Evans offers input, feedback on financial decisions
Evans offers input, feedback on financial decisions
The Hollister School District has extended its contract with a $200-per-hour part-time fiscal advisor who has helped the district work through financial troubles during the last two years.
Maureen Evans, vice president of School Services of California, has been the primary fiscal advisor for the district since fall 2010. Seventy-five percent of her contract is paid by the San Benito County Office of Education, and 25 percent is paid by the Hollister School District.
Her contract, which was renewed through May 31 by the school district board this month, calls for consultant pay of $200 per hour plus expenses – including transportation, lodging, meals, long-distance telephone calls, faxing, postage and the duplication of materials. Last year she was paid just more than $49,000 for her services, and to date this school year, she has been paid just more than $21,000, according to Jack Bachofer, the school district’s chief business official.
“She makes sure we don’t do things we’re not supposed to do and would jeopardize our financial situation,” said Bachofer, who recommended the hiring of a consultant in May 2009. “She comes in on a weekly basis and spends an hour or so with the accounting department and then meets with the superintendent. She’s basically here one day a week.”
Evans offers “a final set of eyes” to review the district’s financial reports, Bachofer said.
“Our audits have been clean with very minor exceptions” since Evans came on board, Bachofer said, noting that the district’s financial situation this year – as reflected in its second interim report – “is very close to being positive.”
In three-year projections, “this year and next we are fine,” he said, while the district is $227,702 short of meeting its mandated 3 percent budget reserve for economic uncertainty as it projects to the 2013-14 school year.
Bachofer gives Evans some credit for helping the district weather the fiscal storm while also crediting the “reality check” that the district made two years ago by seeking external assistance.
“(Then-Superintendent) Dr. Ron Crates was a visionary, but he firmly believed we’d have 3,000 new students in a short time based on development projections,” Bachofer said. “That flew smack dab in the face of economic reality. (Current Superintendent) Gary McIntire said you can’t spend on the assumption you’re going to grow and he took a more conservative approach. The board complexion has changed and they are doing their fiduciary responsibility in terms of making sure we’re solvent.”
