Finance committee accepts clean audit, approves budget transfers and several purchases including Raptor emergency suite and TimeClock Plus

The Upper Dublin School District Finance Committee on Jan. 22 accepted the district’s independent audit, approved a set of budgetary transfers, and cleared several operational purchases and transfers for final legislative or administrative action.

Audit and transfers: Business staff reported an unmodified (clean) audit for the year, with no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies noted. The committee formally accepted the audit and the associated year-end budget transfers required by audit accounting standards. Staff said transfers were routine audit-compliance entries (e.g., GASB lease and software entries, Chromebook ECF funding entries) and that the transfers had no net impact on overall financial results.

Real estate and delinquent taxes: Staff reported that real estate tax receipts were roughly $500,000 below budget owing largely to a commercial-property settlement/stipulation; interim bills and delinquent tax processes were described. The final collection rate for the year was 97.2 percent. The district has reported delinquent taxes totaling about $981,200, made up in part by several commercial properties (staff clarified parcel-to-owner consolidations where the report listed multiple parcels for one owner).

Food-service transfer: The committee approved a transfer to the food-service fund to reconcile uncollected student meal balances of $10,203.99 at fiscal year end, noting that districts cannot deny meals to students and that the general fund must make the food-service fund whole for uncollected balances.

Tax collector compensation: The committee recommended quadrennial changes to the elected tax collector compensation package. Staff proposed applying a 10 percent increase in the first year followed by 3 percent increases in each of the next three years for the school-district portion of compensation (current salary listed as $34,405), raising the office-assistant allocation from $5,000 to the proposed same-percentage increases, and increasing supplies to $7,500 to reflect higher printing/postage costs. The committee moved the recommendation forward for legislative approval.

Technology and operations purchases: The committee approved (moved forward) a services agreement to consolidate emergency-management and visitor-management systems into Raptor’s emergency suite. Staff presented a one-time implementation/training cost of $12,437 for the current year (to be covered by a PCCD grant) and estimated recurring costs around $22,000 annually once fully in place (current combined annual cost for existing systems is about $18,000). The committee also approved moving forward with TimeClock Plus — an electronic timesheet system integrated with the district’s eFinance (PowerSchool) software — with one-time setup/training costs of $21,557.26 and an ongoing per-user cost projected to be about $9,000 annually for the initial 225 users; staff said the change should create efficiencies and could reduce longer-term costs as the user base expands.

Other approvals: The committee moved forward approval to dispose of certain excess or obsolete equipment (a 14-year-old spare bus and a replaced grounds mower) and advanced the Maple Glen roof replacement bid package to be advertised for summer work.

Many items were moved forward for final action by the district’s legislative body or administratively implemented; the Finance Committee recorded consensus approvals or motions to move items ahead but did not itself complete final contract awards for the vendor contracts discussed.