The Husky Huddle
This is the 'Husky Huddle,' the podcast that brings you closer to the heart of Olean City School education. Whether you're a parent, student, teacher, or a proud member of our community, this podcast is dedicated to providing insightful conversations, expert advice, and a closer look at what makes our district truly exceptional.
The Husky Huddle
Decoding the Budgetary Blueprint for Quality Education with OCSD Business Administrator Jenny Bilotta
Unlock the secrets behind the numbers that shape our children's education, as we sit down with Jenny Bilotta, our OCSD Business Administrator with a treasure trove of experience spanning two decades. She takes us behind the scenes of school district budget development, revealing how strategic foresight blends with the needs of students to craft fiscal blueprints. From the precision required to forecast expenditures 18 months ahead to the critical balance of salaries and contractual commitments, Bilotta breaks down the importance of smart spending without compromising educational quality. She sheds light on innovative cost-saving strategies, the ripple effects of inflation on utilities, the sting of health insurance surges, and the puzzle of state aid projections. Engage with us as we navigate the ever-evolving financial challenges of schooling and come away with a deeper understanding of the educational system's economic heartbeat.
Then, we will discuss our Community Campus Renovations Update. As our facilities receive their final touches, we invite you to share our enthusiasm for the new playgrounds, revamped interiors, and locker room makeovers that await our students and community members alike. These renovations represent more than just an aesthetic uplift; they are the symbols of our commitment to fostering a vibrant community spirit. Join us at the upcoming public budget forum on May 7 at the OIMS LGI room, where your voice adds to the chorus that shapes the future of our educational landscape.
Please subscribe and tune into Husky Huddle, where every conversation is a step towards enriching the lives of the families we serve in Olean! Go huskies!
Good morning. Good morning, welcome to our Husky Huddle, and I'm so excited to have with us today, at our next episode, jenny Bellotta, our business administrator extraordinaire, who's going to take you through all the things that you've ever wondered about budget, our budget. How do we develop a budget? Why is it always sound and expediently presented to our voters and you just love it? How about the work that goes into it? All of that, we're going to talk about that today, so welcome, jenny.
Speaker 2:Good morning. Thank you for having me. I wish it was that easy.
Speaker 1:We've got plenty of time to talk about what it is and how we do it and why it's so flawless by the time we're done with it. So no pressure. Anyway, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Sure, so my name is Jenny Bellotta. As you indicated, I'm the business administrator here for the district. I've been here for about four years. This is my 20th year in school business administration, so I started out for about two years at Archbishop Walsh High School here in Olean and then made a move to Bolivar Richburg School where I was there for 14 years and then I spent the last four years here in Olean.
Speaker 1:So it's been fantastic. Best experience hasn't it?
Speaker 2:It has been, although six weeks starting six weeks prior to the pandemic wasn't exactly, you know, the start that I had anticipated here in Olean. So it's been a challenge, but it's been fantastic and a great learning opportunity for me.
Speaker 1:Okay so good, all right, so here we are. We're in our budget season and you can't see Jenny on this podcast, but she seems calm, cool and collected and still smiling. So I think that says good things about our budget development process. Why don't you tell us what that is?
Speaker 2:Okay, great. So we started our budget development process for the 24-25 school year back in October. So budget development can be difficult because you're essentially projecting out 18 months from the time when we start our budget development. Our budget is primarily driven by our strategic plan and the needs of our students, so the first thing we do is try to align the expenditures with the goals that we've set for the district. Obviously, the board sets goals and then we have more individualized goals throughout the district as well, and we keep those in mind as we're developing the budget.
