The Putnam County Board of Education hosted its first Public Budget Forum on Monday.
Due to there being a tax decrease, the board is required to host two forums for the public to attend and listen to a presentation of the budget before voting occurs. The forum is led by Superintendent Eric Arena and goes over the anticipated revenues, expenditures, and changes in the budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
According to Arena, the board’s approval of the budget is based on the board’s vision, mission, and goals for the charter school system, and decisions are made on how much the community can financially support and afford these efforts.
This year, 90 percent of the total budget is staff costs.
Health Insurance increased from $11,340 per certified employee to $18,960 per certified employee, meaning an increase from $2.5 million to $4.2 million annually. In addition, classified employee costs will be increasing in the next few years.
“The big kicker this year is insurance. Our portion of health benefits for teachers had a net increase of about $1.7 million annually,” said Arena. “The way it is structured with our local fair share, 60 percent or more of that dollar amount has to be picked up locally. The state will only pay about a third of that dollar amount.”
Retirement also accounts for 20.78 percent of these staff costs.
“About 14 years ago TRS was 10 percent so we sent about 10 cents out of every dollar towards our retirement for teachers. Now, we are over 21 cents out of every dollar. It has doubled in that time and we are at the highest we have been in the last decade,” said Arena.
This equates to about $5 million out of the budget that must go to benefits for retirement. For health care costs, about $7.25 million out of the budget must be used.
“Between these costs, we are already over $12 million of our budget in benefits for just our teachers,” said Arena.
According to Arena, SPLOST funds may not be used for salary and benefits. It can only be used for capital projects such as renovations or other expenditures such as purchasing technology or purchasing and supporting transportation. Between 2012 and 2019, SPLOST's revenue history had a dip from the lost revenue that had to be made up with local taxes. As of this year, it is back to about $5 million annually to help offset expenditures and capital projects.
“Our local fair share was originally created to have the state cover 60 percent of the costs of education with local funding providing the remaining 20 percent. However, that has not been adjusted for inflation, and for the last few years, it has been the opposite,” said Arena pointing to a chart that showed 2013 through 2022 local versus state costs of education based on Georgia’s Basic Education Act.
“So a vast majority of the money that goes into education is local. So when the government says every teacher gets a $2,000 raise, it sounds great but the government only provides $600 and the other $1,400 has to come from somewhere. And that’s where the burden and pressure come from locally to support that.”
Moving into the five-year digest, Arena states that Putnam County’s digest is growing and so are the exemptions. There is a downward trend in the mileage rate. Last year it was 12.9 but the recommendation for the board is to set it this year at 11.9.
“By the time we got to 2022, our mileage rate was lower than 85% of the state,” said Arena. “The other thing to consider is that the county keeps 2.5 percent or about $550,000 annually so when we talk about taxes levied, it shows about $24 million but the realization is that the $550,00 is withheld. We are required to show it as revenue but we don’t see it at all.”
Closing the presentation, Arena showed a breakdown of the budget based on the chart of accounts where expenditures are categorized. The largest amount of the budget is being used for instruction. The FY23 versus FY24 budget has increased from $43,792,241 to $47,370,392.
A further explanation of why this increase occurred is discussed within the presentation. The next budget forum will be Aug. 21 at 5 p.m. at the Putnam County Board of Education building prior to the normal meeting.