Herny Brackett on encumbered funds

Henry Brackett at 8 August 2011 Lee, NH Deliberative Session on $600,000 of encumbered funds

Full video and source for times: http://media.leenh.org/?page_id=31

Henry: [1:37:10] Henry Brackett, 2 Wheelwright Drive, Lee, New
Hampshire. Zipcode again?

Not necessary.

Henry: [1:37:18] I don't know if many of you know, you probably do, but
I'm on the School Board. And I'm telling you it's been a real beat up
battle lately. But, in spite of it, encumbered funds is a big issue with
me. And, unfunded balances is a big issue with the school district. The
amount of money that I know the town has, that 1.7 that you talk about.
The auditors that I talk to. It's, it's, for our 4 million dollar
budget it's really a big reserve balance. That's kind of high. And, I
see it that way personally, but also the auditors that I've casually
talked to they say the same thing. Now they're school district auditors
so maybe there's a difference, which there is a difference.

[1:38:00] We in the school district cannot, we cannot have an unfunded
balance. What we can do is encumber funds to be pushed forward. In
past years we've pushed forward too much money. And, it's been a
contentious point amongst the administration and the school board. Last
year when we gave back 2.2 million dollars to the taxpayers because we
couldn't spend it, we had $600,000 of unencumbered, that was off the
books as far as budgeted money, this money was just pushed forward.
It's supposed to be matched up with invoices enough but it wasn't. Out
of that $600,000 that was pushed forward one year we spent $400,000 of
it. So, $250,000 or so just sat there, unspent money. It was actually
money that was put in the budget, that was in my mind kind of illegal
that it was done. The monies that we have as unfunded balances right
now, I personally think that it

Point of order. Can you tell me what the relevence is to the topic at
hand?

Excuse me, this gentleman has the floor right now.

I'm asking the Moderator, point of order. I believe he's off topic.

Excuse me, he has the floor right now. He's speaking to this fund.

Henry: Like I said, the fund as it sits right now I think is overfunded.
It's, it's almost a quarter, more than a quarter of our budget. You
said almost 200,000 so, what's that? But, the bottom line is the best
use of that money, you're saying the best use of that money is $91,000
to go forward and spend it. That might be so, but I, I personally think
that, that's too much money to be spending out of the general fund
because I'd rather take half of that or whatever and it's, it's, reduce
the taxes. This year you're going to have a tax rate increase. A big
portion of it's going to be the school. I know I went and we did a
little due diligence on that 700,000 they were taking away from the town
for school. The state was taking it away. That's been pushed forward a
couple of years.

Excuse me, Henry.

Henry: Sure.

I went around the track for you.

Henry: I know you did.

Relevance.

Henry: OK, relevance. I think it would be better use of the, of the fund balance
to mitigate our tax rate. And, I, so I put forth the motion, can I do that now?

You can try it.

Henry: OK. I put forward the motion that we change the figure of 170,000 for a
price and give the board authority to negotiate for 140,000 dollars to purchase the property.

I would need

Henry: Do I have to wait?

5 registered voters to sign that.

Henry: Do I have 5 registered voters out there to reconsider the property bid that we're
negotiating with

If you want to take it aside I'll take further comments from the floor, but at this time I'm sorry, Henry.

[1:41:37]
He's amending the motion on the floor and usually that takes a second.

[1:43:09]

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• ORCSD
• Durham
• Lee
• Madbury
• NH
• encumbered
• funds
• $600
• 000
• school
• board
• Henry
• Brackett

[oysterrivercommunity]

The point of this is? Seems petty to me and completely distracting to what we all should be focusing on - educating our kids.