Reading the recent Courier Times article about the budget at Council Rock, people may have gotten the impression there’s a lot of items that can be trimmed before looking at salaries and benefits. The article stated that salaries and benefits comprise 55% of the budget. That percentage is way understated.
Next year’s proposed budget shows salaries of $106,761,918 and benefits of $38,369,660 for a total of $145,131,578. Based on a $200,394,318 budget, that’s 72%. That’s a large difference.
Whether this was an error in calculation or was a figure intended to paint a rosier picture on the impact of salaries and benefits is unclear.
The salaries and benefits rise to $145,131,578 from $140,298, 907 this year and from $133,913,790 last year. (2009-10 salaries were $104,105,176 and benefits $36,193,731; 2008-09 were $102,023,833 and $31,889,957 respectively.)
With expenditures such as transportation, energy costs, maintenance and such, there are a number of costs that are inevitable and can only be trimmed so far. By stating that salaries and benefits make up just 55%, the article may imply that there are a lot of expenses (45% of the budget) which drive it that high and force taxes higher. But the biggest chunk of the budget and the biggest driving force for its size is the amount spent on salaries and benefits.
Cuts in energy usage, better transportation utilization and similar savings will trim around the edges and hold things down a bit. At a certain point though, you can only trim the edges so far. The only way to maintain significant control over the rise in budgets and taxes is to get control over that largest chunk.
Filed under: Benefits, Budget, Council Rock, Data, Salaries, Taxes, Teachers Tagged: | Benefits, Budget, Contracts, Salaries, Taxes, Teachers
