More budget cuts were considered by the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly at their day-long meeting last Saturday. As part of the budget process, the assembly reviews all the departments in the borough and hears justification for the spending in each. At the end of the five-hour meeting Chief Financial Officer Peggy Macdonald summarized the impacts of the changes made during the review.
“For the recommended budget before it was amended, we had a estimated mill rate of 10. 69. With the amendments that went forward today, our mill rate is now down to 10.538. We're originally taking 3. 5 million from fund balance to balance the budget. We're taking 3. 4. And then for non area wide, we were taking money from fund balance to balance the budget, but with the amendments that we made, we are now putting money to their fund balance. It wiped out the contribution from fund balance, so.”
The last department the assembly heard from was the school district. Member Savannah Fletcher said she would like to amend the budget to give the school district the $64.2 million it is asking for. But that is $10 million higher than the mayor had put in the budget.
“Elephant in the room. It's (the budget proposal) currently at 54 million. You guys have asked for 64. 2 million. I support us getting to that number. The ordinance we brought forward months ago for the special election on May 7th -- it is my intention, I currently plan to use that $10 million in increased tax revenue to go towards education to get us to that number. But that's why I don't currently have any amendments. I intend to hear the will of the voters, if they want to see us pay for the schooling that we think we and know we deserve,” she explained.
Assembly member Brett Rotermund asked School Board member Brandy Harty what might happen if the FNSB voters do not pass a $10 million tax increase in the May 7th special election.
“Um, if the ballot proposition doesn't pass, what's the plan?” Rotermund asked.
“There's currently a special meeting scheduled for May 9th,” Harty replied. “We asked the clerks whether or not we'd have kind of an idea at that point if the ballot initiative had passed. And it's that point that we go through and make our reduction list. If state funding and other things don't come through,” she said.
Superintendent Luke Meinert said the district is closing a $29 million gap caused by higher insurance and energy prices and dropping enrollment. He said after years of flat funding from the state, the district was hoping for a $1280 increase in the Base Student Allocation but pending legislation has only half that amount in per-student funding. He said without money from the state or the borough to close the gap, there will be more cuts and school closures this summer.
“I mean, two to three more students per class, potentially, which is a lot of teacher jobs, um, potential school closures, contracting custodial out. Not any one of those things will get at that 10 million; it'll have to be a host of things and that's on top of the reductions, that we've already had,” Meinert said.
The Assembly did not recommend any changes to the $54 million budget for schools. They will have a regular meeting this week, then a public hearing on the budget at their May 16th meeting, after the certification of the special election results.
