had that you had that information next morning and if it wasn't in the form of a payroll record you it could have been provided in the form you I was I was was not it did not it did not imp transparent to anyone like I said I was I was advised by the custodian of Records um that she would provide the Oprah requests and that it wasn't complete so that was from from that end it is not a good look for the district to charge taxpayer over $200 when you had that information the next morning so for those listening to this meeting that are being told that there is no access to Historic earnings I think they need to understand that you had the earnings the next morning in your email and I was misled and someone tried to get over $200 from me and that is not a good look so I just wanted to set the record straight thank you Mrs Inc carado and listen I expect a much better uh experience in with the current custodian of Records Mrs incado Mr Rogers you run the district and it's easy to pass blame around but it starts with you and if someone's not doing their job I expect you to make sure it's done yes we have a different custodian records this year let's um anybody else Angel yes we have uh Martin peringer Mr peringer good evening good evening can you guys hear me yes we can okay good uh this is just for information matters team 9713 the FC team from Warick which is made up 90% out of Vernon students no worries no Veron Township School District students they are all from uh Sussex Tech but we on residents mostly from Highland Lakes finished the season we were a second best rookie team we got we did not go past Regional um championships so we didn't F didn't qualify for Nationals but overall as I say second best rookie team not too bad is a small team and it's just to let you know it is possible to create a team that is mostly uh done with Vernon students even not including any from Vernon Township School District with no single taxpayer dollar and all run by volunteers okay so thank you thank you and for if it's worth anything for you is we raised about $112,000 for the team from sponsors if that makes any any uh if this is of any value for you the students who are graduating have applied for and there's no decision obviously yet because they're seniors for scholarships multiple scholarships each the SL smallest one is for $5,000 the biggest one for $40,000 a year for four years by the colleges they have applied to and are waiting back to get accepted etc etc you can look up what scholarships are available at first inspires.org scholarships or you can just Google first robotic scholarships and you will see them listed by colleges and organization thank you for listening thank you right we have Jesse paladini Mrs paladini um just for clarification is this the first public session or is this the final one the first oh okay I get it wa wait final final Final oh the final I'm sorry this is the final it's about uh public participation in anything you want to talk about Mrs got it thank you um a question um do you consider that the meeting that was held on the forensic audit last week do you consider that to have been the closure on the matter uh I do not does any other board member have any opinion about that okay I'm very happy to hear that um I had put in an Oprah request speaking of Oprah couple of um after actually the last meeting at the meeting on the forensic audit the Auditors themselves stated that they provided you with a copy of the audit we know you all had it they were on the table in front of you um the auditor did the presentation you discussed it that was a public document brought forth at a public meeting therefore that document is subject to Oprah so the Auditors themselves said that after they gave you that report the attorney said that she wanted to look at it and she wanted to make some corrections additions changes deletions whatever and they then gave you a second copy so I put in an oah request for both copies I still want both copies and I will again be reiterating to the um individuals now that Mr slam is back it went to Nancy Schultz I guess and she never responded to me after I reiterated that I wanted both copies so I will be um sending that to Mr slam again tomorrow um just a couple of things I want to say um let me see oh there was a comment made that uh let me just hold on take a look at my notes there was a comment made that raises wouldn't be possible because they're all contractual the salaries are contractual well that part is correct but raises could be possible if there were any promotions or movement of staff so that wasn't 100% accurate and the last comment that I want to make is um what does a paid administrative leave mean what's an example of a paid administrative leave you have it you have an item on your agenda tonight for a paid administrative leave what is that what does that mean many time they're for personal reasons that we cannot discuss in an open board meeting okay so it could be I'm not I wasn't asking for the individual so it could be for a personal reason and that individual is on leave but is getting paid through the leave is that correct correct okay and this is an indefinite leave correct that's what it says on the agenda says until further notice is it something like that yeah until further notice until I'm sorry until further notice all right that's my only question thank you anybody else nope that's everybody okay I'm going to close the meeting to the public and then open the meeting open board members number four item o any board member like to raise an issue or talk about something I do I'm sorry Jen who who is this this is Jen pellet um I just wanted to clarify something I said earlier I shouldn't have said that um while the okay so while the auditor did reference being asked to look into um the real estate sale by the former uh board president when we later I later and a few board members too I believe spoke with her um she said that she mentioned the situation as an example of something and that they took it as as a they decided to look into it because once it's raised it's an issue I don't know which side of that story is true but you know there was a different side and since she's not here to respond I felt it would be um appropriate to mention that that is her uh view of what happened all right thank you Jen yep anybody else Charles yeah I got a couple sure okay um so first first I just want to kind of recommendation or things maybe we should all think about doing um as a board um we mentioned a couple weeks ago about social media and stuff and and really I'm still not on Board of Social Media but what I did realize last week last week when we had the audit um communication was not the Forum The Forum The Forum we had the Forum um communication wasn't the best right there were a lot of people said they didn't hear about it a lot of people I don't I'm not sure how I I know I knew about it because I was on the board um so I don't know maybe we get an next account so we can just promote out when we're doing meetings just so people somebody can they subscribe to it and get a tweet that it's been done what kind of account tw Twitter I'm sorry yeah yeah they Chang heard yeah yeah so uh I was just something I'm not a social media person so maybe some you know we can look at something like that just something we can s out the meet meetings because I even thought that we had the Ping system through the district but that only is good for the te for parents it doesn't affect anybody else in in the distri in the in the community um the other thing is I I was thinking maybe we can change the format a little bit of our meetings um one thing I noticed is uh that seems to be lacking is