Marlboro lays out five-year fiscal plan

By Mark Reynolds
Posted 2/20/19

Patrick Witherow, Director of Business and Finance for the Marlboro School District, recently presented the school board with a long term financial projection that reaches out through the 2022-2023 …

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Marlboro lays out five-year fiscal plan

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Patrick Witherow, Director of Business and Finance for the Marlboro School District, recently presented the school board with a long term financial projection that reaches out through the 2022-2023 academic school year.

Witherow said at the end of the 2016-17 school year the district had $13.5 million in a combination of reserves and assigned and unassigned fund balances. However, by the end of the 2017-18 school year the district’s totals dropped to $11.96 million because of an operating deficit of $1.54 million.

Witherow said the district’s current final tax cap calculation stands at an allowed 2.17 percent increase in the levy, “which would bring our allowable levy up from about $34.7 million to about $35.7 million; it’s about $963,000 and some change.”


Witherow said continued attention will be given to the district’s operating deficit, which he anticipates will hit $1.7 million in the 2018-19 school year. He said this was a planned operational deficit.

“We knew these were going to occur [and] drops down to about $1.5 million in the 2019-20 school year. Then we start to see debt drop off, so in the 2020-21 school year we see a reduction of $500,000 in debt payment and we also see our operational deficit drop by about that much. In the year after that we have a $1.2 million tax certiorari debt payment that drops off and again we see a significant amount of the operational deficit drop off. By the 2021-22 school year we’ve started to rebuild reserves and fund balance. It’s kind of like that ‘soft’ landing we talked about and everything is continuing along those lines as we anticipated.”

The $1.2 million debt that drops off concludes a $10 million judgment case in favor of Central Hudson.

Witherow said at the low point in the coming five-year cycle, the district “bottoms out” in total reserves and fund balance at $6.26 million. He added that this figure, however, still maintains the district’s legal 4% limit of allowable unassigned fund balance, “and it gives us almost $4 million on top of that as continuing buffer.”

In an email response for additional information on the reserve funds, Witherow wrote: The money held by the district in excess of the allowable 4% fund balance are held in reserves...These reserves are examined annually by the board, after the financial audit is completed and the operating deficit or loss is known.”

[Information on the reserves can be found on the School district’s website, www.marlboroschools.org under the Central Administration tab, then click Business Administration and click the last link on the right hand side column]

Witherow said as the budget season moves into the spring, he will keep the board apprised of any changes and items they should consider for the 2019-20 budget. He will also update the board “on what those continuing operating deficits look like going forward. But this is kind of the picture of where we are; still very strong financially.”