6-1 in favor of .54 mill increase UPDATED

I didn't go to the meeting, but I did hear the news that Scott Goldman was the only school board director to vote against the budget. Ed Kubit and Bill Cooper were absent. (Note: Ed Kubit missed the 10.5% increase in 2010.)

School Board Approves Final Budget for 2014-15 School Year May 19, 2014  At the May 19, 2014 School Board meeting the Board approved a Final Budget for the 2014-2015 School Year in the amount of $87,924,509 setting the millage rate at 23.15 mills, a .54 mill increase over the 2013-2014 millage rate with the use of $750,000 of the Fund Balance to balance revenues with expenditures.

Bill Matthews was chewed out again. Larry Lebowitz questioned Bill's numbers. After all, Jan Klein won that damn award.

The Mt. Lebanon School District received the Association of School Business Officials International’s Certificate of Excellence in Financial Reporting award for having met or exceeded the program’s high standards for financial reporting and accountability for the 2013 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. This is the 29th year the District has been honored with this prestigious award.

A little background on this. We pay for this award. As long as all the parts of the report are submitted, you win the award. Table of contents? Check. Meet the criteria and you win! So double counting is permitted.

Of course, Elaine Cappucci said that they were so fiscally responsible that they eliminated the Assistant Superintendent for the Primary Schools. Then it was announced that Dr. Marybeth Irvin, the new principal at Lincoln who had coffee with Dr. Steinhauer according to Timmy's Traveling Twitter Tweets on the first day of school, was appointed as the new Assistant Superintendent for the Primary Schools.

Oh, big news! "The Grievance" was settled. It only cost the District $60,000! They have agreed to hire permanent subs at the appropriate step.

The podcast to tonight's meeting is available here.

Update May 20, 2014 9:07 AM From Bill Matthews:

Last night I provided the Board with the above chart, demonstrating that in eight of the last nine years the budget has been under budget on the expenditure side by almost $1,000,000 per year, on average. And once again, the Board “baked in” these surpluses from days of yore, raising taxes to cover these ghost expenses, ultimately resulting in an unnecessary and unwarranted tax increase.

Three things (at least) are at play that makes it difficult to work with the Board on budget issues:


1) Their obsequiousness to the Administration’s financial information.
2) Their obsequiousness to the Administration’s financial information.
3) Their obsequiousness to the Administration’s financial information.


While the budget information available to the public is quite limited, albeit often “award” winning, it is far from error free. Please see these pages from the recent annual budget books, where over three years the revenue and expenditure information is repeated, repeated and repeated, as if to make a point.