Speaker 2:We start the process by filling in the pieces of the budget that we most easily project the expenditures for. Some of those include debt service payments or the amount of money that we spend on our capital improvements. We also fill in a lot of our salary and contractual expenditures in the beginning of the budget. This works more easily in years where we have contracts that have not expired. Obviously, our salaries and our expenditures and contractual obligations account for about 60% of our budget. So we try to start out with that to build the foundation of our budget. For expenditures that are more difficult to predict, we use a variety of methods to project those. For some expenses we look at a five-year average. That's proven to be a little more difficult this year due to the rate of inflation impacting many of the expenditures more this year than in years past. Utility expenditures are a great example of this. We've looked at the utilities for the last five years. However, everybody knows their utilities have typically fluctuated a lot more in the last two years than in the last five, so we have to take things like that into consideration.
Speaker 2:Another step of our budget process involves developing our building and department budgets. I meet with our principals and our directors to build their budgets and their department budgets. This year we joined a cooperative purchasing agreement with about 250 other schools in New York State to purchase many of the supplies through contracts that have already been put out to bid to about 100 vendors. So this was a big initiative that we took on this year and, while there's always hiccups in the process, in the long run it'll be best for our students and staff and it'll save the district a considerable amount of funding as well.
Speaker 2:Another significant portion of our budget that involves the partnership we have with the Cataroga-Salegani BOCES and the Erie 1 BOCES. This involves a lot of different services that we purchase and products that we purchase through BOCES. Each year we analyze all of those products and services and see is there truly a more cost-effective way to provide the services? Sometimes there is and sometimes there isn't, but we are fortunate for those relationships that we have with BOCES to be able to offer a lot of the services. One of the most significant cost increases that we are seeing this year, as probably many of our listeners are familiar with as well, is the increase in health insurance costs.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Our health insurance premiums are increasing 24.25%, which is the largest I've seen in my 20 years in this business. This equates to about a $1.5 million increase on our budget alone, which is huge. So that's how we build the expense side of our budget. Now I'm going to talk a little bit about the revenue side. While we can control the expense side of our budget to an extent, the revenue side gets to be a little more difficult.
Speaker 2:There's two main budget sources for revenues, one being our state aid and the other being our tax levy that comes from our voters and from our property owners. Our revenue projections this year have also proven to be a big obstacle as well that we're having to overcome. Under the current law, there's a set amount of foundation aid for the district, and our foundation aid is the general operating aid that we receive from the state. This is the largest pool of general operating aid that we receive and it accounts for about 72% of our overall revenues, so anytime there's fluctuation in that, it has a significant impact on us. Unfortunately, the executive budget proposal, or the proposal that came from the governor that she originally put out back in January, significantly changes the calculation of foundation aid, so our district would see over a $300,000 reduction in foundation aid. This will have a profound negative impact on the finances for our district.
Speaker 1:So by negative impact on the finances. What does that look like?
Speaker 2:So we are going to see about $300,000 less. So, as I just talked about some of those expenditures going up, such as health insurance going up, you know, health insurance alone went up 1.5 million. We're only getting about $44,000 in foundation aid. So that's the huge impact. While people say, oh, you're getting more money, we're only getting $44,000 more based on the governor's proposal. So that comes nowhere near offsetting the increase in expenses. So we have to determine how are we going to offset that and what are we going to do to try to balance those two.
Speaker 1:What do we typically do in this type of situation?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's a great question. So we have a few things that we're looking at. Obviously, you have to find a way to either increase your revenue or decrease your expenses, so we've really done a combination of those two. One of the major things we're doing from the expense side of the budget is we have revamped our special education program and we, a few months back, created a special ed advisory committee. They're taking a hard look at the programs that we offer and we intend to bring a lot more of the programs back in-house to save some money and to reduce the costs. That's one way to reduce the cost. We are also looking at our revenues along with the Board of Education to see do we A increase taxes, b use more of our reserves, or a combination of both? So we're still doing that analyzation.
Speaker 2:Right now. The governor's budget is supposed to be, or the legislative budget is supposed to be released by April 1st. We're hoping that happens, although that really only provides us, you know, a few days. So we're hoping the governor's or the final budget is released by April 1st and then we'll have a better idea. Reserves Currently, if we were to increase taxes or the tax levy, we would not exceed the tax cap, which, for only in this year, would be a 1.42% increase in the levy.
