{"id":28764,"date":"2016-04-13T11:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T15:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=28764"},"modified":"2016-04-13T10:50:20","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T14:50:20","slug":"ucf-moves-to-tighten-budgeting-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=28764","title":{"rendered":"UCF moves to tighten budgeting process"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prelim budget calls for 2.88% tax increase<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann<\/strong><\/span>, Editor, The Times<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Budget\"<\/a>EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 Conservatism is on the outs for the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, at least, when it comes to its budget process.<\/span><\/p>\n

District officials announced Monday night during the Board of Education\u2019s work session that the district would be moving away from its time-honored conservative budgeting process, to a more tightly governed approach. Instead of budgeting for potentials and maybes \u2014 i.e. guessing a desktop computer might fail and budgeting for it \u2014 the new budget process calls for spending only for those things specifically planned for purchase or expenditure. <\/span><\/p>\n

Should a computer \u2014 or heating system \u2014 fail unexpectedly, the new proposed budget will have a catchall reserve, which officials suggest is a smaller total amount than was previously stashed within budget lines, said the district\u2019s Director of Business and Operations, Robert Cocrhan.<\/span><\/p>\n

The new system is the result of input from board members during the recent board\/administration retreat. Board members sought to move away from the decades-old conservative approach that often led to budget surpluses at the end of the school budget year \u2014 and the administration shifted to a new budgeting process.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the public will gets its first detailed look at the budget during the May 2 public budget hearing, the initial proposed final budget looks a lot different from the preliminary budget adopted last December. While the old budget document called for a more than 5% tax increase, this new budget calls for a 2.88% weighted tax increase.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat essentially was a placeholder budget,\u201d Superintendent of Schools John Sanville said, noting that not only did the district not have an idea of state funding would be for the 2016-17 school year, it didn\u2019t know what the numbers for the 2015-16 school year would be \u2014 and any impact that might have \u2014 due to the ongoing state budget drama in Harrisburg. This budget is based on the funding proposals of Gov. Tom Wolf, whose funding plan shifts more money to needy districts, as opposed to the funding formula of legislative Republicans who wish to stick with the formula that gives more money to wealthy districts, such as Unionville-Chadds Ford.<\/span><\/p>\n

The proposed budget uses $191,059 from the pension reserve fund and $284,000 in exceptions above the state Act 1 limit of 2.4%. Cochran said that about 30% of payroll expense is now being eaten up by pension costs, and by using the pension reserve as planned, it softens the impact for the taxpayer.<\/span><\/p>\n

The budget does expand expenditures in a few areas, including technology with the purchase of Chromebooks for the entire middle school student body, as well as a few additional staff hires to address concerns with class size.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other district news, a final solution to the ongoing issue with rain noise for the roof of the Unionville High School auditorium may be on the horizon. After some squabbling over who would pay for acoustic tests, the architect and insurers finally came to agreement, and those tests are slated for next month. If all goes as planned, work on a remedy could happen this summer, Buildings and Grounds Supervisor Rick Hostetler said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prelim budget calls for 2.88% tax increase By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 Conservatism is on the outs for the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District. Well, at least, when it comes to its budget process. District officials announced Monday night during the Board of Education\u2019s work session that the district would be moving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[144,43,377],"class_list":["post-28764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-budget","tag-schools-2","tag-unionville-chadds-ford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28770,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28764\/revisions\/28770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}