By all accounts, the budget process for the upcoming school year was a relatively painless process.
McDuffie County Schools Comptroller Tom Smalley said the school system is actually ahead of where it was projected to be financially.
"The bottom line is that we should end up with more ending fund balance for '04, which is the beginning fund balance for '05, than we projected," he said. "We were actually able to spend one percent less than what I had projected we would spend at budget time a couple of months ago."
Instead of spending 94 percent of budget, the school system only spent 93 percent. Just that one percent of savings will give the schools a nice cushion to start FY 05. Mr. Smalley also reiterated that a millage rate increase is not in the works for this fall, which should be good news for McDuffie County taxpayers.
All that's left for Mr. Smalley and the rest of the finance department to do is take care of some odds and ends.
"What we're doing over the next couple of months (is) I'm going to be tidying up the records, I'm going to be booking accounts receivable from state agencies, and we should pick up some additional operating reserve, so the bottom line is that we should end up with more ending fund balance for '04 which is beginning fund balance for '05 than we projected fund balance," he said.
