The evening of 2025-01-14 was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE), and Program Budget Advisory Council (PBAC).
Full disclosure: I sit on the PBAC, so some of these Observations aren’t exactly from the Audience. Before the budget presentations a variety of items were covered during the Board meeting.
Last meeting, it was mentioned there was an asbestos incident during the Capitol Project work. By the sounds of it, this has been resolved. Mind you, was a comment tossed out during a different topic, so I might have misheard. But an uneventful resolution was to be expected.
As for the Budget presentation itself, there was an overview along with reports from the Central Office/Districtwide, Facilities/Security, and Transportation departments.
During the overview it was pointed out the District is in some part of the process of Capitol Projects with a total cost of ~$90 million. But that the direct cost to the District should be ~$6 million. The rest will be paid for through state aid. Which does mean taxpayers in the end, just not directly through their school taxes. For those of you wondering, this is why there always seems to be a Capitol Project going on. All part of a plan to maximize state aid.
Much of the Central Office presentation felt like old news. That the Board didn’t ask questions implies they agreed. But it did consolidate and summarize a variety of information, which was good. One bit that was new is the expected increase in employee benefits of ~$1.3 million. This is being driven primarily by insurance and retirement, two expenses the District doesn’t have direct control over. Indirect control, yes, but that would mean firing staff.
Facilities presentation seemed focused on security and replacement plans. I’m all in favor of replacement plans, as they tend to minimize overall costs and prevent unexpected disruptions. And while I support security, it seems like it would be important to quantify results here. I understand that can be difficult, as ‘problems prevented before they occurred’ is hard to measure. But I could imagine a tough budget year down the road where having that data could prevent cuts in the security staff.
While the Transportation presentation covered all the normal sort of things you would expect it to, the electric bus mandate took over the discussion. While there are still a number of unknowns in details, the District is looking into them. To paraphrase what was said, the goal here is to be “Ready to go”, while delaying the actual transition. At least to the extent practical.
At which point the PBAC broke out for their discussion. As usual for budget meetings, the BoE had finished the public portion of their meeting by the time the PBAC had finished.
And as usual, the recording is available for watching… Having done that…
Susan Thering has resigned from the Board. The Board is considering whether to fill the position now, or wait for the next election.
There was an update on the current Capitol Project. Sounds like there have been a number of challenges and delays, but so far everything is on budget.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the January 14, 2025 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.
Agenda’s and similar information can be found at HFL’s BoardDocs page. While a recording is also available.