Budget Cuts Looming for Laguna Beach Unified?

The Laguna Beach Unified School District is one of many in California that may be facing some budget cuts next year, depending on whether or not the state approves a tax extension, the district’s Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Norma Shelton announced last week.

Votes won’t be cast until June, and the district’s budget is due before June 30.

“This is a quite a conundrum,” Shelton tells Laguna Beach Patch. “We’ll have to develop our new budget with the assumption that the tax extensions will not be extended, and if they are, we’ll quickly adjust them. But we can’t [make decisions] based on hope.”

Laguna Beach is unique in that it is a basic aid district opposed to a revenue limit district, which means its approximate $40 million budget is obtained mostly through local property taxes. About $2.6 million—far less than what other districts receive—is backfilled by the state.

But if the vote for an extension doesn’t fly, LBUSD will be solely dependent on property taxes, which are also taking a hit due to economic downturn in recent years, Shelton says.

The district doesn’t anticipate any employee layoffs for the 2011-2012 year at this time, she says, but things remain uncertain until it knows what resources will be available after the election.

“We have been preparing for a decline and setting aside reserves,” she says. “Right now we are working with the information we have at this particular time and trying to determine what cuts we might have to make.

“No decisions have been made at this time.”