Lake County School Board – Update on CFAC Committee to identify alternative revenue sources for Capital Projects

Tavares, FL - Monday, June 11, 2012

by Vance Jochim   -  FiscalRangers.com

Lake County School Board – Update on CFAC Committee to identify alternative revenue sources for Capital Projects

The School Board is not meeting today (Monday) , either for a workshop or regular meeting.

Lake County CFAC Meeting (Capital Facilities Advisory Committee)

This Lake County committee (see info here)  started a new series of meetings to examine details on Lake County SCHOOL capital funding to determine what revenue methods could be used as alternatives to the currently waived School Impact Fees.   So far, the schools have “lost” $6-million in revenues for capital projects because the County Board waived their impact fee revenue sources.   The Committee is only looking at capital funding (to build schools, buy buses, etc), and not salaries, operational costs, etc.  Only certain revenue sources can be used for capital projects due to ALL School Districts still using the archaic “fund accounting method” which even a tribe of gypsy hackers could not understand without hours of information.    More modern governments now use “program budgeting” where reports and budgets are tracked by programs or projects, not by different fund source data.

HERE is the page on the Lake County website for the CFAC committee.

If you go to the above page and click the link for Committee Agendas & Minutes, then click the "meeting documents" for the June 7 meeting, you can download and look at the Powerpoint presentation.

The second meeting in the series was last week on June 7th at the School Board offices, and they spent two hours seeing

a presentation by School District CFO Carol MacLeod.  The presentation covered 62 Powerpoint slides and didn’t show the total dollars of capital funding until slide 50.    The presentation mixed capital and general revenue funding sources in the presentation, and some of the committee members were confused and had to ask to not be given acronyms.  Nowhere was the total Schools budget presented, then drilled down logically into capital revenue and spending categories.   For instance, it gives better perspective if you are told the total School Budget for the upcoming year is $450-million (a wild estimate), and it is broken into different funding sources, then spent in different categories, and capital spending was category 4 and here are the revenue source grand totals  and spending grand totals.   THEN break it down into different fund sources with details, and matching spending categories.    That is how business does it, but this was a confusing presentation to someone who hasn’t been through this before. (I have).

I have attended these Impact / CFAC committee meetings for about 3 years, including an earlier series exploring funding alternatives for County Transportation projects like roads since those impact fees also were waived by the County Board.   

My observation is that more organized presentations are needed to drill down to specific factors, AND the School District needs a leader to specify what they want to happen, rather than just throwing data out and hoping the County Board will approve something.   The County Board has already discussed this issue in prior meetings, and I don’t think they will fall into the trap of being bad guys by recommending certain taxes, etc because the School Board won’t take a stand.    

The CFAC Committee is comprised mostly of community leaders who work outside government, and they are giving up their time for these meetings.   They appeared frustrated because they want to schedule more meetings to meet a December deadline for the County Board, but staff has all sorts of vacations, meetings, etc and seems not to have the same sense of urgency when a schedule of future meetings was presented. 

One example of wimpy stands by the School Board is the lack of recommendations included with the recent consulting study they received on new impact fee rates.   The School Board just forwarded their consultan’t report to the County Board without any recommended action plan, which the County Board didn’t really like.   The School Board didn’t even make a recommendation on discounting the recommended impact fee rates to 60% like in the past.

Another example is continuation of “courtesy busing”.  That is busing for students living less than two miles from a school.  In the past, the schools started providing free bus service for those students, but the State won’t reimburse them for that, so it comes out of school Board general funds (I think – can’t keep track of all the funds), and that is money that could be used for music classes or computers or other priorities. 

Or, there is the capital funds being spent on rebuilding two schools.  It is more than $20-million and it could instead be used to pay down bond debt and reduce interest payments.  Then the funds used for paying the bond interest could be used for other priorities while the school rebuilding waited 2-3 years until the economy and tax revenues improve.   (That idea from Tod Howard and Jim Miller, but the other three Board members won’t consider it.)

Opinion

So, unless the School Board leadership stands up to clearly specify their recommended actions, the presentations are more logical, and staff (of both the County & School Board) ALL exhibits a sense of urgency (some do), I don’t think their credibility for obtaining support for alternative funding will be achieved, and they won’t get impact fees renewed, and won’t get support for alternative funding methods.   Too bad. 

I am on the side of the schools to get consistent funding, and they really have lost a lot of funding due to State funding cuts.  But they need more organized and strong LEADERS to FIGHT to develop credibility and support to obtain support for alternative capital project funding.  Maybe mandatory classes in leadership skills, presentations and Toastmasters might help.  Perhaps focusing so much on "collaborative" communication in the school administration has eliminated any strong personalities to fight for the school funding?

PS:  What is really scary, I did a google IMAGE search on "school impact fees" and not far down in the scrolling page were pictures of School Board members Tod Howard & Jim Miller, plus Lauren Ritchie (Orlando Sentinel columnist).   Maybe we should have Lauren Ritchie lead the fight for school funding?  (:-))    My favorite would be B. Grassel from the teacher's union... if she would fight for alternative capital funding like she does for the teacher wages, the County would definitely pay attention...