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Claiborne Parish finance committee reviews 2024–25 budget; General Fund posts $1.5 million surplus
Summary
At a Sept. 5 finance committee meeting, Business Manager Ms. Turner outlined amendments to the 2023–24 budget and a proposed 2024–25 budget, reporting a $1,501,119 General Fund surplus, a $520,170 deficit in the parish-wide District Maintenance Fund, and noting ARPA funds will expire in September 2024.
The Claiborne Parish School Board Finance Committee, chaired by David Nokes, met Sept. 5 in Homer to review amendments to the 2023–24 budget and the proposed 2024–25 budget. Business Manager Ms. Turner presented the financial summary and projections, emphasizing both a General Fund surplus and pressure on maintenance reserves.
Ms. Turner reported that the General Fund ended fiscal 2023–24 with a surplus of $1,501,119, driven in part by total actual expenditures that were $634,384 below the amounts adopted in the prior budget. She said employer contribution rates for retirement dropped, which will affect employer costs next fiscal year: teacher retirement from 24.1% to 21.51% and the Louisiana school employees’ retirement rate from 27.6% to 25.8% for fiscal 2025.
At the same time, Ms. Turner said the parish-wide District Maintenance Fund closed fiscal 2023–24 with a deficit balance of $520,170. She attributed the shortfall to rising fuel prices and increased costs for repairs and maintenance to buildings and vehicles, and flagged line items such as property insurance, utilities and diesel as growing cost pressures that will require monitoring during 2024–25.
To help offset maintenance needs, Ms. Turner noted the system will collect a new school district maintenance tax in 2024–25 (the parish-wide maintenance tax is 5.23 mills). The General Fund also transferred $25,000 in MFP funds to the School Lunch Fund for 2023–24, the same amount transferred in 2022–23; Ms. Turner said participation in the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program, which provides free meals to all students, has contributed to a growing School Lunch Fund balance.
Ms. Turner described federal grants and aid as supplements that support Special Education, pre-school, tuition payments and vocational education programs, and said most of those programs operate on a cost-reimbursement basis per budgets provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. She also noted that American Rescue Plan Act funds received during 2021–22 to aid pandemic recovery are set to expire in September 2024, and that the board is making decisions about which programs to continue and how to fund them going forward.
The meeting minutes were signed by Mr. Christopher Brooks, secretary to the Claiborne Parish School Board. The committee did not record a formal vote on any ordinance or budget adoption in the minutes provided; staff flagged monitoring of maintenance-fund balances and the transition from ARPA funding as the next fiscal priorities.
