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Liberty panel lists cutbacks
Liberty
Liberty’s fiscal commission provided details as to where it would first cut the school district’s budget to close a $1.9 million deficit.
“There are only a couple of major areas where you save money: staffing levels and benefit levels,” Roger Nehls, chairman of the commission charged with guiding the district out of fiscal emergency, said Wednesday.
He said typically employees and their benefits make up 85 percent of a district’s budget.
Within the ranks of employees, he said the commission will look first at the district’s classified workers because they will have the least impact on student performance.
Classified workers are custodians, technicians and bus drivers.
Second, it will examine administrative costs, something schools Superintendent Stan Watson said he already reduced by $150,000 for the 2012 budget.
Lastly, the commission will look at cutting teachers and classroom aides, Nehls said.
Watson is expected to present the commission with $1 million in cuts by its Jan. 30 meeting.
Pat Ungaro, commission member and Liberty Township administrator, recommended the district switch to a third-party health- insurance company from its current self-insured system, where the district builds up a reserve that pays out when an employee files a claim.
“I’ll go on a limb and say you’ll save a significant amount of money when you go out and bid on insurance companies,” Ungaro said. “Let the insurance companies compete for you.”
Ungaro said self-insured is useful when you have a young, healthy work force. But if the work force is older and requires more medical attention, it can deplete the reserve and cost an entity a lot of money, he said.
He said when the township changed from a self- insured plan to an insurance company, the township saved about $500,000 in that first year in health-care costs.
Nehls said the district and employees could be better off increasing employee salaries, something that hasn’t been done since at least the 2008 teacher union contract was signed, while decreasing the current benefits.
He said the suppressed salaries that exist now and that prop up the district’s benefit system could hurt the teachers when they retire because their pension will be based on average salary, not benefits.
The next commission meeting will be Dec. 21.