The budget solutions work group, which met throughout the summer, outlined several recommendations, including reducing the planned contingency fund from 6% to 4%, withdrawing the full $16 million from the district's contingency fund, and freezing spending not already contracted.
At the bottom of the list is the property tax rate reduction, which will generate $13.5M in revenue for the district in the first half of the fiscal year.
Hunter Stout, CFO of Keeneland, was a member of Fayette County Public Schools' budget solutions work group. Stout criticized the board for not providing necessary information ahead of meetings and called the occupational license tax a "last resort."
“You guys showed it as number 10,” Stout said. “It is number 10 by default. We were told to put 10 recommendations up. If we'd only needed if we only were required to put nine recommendations up, the OLT tax would not have made the list. So, it made the list by default.”
Board member Dr. Monica Mundy called for more transparency from the top.
“There are a lot of unknowns, and there's so much that we haven't been communicated. Or when those questions have been asked, I can personally say there has been pushback there as well. And I 100% understand that we can't cut our way out of this, but we can't tax our way out of it either because it's not going away,” Mundy said.
Mundy also questioned how the contingency fund shifted from a projected $42M to a range of $15 to $22 million within a matter of months.
Board member Penny Christian was on the other end of the spectrum.
“Feel free at this point to get your stones ready and your pitchforks and whatever else you got,” said Christian. “Public schools are funded by taxes. It's written in statute. It's what drives the beast.”
School board president Tyler Murphy called for a special meeting in September to allow the group to propose a school tax increase legally. That plan was scrapped this summer after state attorney general Russell Coleman ruled that the process did not follow Kentucky law.
A special meeting will be held on September 5 to hear public comment before a September 8 vote on the tax increase.
Earlier this week FCPS Superintendent Dr. Demetrus Liggins laid out the following plans to help shore up the shortfall:
- Reassign the Financial, Accounting, Budget, and Benefits Services department to report directly to me as superintendent.
- Implement a mandatory hold on filling any district office vacancies.
- Limit all out-of-state or overnight professional development travel funded by the general fund to mandatory purposes only.
- Pause all maintenance projects unless they are directly related to health or safety needs.
- Hire retirees only for substitute teaching roles.
- Provide monthly public updates to keep the community informed.
- Launch an internal review of both current and past financial procedures to ensure best practices.