Read the Clean Slate’s ORCSD election post? Clarifications here!

Dean Rubine posted his summary and recommendations for the March 8, 2022 elections today over at the ORCSDCleanSlate blog. What I’ve written below won’t make much sense if you don’t read his first.

My own brief summary of the school warrant articles (what’s on the ballot) is in this other post.

The sample ballot is here.

And I’ll post my recommendations for school board candidates soon (post will be updated when I do).

Disclaimer: This post (and everything on adpunctum.org) is my own opinion only. It’s not anything official, and it is definitely not the position of the Oyster River Cooperative School District or its School Board.

This post addresses a few specific items that I don’t think Dean got quite right:

Article 3: The Budget. It’s less than Dean said.

Correction: The total increase in spending from 2021-2022 to 2022-2023 is 4.1%, not 5.8% or more as CleanSlate suggests. If voters approve Article 3, 4, and 5, we’re approving a total budget of $52,325,025 for 2022-2023. The total amount approved for 2021-2022 (articles 3, 4, and 5) was $50,254,968. This is a difference of $2,070,057, or just under 4.12%.

It looks like Dean assumed the amounts that may be taken from reserve funds like the Facilities Fund or the Emergency Fund were on top of this. They’re not. The way NH does school accounting, when you take money out of a capital or other reserve fund, it shows up as a “revenue”. This is subtracted from the total budget before this year’s property taxes get calculated.

Clarification: What’s the Capital Account? The Capital Account that is referred to in the Deliberative Session budget slides and the CleanSlate post is really the capital spending line in the budget. It’s called an “account” sometimes because the categories in the budget are called General Ledger Account numbers. It’s not a separate account like a bank account. The capital spending (outside of finishing the new middle school fields, parking, and landscaping) totals $940,000 for 2022-2023.

Clarification: “additional $596k” of spending at the new middle school building that CleanSlate asks about for furniture, playground equipment, and bus block heaters is a result of being conservative about what is spent on the middle school building. While the major construction of the new middle school building was covered by a Guaranteed Maximum Price contract, some items were not included in that. For example, furniture was an estimate and depended on what we selected as interior design was finalized. There could also have been problems encountered or changes the School District asked for that were not in the original plan. Fortunately, these have been minor. The playground was not originally included out of similar caution. It’s great that we can fit the playground and furniture in under the bond. The block heater plug-ins for the busses are an opportunistic addition. When snow is expected, school busses can be parked under the solar support structure at the middle school, saving drivers many hours clearing them off. Block heaters make sure they start efficiently on cold days. Any money remaining from construction will not be released until the project is completed and the books are closed. This likely won’t affect/benefit property taxes until fall of 2023.

Clarification: What is the “Emergency Fund”? CleanSlate questions a couple times if use of reserve funds constitutes an “Emergency”. The term Emergency Fund is probably not the best label. State law (RSA 198:4-b) refers to it as a Contingency Fund. This is money that was left over at the end of the year (the unassigned fund balance) that school board voted to keep to balance out ups and downs in taxes or deal with unexpected midyear expenses (the need to take money out for unexpected expenses hasn’t happened recently). The maximum amount that can be saved in this fund is about $1.8 million, which is less than 4% of the total budget. This is much a much smaller unassigned fund balance than the towns keep. For example, Madbury’s unassigned fund balance as of December 31, 2021 was just over $2 million.

Article 6: Saving $125,000 towards buying the ORMS solar array

Correction: I am not aware of any proposal to provide free electric vehicle charging for private vehicles at the new ORMS. Apparently there is “a rumor that they’re just giving away the power to charge folks’ electric cars under it” per Clean Slate. I will vote against any proposal like that. I have to admit that the line Dean wrote after that about fiscal irresponsibility stung a little. But Dean is entitled to his opinion.

Clarification: What does “no amounts to be raised by taxation.” This is language that the lawyers ask us to include in items like this. The school board cannot put money into any of the reserve funds except for the Contingency Fund (limited to about $1.8 million – the reason is best left for another discussion). If you vote in Lee or Madbury, there are always a bunch of articles to collect tax money and set it aside for fire equipment, police equipment, bridge repairs, etc. If we don’t specify that this amount is NOT to be raised by taxation, the State Department of Revenue Administration will add it in when they are figuring our taxes. This $125,000 only gets saved if it is remaining unspent at the end of this 2021-2022 school year on June 30, 2022. If it didn’t get saved towards the solar array, the school board could save it in the Contingency Fund (a.k.a. Emergency Fund), or use it to reduce taxes. The tax impact would be in the ballpark of 4-5 cents per $1000 (varies a little from town to town). So, Dean is right, this is tax money that has already been collected from us as taxpayers.

School Finance is pretty dry stuff. I hope this helped a little for those that care about the details.

My personal recommendation (not on behalf of the school board or school district) is to vote YES on Artciles 3, 4, 5, and 6. Thank you!