St. Martin School Board’s budget shows deficit

The preliminary school board budgets for the fiscal year 2014-15 unveiled during last week’s meeting of the school board’s finance committee showed anticipated deficits in three major funds.
The final budgets must be adopted and submitted to state officials by the end of September.
As presented by CFO Casey Broussard, the $71 million general fund budget includes a projected $1,240,000 deficit; the Sales Tax #2 reveals spending of $1.64 million over income; and the Food Services fund is expected to spend $561,768 more than it receives in revenues.
Both the General Fund and Sales Tax #2 have healthy surpluses, however.

GENERAL FUND
The proposed General Fund budget projects just under $70 million in revenues but $71.2 million in expenditures.
Major sources of income include state funds of $46.4 million, $16.5 million in transfers from sales taxes, and $6.55 million in other local taxes.
By far the largest expenditures are for employee benefits – almost $41 million in salaries and just under $20 million in benefits.

SALES TAXES
Broussard is projecting collections of $8 million in revenues through Sales Tax #2 and $8.16 million from Sales Tax #1.
The $1.64 million deficit in the Sales Tax #2 budget is partially offset by an excess of revenues over expenditures in Sales Tax #1 of just over $1 million.
Broussard also pointed out that Sales Tax #2 currently has a fund balance of $2.8 million.

FOOD SERVICES
The Food Services budget of $4.6 million and deficit of more than a half million dollars reflects the continuing increase in operating costs of the lunch program.
Along with $3.46 million in federal subsidies, the revenue side of the budget includes $75,700 from state sources and nearly $500,000 from local sources, including charges for student and faculty lunches.
In addition, the Food Services fund will receive $820,000 in subsidies from the General Fund.

SALARIES
In a separate report, Broussard showed committee members that the board will pay out almost $41 million in salaries during the current fiscal year.
In addition, the system will contribute $10.3 million to employee retirement funds and $8.2 million in group health premiums and benefits.