Snow’s Reasons for Not Voting for Huntley School District Budget

In this page five portion of Huntley School District 158 board member Larry Snow’s letter to constituents he explains why he didn’t vote for the budget for the 2006-2007 school year.

The reasons boil down to administrators having such a sweet deal on their retirement plans and health benefits, wasted money on unneeded buses and all high school teachers now teaching only 5 of 7 class periods each day.

He also notes that one school administrator is receiving an extra $10,000 for doing his regular job.

“I Didn’t Vote for This Year’s Budget.” aka “Do You Think the Taxpayers are
Being Ripped Off?”

The budget ratifies too many individual bad financial and management decisions that have already been made. I gave 3 specific reasons.

1. Over $ 440,000 is budgeted so taxpayers are paying for 100% of what the administrators should be paying for their own retirement plans and for health insurance benefits that exceed what other employees get. The “certified” administrators have no FICA (Social Security) deducted from their paychecks but have to have 100% of their employee retirement contributions paid by the taxpayers.

2. District 158 has 25 extra buses not being used in addition to 8 spare buses to replace those needing repair or to be used on trips. There’s $ 234,000 budgeted for 4 more in Dec.

3. It wasn’t enough that 40% of our high school teachers were teaching 5 or fewer classes a day. (There’s 7 classes each day.) They had to insist on 100% that costs $ 333,000.

Side note: Additionally, one administrator is receiving $10,000 in extra compensation for meeting quarterly goals in his contract. If you were to see the “goals” attached to his contract, you might think parts of a job description became individual “goals”. Did you ever have a list of job activities as your “goals”? How about at least a few real goals for an extra $10,000?


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