Board Approves Furniture, Field Trip Funds

After lengthy debate Monday night, the Merrimack School Board voted to advise administration at the town's schools that they can use previously reserved money to purchase furniture and schedule field trips for the 2011-12 school year.

During the budget process for the 2011-12 school year, the board created a three-tiered plan that would set aside around $1.5 million in spending in the event that the demands from the retirement system for contributions from the state's school district's spiked as was expected due to a budget shortfall.

In June, after the retirement system recertified the rates it set back in the fall, school districts around the state were informed they would need to contribute about another 5 percent to the retirement system, which equates to about $1 million in Merrimack, said SAU Business Administrator Matt Shevenell. This is because of a reduction in what the state is paying into the system.

However, recent legislative changes to the contributions school district employees make to the system, that increases their contribution by 2 percent, set in motion a change, and the retirement system recertified its rates again, leaving only a gap of about $220,000 that needs to be paid by the district, Shevenell said.

"I've never seen this type of volatility before," Shevenell said.

In his 20 years of working in school districts, he said he's never seen the New Hampshire Retirement recertify its rates three times in one year, until now. In the past, the rate is generally set for two years and it would be fixed at that rate, "written in stone," Shevenell said.

The news of the latest recertification came out late Thursday night, he said. And while this is generally good news, in that the districts owes about $780,000 less than it previously thought, Shevenell said he couldn't guarantee that this would be the final rate.

As such, he and Superintendent Marge Chiafery and School Board Chairwoman Jody Vaillancourt all shared a similar concern -- that this rate could change again and spending the reserved money could leave the district scrambling to figure out where to find the money to pay the state if the district's contribution spiked again.

"We still need to think about planning for the worst and hoping for the  best," Shevenell said, adding that given what's happened on Wall Street in the past week, he didn't think it would be out of the realm of possibility that the retirement system would revisit the rates.

Chiafery cautioned the board to consider carefully whether it would advise administration to spend some of the reserved money.

"The thing that concerns me is restoring, if you will, these items and then coming to a point of time, be it November or January, where a force that's out of our control determines that we lose something else," Chiafery said.

During its discussion about the authorizing the expenditure of some of the reserved money, Vaillancourt said she would not be in favor of spending any of it at this point in time.

"I am not comfortable making a decision to move forward with spending any of this money knowing there's a very, very good possibility [the district's contribution to the retirement system] could change in a couple of months," Vaillancourt said.

Having earlier in the year reserved $240,000 in health insurance spending, Vaillancourt said the board could decide to replace all the other money to the budget aside from that and gamble on the fact that this money would cover what they owe to the system, but she didn't think that was wise.

In taking a poll of the board, however, member George Markwell said he wanted to put at least some of the money back on the table: including field trips, furniture, co-curricular and athletic supplies. He said he thinks field trips are too valuable to give up and he thinks giving students as rounded an education as possible are top concerns.

"I know we're worried about money, but I think that's part of delivering an education," Markwell said of the items he wanted to replace.

He said the potential for having to come up with more money to give to the state at a later date is something he is absolutely concerned with, but he believes the board has a duty to help provide students with the best education they can get.

Board member Jennifer Thornton said she too would like to see some of the money go back into budget, but she was on the fence about what to replace.

Board member Shannon Barnes said she was on board with the items Markwell suggested replacing. She pointed out that the board has about a million dollars to play with and these items represent only $77,000.

Doing the math, Shevenell said the board would still have about $950,000 reserved if they spent the $77,208 reflected in Markwell's recommendation.

Markwell made a motion to advise administration they could use the money for these four line items, which included $26,643 for furniture at the elementary schools and $34,679 for a bevy of field trips as well as money for co-curricular salaries and supplies at the high school and athletic supplies at the middle and high schools.

It was seconded by Barnes, however, Thornton said she did not agree with releasing money for co-curricular expenses and athletic supplies, so Markwell amended his motion to remove the co-curricular supplies and salaries and athletic supplies in an effort to garner a majority vote.

Both the amendment and the amended motion passed, with Thornton, Barnes and Markwell in favor. Vaillancourt abstained from the vote on the amendment and voted in opposition of the amended motion. Board member Chris Ortega was away on business and absent from the meeting.

The board agreed Monday night that it will continue to revisit these reserved funds as frequently as they need to and hope to be able to release more money later in the fall.