HUSD Budget to Drop $1.1 Million From June Forecast

Due largely to state budget cuts and a drop in property tax revenues, the is projected to run $1.1 million lower for 2010-2011 than was forecasted in June, according to budget report delivered by HUSD Director of Business Services Steve Barekman at Wednesday night's school board meeting.

Barekman said the district anticipates an unrestricted general fund deficit of $733,0875 -- about a $1.1 million drop-off from June's budget, wihch forecasted a $369,339 surplus. A decrease in property tax revenues accounts for about $400,000 of the $1.1 million drop, Barekman said.

Barekman described Wednesday's budget presentation as a "worst case scenario," based on projections of continually low property tax revenues and deep cuts in state funding.

"All of us think property taxes will come in higher than we have it budgeted, but we'll keep the numbers low for the time being," Barekman told the school board Wednesday.

Barekman added that the district is likely to keep its total budget in positive figures

"I'm very comfortable recommending a qualified certification for the district,

Superintendent Jeff Harding praised Barekman's budget as an appropriately cautious forecast at a time of wildly fluctuating state funding projections and larger economic uncertainty.

Harding pointed out that the budget had changed significantly from even the day before, after Gov. Jerry Brown ordered "trigger cuts" that will slash state spending on student transportation in 2012.

"This is a bizarre world we're living in, where there's no way to predict what happens from one day to the next," Harding said. "We're hoping with Steve's conservative budgeting process that we'll again see a net balance at the end of the year."

According to Barekman, HUSD will lose about $107,000 in transportation revenue as a result of the trigger cuts.

"Some districts this won't affect at all because they don't have transportation, some it will decimate," Barekman said. "We're kind of in the middle."

On another topic Wednesday, the HUSD board considered the renewal of a joint use recreation contract with the city.

Harding recommended to the school board Wednesday that it renew HUSD's contract with the City of Healdsburg to share recreation fields, even while acknowledging that the new contract would shift the more of the cost burden onto the district.

"The old agreement really benefitted the district because it was put in place when the city was flush with money - and that's not the case anymore," Harding said.

The joint use agreement, scheduled to lapse at the end of the current fiscal year, allows the city's parks and recreation department to use school fields and indoor athletic facilities during non-school hours and when they're not booked by school atheltic teams; in return, HUSD is given access to the city fields -- including, most notably, recreation park, which the district has used heavily for sporting events, as well as graduation ceremonies.

Under the new proposed agreement between district and city officials, the district will bear 71 percent of the cost for lanscaping, maintenance  and administrative costs of all fields that fall under the joint use agreement.

Previously, those costs were evenly divided between the city and the district, acccording to Harding.

"It will cost us more than it has in the past, and I think that's fair, because we've been getting more out of this than the city has," Harding said. "It is still cheaper than it would be if we were doing it ourselves."

Harding asked the school board to think about the new contract, adding that he'd bring the measure back for a vote at the board's January meeting.

But board member Vince Dougherty said he was concerned the contract was unfair to the district, adding that a lot of the upkeep of city field's has been done by the sports teams who use them, and not the city's landscaper.

"I think those (baseball) fields have been kept up by the Little League more than (the city)," he said.