Imagine someone telling you now that you spent too much money on electricity last year. You need to go back and use less. Or, at the least, figure this year’s budget to absorb last year’s unapproved expenditures – even though no one informed you of the approved amount in the first place.

Doesn’t sound fair?

South Madison school officials are facing a similar situation on a much bigger scale. Although the school board recently adopted a 2009 budget, the state has yet to approve the 2008 budget – even though the year is almost over.

Joe Buck, Chief Financial Officer, says he expects the state to cut the 2008 budget, but by the time the amount is declared, the money will already have been spent. Those cuts will have to be absorbed into the budget for 2009, which is also expected to be cut by the state.

“I don’t know how you build a budget for the new year if your current budget hasn’t been approved,” said Jon Trippeer, school board president. “I think the legislature has done a great disservice to the state of Indiana. Every school corporation in Indiana has had to borrow money. I think that’s totally unfair. Because we don’t have an approved budget, we really don’t know where we are. I think that is a disservice to the citizens of Indiana.”

Although fairly new to his position, Buck says that it is his understanding that the state has never been this late in approving budgets before the last couple of years. The core of the problem is the reassessment of property values. Last year the tax draws for the schools were so late that the corporation had to borrow money just to keep operations afloat.

In addition to expecting to make up for 2008 cuts in the 2009 budget, the enrollment numbers were not as high this fall as anticipated. The 2009 budget was calculated with a prediction of 60 additional students, an estimate Buck described as conservative.

“I have never seen enrollment drop from the first count to the very end,” said Dr. Thomas Warmke, superintendent. “It was very disheartening for us, but nevertheless, something we have to deal with.”

The decrease in enrollment will cause a shortfall in the 2009 budget of over $230,000 in tuition support and vocational grants. Buck also said that receiving the projected excise and property taxes is unlikely. Appeals are in the works to recover some of the shortfall from the 2007 draw.

Unsupportive of the 2009 budget before the latest shortfalls were announced was board member Mike Gaskill.

“One of my concerns is that there is not a lot of effort put in to try to cut costs and it just irritates me that people are hurting out there and we keep increasing our budget and increasing our burden on the taxpayer,” he said. “We need to find ways to cut costs and find waste in ways that doesn’t affect education in the process.”

Gaskill admits that once the work session on the budget rolls around each year, the major decisions that affect the total amounts being spent have already been made. Each decision on building projects or hiring or purchasing equipment throughout the course of the year culminates into the budget and little can be done to cut costs at that point.

“By the work session, it’s kind of a done deal,” he continued. “I think the cost-cutting measures should have taken place over the course of the last year. When you get down to budget time, it’s too late.”

This realization is one factor that prompted his “no” vote to the board’s proposal to bond $4.7 million to renovate the current middle school.

“It’s scary to me when we are $85 million in debt and the total assessed valuation of all the homes and businesses in our school system is $850 million,” Gaskill explained. “That means we have borrowed one tenth of the value of all the property in our district. If you have $100,000 house, your share of South Madison’s debt is $10,000. If you have $500,000 worth of farm equipment, your share of the debt is $50,000. It’s hard with large numbers like that to put it in relevant terms. If you put too many commas in a number, then it gets hard for people to understand. (The school corporation’s) debt is scary to me because we are just talking about one level of local government. We aren’t talking about the towns or the county or the library.”