MAHANOY CITY — The Mahanoy Area School District Business Administrator John J. Hurst provided an update on the current budget, including revenue and expenses, at Thursday’s school board meeting.
Hurst told the board that the information he gathered will be part of the monthly meeting of the Schuylkill County Business Managers. Invited to attend the meeting are state Reps. Neal P. Goodman, D-123; Jerry Knowles, R-124, and Mike Tobash, R-125, and state Sen. David G. Argall, R-29.
“As far as the state budget is concerned, we are nowhere closer to a resolution of 2015-2016 than we were six months ago,” Hurst told the school board. “I’m meeting with our local legislators tomorrow as part of our Schuylkill County Business Managers meeting. The handout that I gave you will be shared with the legislators to show what the impact that state budget impasse has.”
The two-page report has bar graphs on the front showing that 67.5 percent, or $11,700,395, in budgeted revenues come from the state, while 29.4 percent, $5,107,652, is from local sources, and 3.1 percent, $537,285, comes from the federal government.
“Almost 68 percent of our funding comes from the state,” Hurst said. “So when the state does not increase its funding, that has a much harder effect on us than it does for someone who only gets 20 percent of their budget from the state.”
The other side of the report showed the current budget summary.
“As you know, and I’m probably sounding like a broken record, the governor proposed $400 million in basic education subsidies,” he said. “The budget that was vetoed and passed in December had only $100 million in basic ed money in there. When we built our budget, we built it on the governor’s budget. Based on the budget passed in December, we lost about $300,000 in funding because of that. So now we’re down $300,000.”
Hurst also spoke of the Planning and Construction Workbook process and the delays in getting reimbursements for approved construction projects in school districts. According to the Pennsylvania School Boards Association website, Pennsylvania provides partial reimbursement to school districts for new construction and renovation projects. Districts that undertake school construction projects and seek reimbursement must receive approval from the state Department of Education through a process referred to as PlanCon.
Hurst said that PlanCon funds had been in the state budget, but has since been pulled from that budget to operate separately and be funded through bonds. He explained that no authorizing legislation has been passed to float the bonds for funding.
“So as it stands right now, and if it doesn’t get resolved, we will lose another $440,000 out of our budget this year,” Hurst said.
Hurst said the 2015-16 budget had estimated revenues budgeted at $17,345,322, with expenditures at $17,867,757, leaving a budget deficit of $522,935. Even with a $100,000 savings due to debt service refinancing, the budget deficit will end at $1,162,435, which is deficit increase of $640,000.
“What I want to stress at the meeting tomorrow is that we are significantly affected by the budget impasse and we need to have more state funding,” Hurst said.