THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512080219
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: BY WILLIAM R. PIERCE
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
The revelation that the Virginia Beach School Board has overspent to the tune of $12.1 million has generated widespread media coverage and front-page headlines during recent weeks. However, in Chesapeake, the citizens have similar questions on how much money was spent on schools, but these questions generate little media interest and have been left unanswered by the Chesapeake School Board.
Early this summer, the Chesapeake Taxpayers' Association gathered totals of actual expenditures by the Education Department for the fiscal year ending 1994 from four authoritative public sources. These are the documents and the total expenditures that each records:
School Board's Proposed Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 1995-1996: $151,481,884
Virginia Department of Education, Superintendent's Annual Report for Virginia, 1993-1994: $188,238,179.56
Chesapeake's Proposed Operating Budget, 1995-1996: $152,127,397
State Auditor's Comparative Report of Local Government Revenues and Expenditures for the year ended June 30, 1994: $162,772,660
According to the state, $36.8 million was spent on education that cannot be explained from local reports.
Every citizen has a right to know how their tax dollars were spent; consequently, any citizen with basic mathematical skills should be able to track budget expenditures and get the right answer. However, here we have a situation where accounting experts from four different sources cannot agree.
When accounting experts cannot agree, it underscores the difficulty the School Board, the City Council or a private citizen will experience when attempting to cross-walk and reconcile budget figures between two separate organizations.
The recent change in management to a new school superintendent should have automatically triggered an independent audit to resolve these discrepancies, as is normally the case in private industry.
These types of unexplained discrepancies lend credence to Virginia Beach City Council's demand for consolidation of the School Board's support functions, such as accounting, payroll and purchasing offices, under the city's Finance Department.
The Beach School Board's overspending crisis together with the inability or unwillingness of the Chesapeake School Board to explain major budget disconnects should serve as a harbinger to our leadership and concerned citizens that a reorganization of the Chesapeake School Board is also in order.
We believe that the citizens are entitled to the right answer regarding these actual expenditures. Additionally, with the transition in Chesapeake to an elected School Board, an independent audit is imperative as it will permit the present School Board to identify and resolve any problem areas before they reach the crisis stage similar to what Virginia Beach is experiencing and will provide a ``yardstick'' with which to measure the performance of the newly elected School Board.
Citizens of Chesapeake, if we do not get satisfactory answers from the School Board as to how our tax dollars for education were actually spent, we can express our dissatisfaction at the polls on Dec. 19 during the election of members of the School Board. MEMO: Mr. Pierce, who lives on Creef Lane, is acting vice president of the
Chesapeake Taxpayers Association and an unsuccessful candidate for the
City Council in last month's special election.
by CNB