The cash-strapped New Westminster school district is holding a "special" open meeting to discuss the 2012/13 amended budget, which it's had to scramble to put together because secretary-treasurer Brian Sommerfeldt is off on medical leave.
The board met last night to discuss the budget, but board of education chair Michael Ewen said trustees may need more time to review the latest budget, which required a number of cuts to deal with a potential shortfall.
"It's just a matter of with Brian off sick, it's much more complex to put it together," Ewen said about the budget.
As of Tuesday, the board had scheduled the extra bud-get meeting for Thursday, Feb. 28 at 6 p.m. at the New Westminster Secondary School library.
"It may be trustees decide they don't need to have an extra meeting, and they are prepared to pass the budget tonight," Ewen said, though he noted he saw the amended budget at 2 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, just a few hours before the board was slated to meet and felt he would need more time to review the budget.
Al Balanuik, the district's assistant secretary-treasurer, has been doing Sommerfeldt's job while he is away. Ewen doesn't know how long Sommerfeldt will be off.
Ewen said Balanuik has been able to call on Joan Axford, a consultant the district hired to review its books last fall.
"She's provided some advice," he said. "She's not sitting there writing figures, but I think Al's been in touch with her saying, 'OK, what about this and what about this?'"
Axford was brought in after the board learned about a "surprise" $2.8 million deficit from last year.
At the time, Axford told the board that it faced another hefty $2.2 million deficit this year. As a result, the district has cut services, staff and supplies in order to offset the shortfall.
But that doesn't mean the district's amended budget will be balanced, Ewen said.
"We simply won't know until nearer to the end of June whether we've been successful," he said, referring to variable expenses and funding. "We are sort of far away from the three-year stable funding that we had been promised."
Ewen said it's tough to find "predictability" in the funding formula.
"We've had in the past, we've had governments change the funding rules . without actually telling school boards and just changing and releasing the amounts, and secretary-treasurers have had to figure that out. That happened this year," he said. "It's not consistent and it's not predictable, and that just leaves everybody in a bit of a mess."
The board has to pass the amended 2012/13 budget by Feb. 28, and the final budget for the year must be passed by the end of June.