Speaker 2:That equates to about $196,000. So that is one option If, as many of our listeners are probably familiar with the tax cap, if we were to exceed that, we would need a super majority of the vote of the voters to approve that. But for the time being, we're just looking at do we raise any of the levy to that 1.42% or do we look at using additional reserves to offset that? Um, so that's basically a summary of, you know, the expense and the revenue side. We, if any of our listeners have questions about the budget, I would encourage them to reach out to us. We also have our budget presentation on Tuesday, may 7th, at six o'clock in the only an intermediate middle school LGgi room. So that's a great opportunity for people to learn more about the budget as well.
Speaker 1:So if I were in the community and I had questions I could call, then yes, yes, I don't just send them in advance or reach out, right.
Speaker 2:Right, so that ideally, the public forum on May 7th is the best time for people to learn more about the budget. We will also have stuff out online. We will also send out the budget mailers to people, but if you have more questions and you want to see the complete presentation, that's really the best time to come in and see that. I will be back on here again to see to provide more information about the specifics of the budget. So we will be doing another Husky Huddle between now and then.
Speaker 2:Once we finalize our budget and, obviously the most important date, we encourage everybody to get out and vote for the budget and for the board. Seats that will be open. That vote will take place on Tuesday, may 21st, from 7 am to 9 pm in the middle school music suite, but ideally, again, you know, if there's questions, come out and join us at the public forum. We'd love to answer any questions. Um, the best vote is the most educational vote and and I encourage people to um, you know, learn more about our budget process and more about the specifics of it.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So is there anything else that you think is important for our listeners to know about when it comes to budget?
Speaker 2:Again, I think it's just best that they are informed of it. You know, if they have questions, chances are somebody else has questions and don't be afraid to ask. There's nothing simple about a school budget. It's very complex and we do the best we can to share everything with people, but it really is important for them to learn about it and to take advantage of the presentations and the materials that we put out. We put a lot of time and effort into our budget, so the materials that we put out. We put a lot of time and effort into our budget, so you know we want everybody to be very well educated on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's easier to just reach out and ask your question versus just asking a friend or someone else you may know that you may think has the answer, whereas you can just call us and we're more happy to answer those absolutely absolutely, and if you can't make it to the public forum by, you know, on on may 7th, by all means reach out to us.
Speaker 2:I'm happy to to meet with anybody or to share whatever we can with people fantastic, all right.
Speaker 1:So what I'm hearing is come on may 7th and then come to the budget vote on May 21st 21st, all day. We'll literally be here all day, and that's the opportunity to vote for our new board members as well, and we would love to see you and hear your voice and get your votes for those really important things that are necessary. Absolutely All right. And one last question, because of course, everybody wants to know how's the turf field going?
Speaker 2:The turf field is going fantastic. If you haven't had an opportunity to look at it, I encourage all of our listeners to drive by there. It's amazing how fast it's going down now that it's able to finally, you know go down. I saw numbers.
Speaker 2:Yes yes, so they're really working on, you know, the hash marks in there in the last few days. It's a very interesting process to watch. You know, we're hoping here within the next few months that everything will be finalized. We also have some playground equipment coming in within the next few weeks down there. We know our students are very excited for that as well. So everything is finally coming together. We're also trying to wrap up a lot of the interior capital project work too, trying to wrap up a lot of the interior capital project work too. Our locker rooms should be done very soon as well. So finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It'll be a great opportunity, great opportunity for our community to enjoy some of these capital improvements Beautiful.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad that it is publicly accessible. Some of the renovations are in buildings and not necessarily accessible by the public, but this is one you can see, you can use. It's part of the community. This is a great, great addition.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:Yes, exciting, all right. Is there anything else that you want to leave our listeners?
Speaker 2:with. I don't think so. Hopefully I see many of you on Tuesday, May 7th, at our public forum for the budget.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This has been another amazing episode of the Husky Huddle and thank you for joining me. Thank you,