Even though I applied for membership in this Budget Committee, for various reasons including Dr. Wagner's prohibition in serving as a member of two committees, I have not been allowed to participate in your meetings.
This is illogical since my work experience involves me deeply in government accounting and financial affairs and I have backup to assist me. Not in an effort to toot my own horn, but I have spent 25 years in the accounting profession, including government entities, and I know far more about the issues and facts than anyone on your committee, Dr. Wagner and probably the school business manager.
Saying that, your committee's reports, which are based on inadequate and defective information created by Dr. Wagner, and your recommendations concerning the school's accounting methods ignores the fact that all of its accounting methods are under the strict control of various state and federal regulations, so your idea of changing their accounting methods goes nowhere. How do you do this action, which is from your report:
“The long term stabilization of the budget must involve its restructuring so that appropriate balances are maintained to avoid encroachment of "Restricted Fund" obligations on "Unrestricted Funds"
What is needed is a summary of the budget in language that your committee and the community can understand.
The fault is that the financial decisions of this District have been made by, at best, self-serving administrators pushed by political agendas without any regard to financial facts. I warned the community, Dr. Wagner and the Board in January that the District was well on its way to financial ruin based on the flawed audit of the District.
Dr. Wagner and the union pushed through an incompetent consolidation plan based on documents created by Dr. Wagner containing millions of dollars in errors caused by double adding income items.
Dr. Wagner then withholds the second interim report from the Board for two months hiding the huge deficits and pays back her union supporters with a permanent raise, even though each dollar comes from deficit spending.
She then goes on a spending spree for new bathrooms, moving modulars, huge conference expenses, consultants, outside accountants, attorneys, and now finally lobbyists to support her crazed plans.
And then she goes all the way to Spain to hire a physics (?) teacher whose credentials are at best questionable. She is on her third principal at Vasquez in a single year and this one is not even from our community, but commutes from Ojai every day.
And finally, she issues thousands of dollars of stipends to the teachers in addition to their annual salaries, claiming these are required under the union contract, a copy of which she refuses to provide to the public.
When the new business manager became aware that the Hardship Funds, if received, in Dr. Wagner's opinion, would consume all of the Developer Fees and all of the other encumbrances from the various Dr. Wagner projects would bankrupt the District, she courageously provided this information in her budget, illuminating the problem.
So, your committee should be much more involved in looking at wasteful spending rather than pontificating on creating a new accounting methods. For your edification, the primary difference between the Capital Facilities Account (commonly called the Developer Fee Account) and the General Fund is that the Developer Fees must be spent for capital facilities.
Because of the idiotic decisions by Duzick and Bandaras to finance Vasquez and the completion of Meadowlark with COPs and the renting of modulars, these are considered capital items and can be paid from the Capital Facilities Account (Developer Fee Account) or the General Account.
A sale of the Acton Campus would go into the Capital Facilities Account, but its rental would go into the General Account. If the Capital Facilities Account is exhausted, the unpaid components of the Vasquez rentals and the COPs have to come from the only other possible source, the General Fund.
It is the desire of the union to maximize the General Fund because they usually keep 100% of the excess of the General Fund as raises, which is Dr. Wagner's current goal, to pay off the union for their unquestioned irrational support of her consolidation plan.
The problem here is the superintendent who, either intentionally or through ignorance, does not have the interest of the community as her number one goal.