Dear Board Members,
I would like to express my concerns about funding out of parcel taxes an
expenditure listed in the agenda for the WCCUSD BOE meeting for Dec. 7,
2011 under:
F.2 K-6 RLA Instructional Materials Adoption
http://www.wccusd.net/wccusd/lib/wccusd/20111207_BOE_Agenda.pdf#page=13
This calls for the use of $900,000 over 3 years ($2.7 million) in
"Parcel Tax monies". In the last adopted budget and the interim report
under consideration tonight there is $1.25 million in existing
expenditures in "Textbooks and teaching materials". The F.2 agenda item
does not say how this number would be affected. Is this a way of
spending $900K of the existing $1.25M? Is this an additional expenditure
on top of the $1.25? If so, where will cuts occur in other
parcel-tax-funded activities to make up for this?
Furthermore, as pointed out by another writer to the board, the
budgeting categories used for the parcel tax are based on the previous
parcel tax's categories not the current parcel tax.
<http://www.smartvoter.org/2008/11/04/ca/cc/meas/D/> The current parcel
tax does not include "textbooks and teaching materials". The parcel tax
expenditures need to be realigned based on the current categories. I
would think that you would want to sort this out before making a major
new commitment of parcel tax funds.
Finally, we are in a time of extreme budget uncertainty just before the
final determination of trigger cuts. Is this really a good time to make
this sort of commitment irrespective of special time-sensitive offers
from the vendors?
Thank you,
Charley Cowens
Local Resident
charley@cowens.net