Wednesday, February 22, 2012

LT Ben, we’re having some fun now!

Mr. Ellis of the School Board has decided to engage in discussion with your correspondent on the Forecaster article page.

Just a little while ago, I posted this addendum the prior response we posted:

Mr. Ellis:

In rereading this paragraph of yours:

"Brunswick has never spent the $13,559 you suggest per pupil. In FY11, the most recently reported year, we spent $29.6 million against a budget of 2,734 subsidizable resident pupils or $10,842 per pupil. If you base it on actual resident pupils that year, 2470.5, you get $11,998 per pupil, but that's not how budgets are planned."

it appears to me that you are trying to befuddle the readers in two ways. First, by using the term 'subsidizable resident pupils,' by which you may very well be referring to the three year sliding average for the prior three budget years: FY 08, FY 09, and FY 10 that would be used in the EPS calculations for FY 11.

If so, I cry foul, and send you to the penalty box. That number is an artificial statutory construct with no relevance to a real school year and real department budget. We are in FY 12, and my per pupil spending figure uses ACTUAL FY 12 enrolment and ACTUAL FY 12 budget figures, just as all my figures use the actual enrolment and actual budget figure for any given year. Your calculation uses no real approved budget figure, and I am left to surmise you have pulled up the EPS figure from the prior budget year; it's the only way I can explain the fact that you ignore the very real School Department budget of $33 million plus both in the current school year and the prior school year. In fact, actual School Department budgets have been at the $33 million plus level since FY 08.

If I am wrong, surely you can explain things here in this very public forum. If, on the other hand, I am correct, you have forfeited all credibility by hiding behind sophistry and bureaucratic deceptions. If you have, you are either shameless in your approach, or you have been brainwashed by the polished experts who have been doing things this way forever. And counted on the help of a complicit media and gullible parents to back them up.

Shame on your, or shame on me. Which is it?

Additionally, Mr. Ellis points out that School Department budgets are not reflective of actual department spending.  He claims that in FY 11 they spent $2.7 million less that the actual budget of $33.1 million.'

That would be nice if it weren’t for the fact that our property tax rate was set based on the actual budget, and is apparently 9% higher than it had to be.  How does that make you feel, bunky?

We can only wonder how long this has been going on.  And add that the discussion with Mr. Ellis is taking us to places unknown and for this observer, too bizarre to comprehend.

Only the enlightened can grasp things; those to whom it has been revealed.

We don’t know about you, but we’d like to get that 9% property tax overcharge refunded post haste.  And likely the same amount for the current budget and tax year.

Lucky those at The Ostrich; they didn’t pay their taxes, so they  have no claim on a rebate, do they?

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