Monday, I wrote about the extra couple dozen buses that District 158 has sitting unused.

Pretty poor planning.

Also on Monday Northwest Herald reporter Tom Musick wrote how the new budget would add still more buses:

A fast-growth grant and additional state aid that was in limbo for several months will help District 158 spend more on teachers, buses and other items this year.

Apparently, the budget document Huntley School District 158 approved has Chief Operations Officer Glen Stewart planning on buying 4 more school buses.

There’s even a letter on page 124—the very last page—of the budget from Stewart making that recommendation.

The cost is only $234,357.

No bigger than a rounding error in a $68 million budget, right.

Just in case that page disappears, you can read it here. Just click on McHenry County Blog’s images for an enlargement.

Is this a way to pad Stewart’s budget?

As a former budget examiner for the United States Bureau of the Budget, trust me, there are less obvious ways to pad a budget that to put in four news buses, when empty ones sit (at 8:15 in the morning) outside the building where the board meetings are held. Of course, the board does not meet at 8:15 AM, so reporters won’t see them unless they make a special trip.

Maybe the Finance Committee members didn’t know about the surplus buses.

Maybe they will amend the budget the way the old school board did in June 2006, right before the end of the fiscal year.

I’m told that Stewart ran for school board on a platform of “Fiscal Responsibility.”

No wonder Larry Snow and Aileen Seedorf didn’t vote for the budget.