um I don't think actually not lacking because we we are doing it we are following up but um people who come to the meetings every week I don't think know the followup so if we put like a little change a little do old business in the beginning and go over the questions that we we were asked and it could be something simple where what the answer was or if it was something that um Russ said call me directly because it's a personal matter he can just said it was taken care of just something quick so everyone in the public knows we address things and if it was something that was valuable to the whole public to hear they can hear it so maybe the first part we just do that um it's it's actually sounds very simple but we have to change the whole policy yeah okay yeah we will I mean that's okay we can all discuss it sure okay At a next work session I'll follow up all right and then and then the last thing is uh I wanted to I I mean the audit to me like I said last week um it means a lot to me you know as far as the audit um you know there is no like we didn't find a whole bunch of money that we can fund the whole district for the next 10 years with but there there are a couple recommendations and I want to take something away from it and I thought we can maybe there's more like the um the finance committee can maybe look at it or something but there are a couple there's four recommendations on there and I think we should take a little look at them and add it to our goals I know we were going to redo goals you mentioned um you like um just because like how we approach things you know if somebody if the administration comes to us with with a small project you know okay we we don't need a ton of doation but we should put limitations there and say you know it's over 50 Grand we need we need you to supply this before you come come with it you know um something like the sabatical really like we had that one piece of paper we thought it was good but we now know like maybe we should had a little bit more so if we thought about that and have that um in place like a policy or or something we could just stud the administration you when you have something requesting like this you can provide this kind of information and the other thing on the audit was uh recommendation was for Russ and Ray which I know you guys have said you address this already but I don't know if it's too late if you can amend it to your Russ you can amend it to your your goals or put on next year's goals and the only reason why I'm saying this is the stuff that they talked about with the audit um as far as accounting and all that it's not so much that hey we know it's done but if we have it as a goal it gets reviewed and we can say we did it we did it we did it and we to do it for a couple times knowing that it's been done I know you mentioned it the good part is we've had a lot of these internal discussions and I think it would be great at a financial uh at a committee meeting having the further discussions to let let you in on what we discussed to to towards those recommendations so that you know what we're doing uh to address them uh also when you when you see your financials uh the uh from from uh month to month you see that is put in a much organized fashion now and when I go talk to the business office it's a lot easier for me to follow as well U so we could follow up and give you the details on what we're doing to improve those processes yeah I totally agree and Ray on your list of things to do you know you're GNA give us a a seminar a symposium 101 15 minutes on all the forms I don't know if I can keep it 10 or 15 minutes yeah you it was a little long no I'm kidding but whatever we all the education that we you can give us will take yeah so my plan is um you know I know you've had some complications in your family a little busy but uh so the the I did one in January uh obviously the the bud bud will will go up under the budget section of the website we've been rol retooling the business office website to try to provide as much information as possible but there is a section there labeled presentations that's those are more like the generic presentation not the budget presentation that's budget presentation will be up there too right but uh these are presentations like what I did where are we now status another one could be maybe just a quick overview on on person law because purching is highly regulated uh we're highly regulated on everything to be honest uh which is no problem because that the regulations are put there for a reason right someone did something at one point Charles I'm sorry I didn't mean to step on your you yeah um the other thing we could be reading we mentioned before reading a board secretary's report report things like that and we we had talked about this our our number one step was is the budget and then after the budget even though we've talked about like just we'd like to communicate to to everyone else what we're doing as a district to improve and address some of those uh recommendations yeah I think it's good for the public to hear you know they we did the audit they want to see something out of it and make sure we're not making the same mistakes over and over again before we got that 1.1 million from from in state aid we were uh we were very concerned yes and Ray you really did a wonderful job of in the presentation I've seen a lot of budget presentations it really was very well explaned good job everyone stayed awake I have a question um is there a secretary taking notes of what we're saying or is this all recorded it's all recorded and who listens to this to who to the the recording to go over it again to hear what was said we all do well I I think I'll be honest with you elae a lot of times we take different Snippets to look back and and and and go back and review what was said to make sure that questions are answered sometimes we may have miss something or or someone from the public from home I'm telling you how many people on Zoom are watching the meeting right when the forensic audit was uh was conducted The Forum there were 53 people online watching I had 58 I saw you know it varies as people you know but a lot a lot of us here at this table go back and view the tape to to look at certain things to make sure that they're addressed as well and and there's also a transcription posted um as well so if you if you want to download that yeah you can actually search it um for whatever textt you're looking for so we've neglected Gia our student representative yes thank you for coming we didn't even ask if you had you sure you chose to come to the budet meeting it was It's really informative really just want to mention one thing with executive session minutes for instance if you're discussing in the executive session your strategy IES for negotiations with teachers or any other employee contracts when that contract is concluded and signed off on those portion of those minutes are public I know that agreed they they are yeah so they're not always the know the stuff could be blacklined out but that that portion of the is a public contract is ratified yeah thank you you're out of order Mr cell anybody have anything else board am I gonna just about to adjourn I'm waiting for the public session to say out of the positive news so I'll keep everyone in suspense for the next board meeting but play was phenomenal yes it was all right um I keep wagon here the play was great and I won the 5050 really thank you for giving that back to School District give it back but I want I felt good for about two minutes all right motion to adjourn zman seconded by Mr cantino all in favor I I I motion is adjourned G I'm sorry the meeting is adjourned thank you this is