Finance Board Approves New BOE Financial Software

The Board of Finance approved the school district's request at its regular meeting on Monday to use existing surplus funds to purchase new financial software and replace a cafeteria food steamer. The town and school board will also be contributing more money to Avon Middle School tennis court restoration.

In order to do so, the board granted three supplemental appropriations, which will be booked under the 2010-11 fiscal year. The supplemental appropriations provision of the town charter allows the Avon Town Council and Board of Finance to approve of the use of certain excess funds to cover the cost of items not already specifically accounted for in the annual budget.

The board members reviewed the sources of the funds prior to voting.

Budget Sense

The largest appropriation the board approved, amounting to $224,475, concerned school district's request to use some of its revolving account funds to purchase new accounting software, called Budget Sense. The funds would also cover the cost of servers and financial consulting services from Blum Shapiro auditors.

Board of Finance Chairman Thomas Harrison said Tuesday that funding for the financial software would come from the 2010-11 revolving account, which held $848,000 as of 10 days ago. About $169,000 of the surplus includes a school board general fund operating surplus, though this amount was not touched, he said, for the requested appropriations. Technically, the $224,475 will be transferred from the revolving account to a capital improvement project fund within the general fund and designated for Budget Sense.

The Town Council signed off on the appropriation for Budget Sense on Aug. 4 before passing the request onto the Board of Finance. However, some council members initially , noting that would come from a surplus, which predominantly consisted of $756,836.63 in special education and excess cost reimbursements received as of June. Councilwoman Pamela Samul questioned whether it was fair to use the funds for anything but special education.

School officials previously explained that because money in the operating budget was already used to pay for special education outplacement, any additional funds after offsetting the expenses would be freed up. Operating budget payments for special education outplacement does not initially include state grants and reimbursements from the Hartford school district for Project Choice students attending Avon schools. Those funds come in later in the year. The cost and amount of students being outplaced varies by year and program, depending on need.

Avon Superintendent of Schools Gary Mala once again presented his case for the need for the new financial system Monday. He said the current software, Great Plains is deficient in a number of areas, including human resource management, purchase order tracking, budget capabilities and proficiency of reporting. Many of the functions now performed manually would be handled by the requested software.

“I have a number of staff working a disproportionate number of hours beyond what their positions call for to manage this,” said Mala.

School officials interviewed four companies before deciding on UniFund's Budget Sense software package.

Mala said the estimated payback period for the investment would be less than two years with the costs recouped from employee hours saved by the efficiency of the system.

New Food Steamer

The money to purchase a new food steamer for Avon Middle School was drawn from a surplus from the school's cafeteria special revenue fund. The cost for the equipment is $18,259. The surplus in the fund is in excess of $230,000, prompting a question from board member Catherine Durdan as to why school lunch prices were recently increased if the cafeteria fund was carrying such a large balance.

School officials said the decision for the increase was based on a comparison with surrounding towns and a desire to keep the food service employee and operation costs separate from the general school budget.

Steve Bartha, assistant to the town manager, said that the cafeteria fund is self-sustaining and also covers cafeteria personel salaries and benefits. The balace, or leftover money, in that account is solely used for capital equipment costs for the school district's cafeterias.

Avon Middle School Tennis Courts

Finally, the finance board voted to approve a supplemental appropriation of $40,000 for the construction of tennis courts at Avon Middle School, split evenly between town and school board surplus funds.

The school board voted on Aug. 10 to appropriate $20,000 for the project from excess money in its plant and facilities account, which includes fees people pay to use school facilities. The Town Council pledged $20,000 on Aug. 4 from its capital projects account, which became available when some town capital projects cost less than anticipated.

The finance board approved the appropriation with the understanding that no money would be spent until a United States Tennis Association (USTA) comes in and provided that other funds do not fall short.

“If the private money didn't come in, they would have to come back to us and ask for more money, and we would say probably no. That's the safety valve, they couldn't get it out of the cookie jar without coming back here again and we would give body signals saying the cookie jar is closed,” board member Thomas Gugliotti said.

That brings the total town and school board contribution to $65,000. The town and school board previously agreed to put $12,500 each toward the project, $25,000 total. The remaining cost would come from private contributions and grants.

The total cost for the project itself is about $135,000, which rose since the initial projection of $125,000 because of water drainage problems under the courts.

That does not include up to $45,000 of "in-kind services," as Public Works Department employees will be assigned to site work on the tennis courts on slow days when they are not needed for other town maintenance projects like road or trail work or lawn mowing, accoring to Bartha. 

"It won't cost the town any more," Bartha clarified because the work will happen during normal hours, and their salaries and equipment costs are already accounted for in the budget. The employees would not be paid extra, Harrison explained. No additional funds have been requested to cover in-kind services, as a result.

The in-kind services are recorded in the total project costs when applying for grants, Bartha said, bringing the total to $180,000. Excluding the in-kind services, $65,000 from the project comes from taxpayer money and the rest will come from private donations and the USTA grant.

Project organizers expected to hear about the grant by September. Once the renovation is complete, the courts will be open again to the public for use in the off-hours.