Budget draft is not transparent

The West Bonner County School Board budget hearing on June 28 was mostly just shameful. The long list they published of seemingly random account names with balances that also seemed completely random couldn’t pass for a budget in any legitimate business. There were no designations of what estimations of payables were and what estimations of receivables were. Heck, they didn’t even have any dates in the document. Really, it’s that bad. Go look for yourself; it’s on the district website: FY24 Budget Draft at bit.ly/3OgrCQO.

There were no projected cash flows. In fact, there were no projections at all. It’s almost like it was designed to deceive people. Either that or whoever put it together is totally incompetent. That’s the budget they produced while Susie Luckey was the interim superintendent.

It’s frightening that Margaret Hall and Carlyn Barton and the pro-levy gang were actually asking for an almost 60% increase in the levy based on that pile of nothing. Thank goodness we voted the levy down. And thank goodness the school board hired an actual professional in Branden Durst to sort that mess out. He was the one bright spot in the whole meeting and was the only one on the administrative staff that knew what he was talking about. Now maybe the district’s children will get an administration that cares more about them than keeping their own relatives in high paying jobs.

KATHY NASH

Blanchard