The Austin Board of Education received an "A" Monday night.

Tuesday, October 10, 2000

The Austin Board of Education received an "A" Monday night.

The grade was bestowed on the school board for its work in managing the district’s finances. Making the award was Darwin Viker, an accountant with LAWCO who reported on the annual audit.

School board member Larry Andersen, one of four new school board members elected after the deficit spending was exposed, asked Viker to grade the school board for its performance a year ago and today.

"Last year, because of all the deficit spending I would have to give you a D minus," Viker said, going along with Andersen’s tongue-in-cheek request. "This year, it would be an ‘A’ for all the steps taken to turn the deficit spending around."

According to Viker’s audit report, the district general fund balance on July 1, 1999, was a minus $333,397. With actual revenues of $28.77 million and actual expenditures of $28.36 million, that represents a net gain of $411,010 and leaves the general fund balance at a plus $77,613.

The community service fund remains a deficit.

The fund ended fiscal 1999 with a deficit of $305,218, had revenues of $1.1 million and expenditures of $1.03 million for a net gain of $70,044.

After poring over each account and answering the school board members’ questions, Viker continued his praise: "You’ve done a good job of turning things around and they should continue."

Viker praised Volz and the business office staffing level, said the district had good software to track its finances and that the school board was giving good oversight.

One school board member, Amy J. Baskin, cautioned everyone: "It’s easy to get a false sense of security at a time like this."

Viker also told the school board members about what he called "significant changes" in the area of fixed assets accounting.

Mandated by law, the new accounting changes will require an inventory of all of the district’s fixed assets, buildings, equipment and more, and computing their depreciation.

"There will be a lot more auditing work to come for the financial office," he said.

According to Viker, the "driving force" behind the changes for local government entities was the push for more information for the public.

"Citizens groups, other government entities, everybody wants more information in the form of a financial statement that, theoretically, they should be able to better understand," he said.

Viker predicted the fixed assets appraisals will impact county and city government units more than school districts, "because there will have to be appraisals of their infrastructure, too."

Austin school board member Kathy Green asked Viker, "Is there any way this will benefit our students?"

Viker had no straight answer to the question except to say the new information should have an impact on how citizens study school districts handling funds for education.