Cinfici’s Speech at the May 23, 2018 Reading School Board Meeting on Fiscal and Budgetary Matters

           I spoke at the Reading School Board meeting yesterday about the accomplishments of a former colleague who recently passed away and about related budgetary matters, which was covered in the Reading Eagle: http://www.readingeagle.com/news/article/reading-school-board-oks-tentative-budget-with-tax-increase.

            I noted how when I served as a Reading School Director the second time in 2013, the Administration was not providing the Board with regular financial statements, withholding other information, providing false information and changing information at the last minute.  I observed that the current Board had no idea how difficult it was to make budgetary decisions under such circumstances.  Because our Board did not want our successors to face a similar situation, my late colleague, who chaired the Finance Committee, and I worked with the Administration to produce a comprehensive document so the Board could make more fully informed budgetary decisions, something I note I had also done when I served the first time from 2005-2009.  The monthly financial statement was singled out for praise by the Pennsylvania Auditor General as exemplary of the Reading School District’s financial and board governance turnaround, for which my colleague deserved credit.

            Speaking of the difficult budget process of 2013, I took the opportunity to tell the Board, which was considering whether to spend its fund balance or raise taxes to close a budget shortfall, but not apparently considering any spending reductions, that there were a number of items the Board considered to cut spending or increase revenue without raising taxes that the Board did not have the time to consider more fully.  I invited the current Board to look back at those ideas and work its way through them before reaching its final decision on the budget.  I did not have time to mention there were additional ideas.

            I mentioned other items my colleague and I supported and had hoped our successors would adopt that I have repeatedly raised.  The first was adopting a Board policy to eliminate non-competitive contracts for professional services by requiring periodically requests for proposals.  Observing that this matter was tied to Reading’s pay-to-play scandal and is costly to the District, I stated that the taxpayers had a right to know that the Board’s hiring was based upon merit, not who knows somebody or who makes the most political contributions. 

The second was the formation by the Board of an Audit Committee to improve oversight and financial controls.  I noted the Board already had something somewhat similar in its Board Policy (which are like its constitution or bylaws), but, as in other respects, it was not following its own policy. 

I urged the Board to consider these ideas and thanked them for the opportunity to present them.  I shall continue to follow up to promote sound fiscal policies and practices and spending decisions to make the best use of taxpayer dollars for the poor, urban District’s quarter-billion dollar budget.