The Examiner U-46 News Feed
U-46 budget approved but controversy lingers
By Seth Hancock
The Fiscal Year 2018 budget in School District U-46, which sets spending at $517.9 million and revenues at $509.1 million, has been approved, but questions over procedures and agenda setting were raised during the process.
The budget was approved by a 5-1 vote, Jeanette Ward voting no and Phil Costello absent for the Sept. 25 vote.
Although not there for the vote, Costello issued a public statement online which he stated: “Having studied the budget, I have concluded that I cannot support it in its present form based on its lack of proactive budget constraints.”
Costello added that “longer term prognosis weighs into my decision that I believe will have serious consequences on future School District U-46 budgets including” and he offered concerns as well as recommendations surrounding issues of community impact, dashboard reporting, budget vetting, earned income, transportation, attendance, investments, the Corporate Personal Property Replacement Tax, personnel, expenditures, vendors, legal, violence, utilities and contingencies.
At the Sept. 25 meeting Ward had planned to read a statement from Costello regarding the budget but the board’s majority denied her the right to do so, something Costello later called “another case of selective censorship,” and the district administration apparently proved one of Costello’s points in a response to his public statement.
“What makes this vote even more contentious is that in most instances board member input is marginalized during the budget process,” Costello wrote. “I believe that I have related expertise to offer constructive insights that are generally acknowledged and then summarily dismissed by the District.”
The district acknowledged Costello “did not submit (his statement) to administration for a response,” but “we feel compelled to provide a response.”
Within the district response, it claimed the administration did not “intend to make any board member feel their input was marginalized or summarily dismissed.”
Costello said at the Oct. 2 board meeting that his “notes were directed to the public since they were already answered by” U-46 CEO Tony Sanders’ staff.
On the night of the budget vote, board member Traci Ellis said Costello “forfeited any right to be heard on this issue” as the board’s majority did not allow Ward to read his statement, and Ellis also called his statement “irresponsible” and “so full of inaccuracies.”
Board member Melissa Owens criticized Costello’s statement at the Sept. 25 meeting saying: “I really wish some of this would have come out in the committee meetings we had.”
However, Costello told The Examiner: “Each one of those points was raised with members of the finance team and with Mr. Sanders. And they have denied, basically worked around, any type of constructive thought process and have basically said that my comments had no bearing on that issue.”
One of the claimed “inaccuracies” concerned violence in which Costello wrote “our schools face daily acts of violence that require disproportionate share of resources to a small segment of individuals that disrupt the education delivery mode for the vast majority of dedicated and deserving students.” The district claimed it “has no evidence to suggest” that to be accurate, but according to Costello that was sidestepping the point he was making.
Costello told The Examiner: “The point is that every time a teacher or a student walks down the hall, they are subject to violence. Does that happen every day? Absolutely not, but my point is they have to fear it.”
“I also think it’s important to note that every day we spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect against violence,” Costello added. “So we are concerned about it each and every day. And, that to me, takes away resources from the classroom and the people that want to learn and invests it into the people that don’t want to learn.”
Costello shared concerns in his statement about the sustainability given that enrollment is projected to decline by around 2 percent a year while expenses are expected to continually rise year after year, including an over 2 percent increase a year in personnel costs. If the projections bear out, enrollment will have dropped by 10.6 percent from 2012 to the 2020-21 school year yet expenses will have risen by 22.6 percent.
The decline in enrollment coupled with contractual constraints will lead to a “probable need to increase taxes from public sources” Costello wrote.
The district’s response was that “reductions in enrollment do not lead to reductions in overall expenditures” claiming the projection “equates to 8 students per elementary and 0.4 students per classroom.”
Costello told The Examiner “we will have to cut staff and raise the classroom size in order to make sure our staff gets paid what contractually is owed them.”
The district has an over reliance on single sources regarding vendors and investment firms Costello said, and he asks: “Why are we relying on one vendor when we can rely on several and get the best value for our dollar?”
On utilities, the district claimed Costello’s statement was “incorrect” as he wrote “the District is projecting a 21 [percent] increase in utilities primarily due to sustaining inferior physical plants as I understand” while the district said “rates increased by nearly 29 [percent] over the previous contract which is the predominate reason for the increase in utilities, not the inferior physical plant of our facilities.”
The district response ignored suggestions made by Costello, and he later told The Examiner he’s been told “raw prices of electricity are not going up substantially” at the park district level where he is a public administrator while U-46 is claiming the opposite.
“Something is not congruent there,” Costello said. “And I’m not saying that I’m right or they’re wrong, but by going out and finding multiple sources of this information you’ll get the best value.”
Costello said the district’s priorities and agenda setting process may not be in the best interest of the public, and he raised the Elgin Math and Science Academy (EMSA) charter proposal as evidence in his budget statement as he wrote “the Board invested countless hours and heard or read over a thousand public comments” on “a $4-6M budget” for EMSA but was asked to approve a $517.9 million budget “after three presentations with no registered public comments.” He told The Examiner the district spent more time “thwarting EMSA” than focusing on the budget.
“This should raise flags to the public and our leadership of dubious priorities in agenda setting,” Costello wrote.
On the board’s agenda itself, he called it the “administration’s board agenda” on Oct. 2.
“I do more to prepare for these meetings than most other board members by offering objective and challenging questions to the administration’s board agenda, especially on financial issues,” Costello said. “In fact, I have never seen a single question from two board members in two and a half years. Those certain members blindly vote in favor of each and every item that administration puts on the agenda, which should be a greater source of public concern.”
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