It was good news for the Wadena-Deer Creek school board Monday: the district ended the 2007-08 school year with an unedited, unreserved balance of $253,421 in the district's general fund, according to auditors.
That figure is up from $2,000 a year earlier and marks the first increase in the balance in the last five years.
The district's total general fund balance, which is arrived at by adding reserved funds, is $434,208. The fund was estimated at $380,000 in September by Business Manager Jerry Anderson.
Revenues and other sources exceeded expenditures and other uses for the first time since 2004. The general fund showed revenues for the 2007-08 school year of $10,435,000 while expenditures came to $9,958,000.
"We've made very significant budget cuts this past year," Anderson said. "We cut over $600,000 out of our budget, which the board needed to do. We were projecting an increase in our unreserved general fund balance of about $176,000 and we ended up greater than that, which was great."
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State sources provided the district with 76 percent of its revenues. Local property tax levies provided 8.46 percent while federal sources provided 6.52 percent, local and county sources provided 6.42 percent and sales and conversion of assets provided 2.6 percent.
School board member Ann Pate indicated she had a few questions about the audit so it did not receive immediate approval by the board.
The audit, which was performed by the certified public accounting firm of Carlson Highland, was presented to the board by Randy Highland Monday night.
