Tuesday's Internet Edition, September 07, 2010.
There’s not enough money to adequately fund operations
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Kleberg County says it will come up with a balanced budget, and for the second year in a row, initiate cutbacks to make sure revenues and expenditures balance.
The Kingsville Independent School District has already said it faces a deficit budget, and now trustees must ponder how deep they’re willing to jump into a pool of red ink and dip into savings to come up with adequate funding.
KISD is considering a budget of $31,384,495 for the 2007-2008 school year that includes a pay raise for teachers.
KISD anticipates a $1.3 million deficit or more this year.
KISD salaries and benefits will be $22.7 million.
With a fund balance of $5.9 million going into the budget process this year, KISD staff predict that will decrease to $4.3 million when the new budget is adopted.
KISD, with 687 employees, is one of the largest local employers.
The school district’s money problems stem from declining student enrollment and a surplus of staff, according to TEA guidelines.
KISD has an enrollment of about 4200 students today as compared to 5,136 students 10 years ago.
Kleberg County is considering a $12 million budget with about 240 employees.
Both the county and school district spend between 75 to 80 percent of their budgets on employee salaries.
High fuel costs and other expensive operational costs have impacted county government and the school district.
KISD receives its major revenue from local property taxes, state revenue allocations and to a lesser extend from federal sources.
Kleberg County receives most of its revenue from property tax, a portion of the sales tax, fees and fines, and sometimes from federal grants.
KISD will have a public hearing on the proposed 2007-2008 budget at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 28, that will also include a proposed tax rate. The regular meeting will follow at 7 p.m. at the same place in the KISD board room in the Administration building located at 207 N. Third St. Larry E. Garza, KISD board president, said previously that he welcomes community input both vocally and in written form. KISD budgets are approved this month.
Kleberg County Commissioners Court will have budget workshop at 10 a.m. Wednesday August 29 at the Courthouse Annex, Law Enforcement Center, 1500 East King. Kleberg County Judge Pete De La Garza said budget workshops are open to the public where they can make a statement and “say their piece.” Their regular meeting will be held at 1:30 p.m. Monday Aug. 27 where a budget item concerning the Kleberg County Sheriff’s Department and jail will be discussed again. The county budget is approved in late September with their fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
DeLa Garza claims their major money problems stem from the county often allocating more money to the Sheriff’s Department. The county judge accuses the Sheriff’s Department for not managing their budget. The Sheriff’s Department has about a $3 million budget. De La Garza said their department continues with mismanagement with too many administrators and cell phones.
Sheriff Ed Mata appeared before the Commissioners’ Court Monday morning asking for a budget amendment of $181,000 for projected expenses for his department. De La Garza emphasized the county had given the Sheriff’s Department whatever they needed in money and manpower to operate the jail many times. The county will allocate $130,000 for the construction of temporary jail housing in the near future.
The county judge stated the commissioner’s court had given Mata an additional $600,000 since he had been in office the last three years. However, Mata explained the money problems stemmed from the influx of prisoners and having to pay expenses to house them in other counties. Precinct 4 County Commissioner Romeo Lomas agreed with Mata stating the county had not budgeted enough money for the sheriff’s additional expenditures necessary for the overcrowded jail situation. Lomas said people involved with jailing people needed to do their paperwork to release some of them. He advocated personal recognizance bonds for local inmates. Lomas wanted to allocate money to Mata but was not supported by the other commissioners and the judge.
The heated discussion was so loud at times that observers could not figure out what was being said. Finally after a lengthy discussion, Precinct 1 County Commissioner David Rosse made a motion to pay $33,400 to Brooks County to pay the July bill for housing inmates. Precinct 2 County Commissioner Norma Alvarez seconded the motion.
Rosse then asked the commissioners to authorize the county auditor to look into the costs of salaries and group insurance and stated “ at that point then they could make line items in deputies salaries just to make $181,000.” The commissioners approved to authorize the county auditor to see what money can be found in the salaries and benefits left in their budget. De La Garza said there were many vacancies in the Sheriff’s Department.
The $33,400 bill will be paid from the Southwest Border Initiative Fund that comes from federal funding. The Southwest Initiative Fund is money set aside by the federal government to counties that have checkpoints such as Falfurrias, Hebbronville, and Laredo, according to De La Garza. The money is used to assist inmate costs for those arrested at the checkpoint and jailed locally.
The county streamlined their budget last year by cutting 13 people from their staff and reducing their benefits on retirement and health insurance.
“This has helped tremendously,” De La Garza said.
“We continue to tweak the budget and so far are not in a deficit, but if we start giving money in budget amendments, we will be going down that highway,” De La Garza said.
While the KISD board meetings are not as animated as county meetings, money problems often trigger reaction from the trustees and the audience especially teachers who are advocating for pay raises. At the Tuesday night meeting some teachers loudly voiced a need for pay raises. Even though KISD will have a deficit, Garza, board president, said teachers deserved pay raises at a recent board meeting. The amount of pay increases has not been determined.
KISD’s major money problems are student enrollment losses each year. The state allocates $5,000 per average daily attendance for a student. The KISD financial crunch has escalated with high facility operational costs and surplus of staff.
The declining student enrollment is not a new issue with the school district. Within the last 10 years KISD has lost from 60 to 100 students each year. This year the district will lose about 125 students. Many students are transferring to area schools with open enrollment that also need students.
School Superintendent Dr. Rudy Lopez said Friday that KISD will provide pay raises for some of the teachers because they had to stay competitive with other districts.
Lopez said he was aware of the financial problems and they were looking at measures to save money. There were 31 employee vacancies about two weeks ago. Karen Wiesman, Assistant Superintendent for Support Services, stated earlier that even if these positions were not filled, the deficit would still be there.
Lopez said Friday they were scrutinizing these positions carefully to see which ones could be eliminated. The superintendent said they were streamlining the budget as much as possible. Last year the district saved money through attrition and did not replace over 30 employees.
KISD had three roofing projects for next year but would postpone two of them for next year and this would save the district thousands of dollars, according to Lopez.
One main funding problem is that if the local property tax increases the legislation allocates fewer monies.
Lopez explained they are looking at the consolidation of schools in the near future to deal with the issue of declining enrollment.
Robert McCreight and other community leaders have publicly criticized Lopez and Garza’for not making hard fiscal decisions and also showing apathy toward taxpayers’ ideas for saving money. McCreight and other community leaders suggested closing down three facilities, KEYS, Lamar and Harvey would save money in operational costs. McCreight, a former school board candidate, also said KISD was not making any cutbacks in staff and facilities and were wondering how they were saving money.
Garza disagreed with McCreight stating the school board is addressing the fiscal problems, but it takes time to do so. The school board president said they are making inroads to solve the money problems.
Garza said KISD has to invest in both people and facilities and these things have to be balanced.
“The goal of the board is to invest in educational benefits and this will pay in dividends in the community in the future,” Garza said previously. Other board members are Corando C. Garza, Jilma Viduarri, Annabelle Garza, Juan Garza, Romeo C. Reyes, and Joe R. Trevino.
Garza also defends KISD as a good school district for students.
“KISD had produced successful graduates and self-sufficient people,” Garza said previously.
Although two completely different entities, Kleberg County and KISD have one thing in common: money problems. Some tough decisions have to be made in their budgets because their constituents and taxpayers are holding them accountable.