The first of tw
o planned public forums on how to spend the approximate annual $1.5 million from the Gun Lake Casino Monday evening attracted absolutely no one from the public.
The Wayland Board of Education plans to have another public session on casino spending at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 21. The date was reported incorrectly earlier as April 18.
Such meetings in previous years prompted a lot of public comment and some changes have been made as a result. However, it appears the spending priorities will be about the same as the 2015-16 fiscal year.
“I expect that it pretty much will look like this year’s, but there may be a few tweaks here and there,” Finance Director Bill Melching told the school board.
Last year’s total casino funding pot was composed of three main funding categories — the public improvement fund ($675,000, or 46%), community support ($389.047, or 27%) and instructional support ($397,400, or 27%).
The board consistently over the five years since the casino opened, has resisted spending any of the money on any budget items in the general fund.
“We will not use casino funds (directly) for any projected budget deficit,” Melching insis
ted. “We’ll make whatever reductions that need to be made 
to balance the budget.”
Administrators indeed are considering the possibility the district will have a deficit of about $95,000 at the close of fiscal year 2016-17 because of an anticipated increase of 13.1 percent in employee health insurance costs through MESSA.
So the board spent part of the work session poring over ideas in adjusting provisions for field trips and fund-raising that could reduce some of the projected shortfall.
The casino budget from last year included about $30,000 from each line item. Administrators and board members agreed that there will be no changes to permit charging for field trips, but they are open to perhaps relaxing rules governing student fund-raising.
“We are, by far, the exception (among area schools) in not charging students for field trips,” Melching noted.
But both he and Superintendent Norm Taylor agreed that allowing different organizations to get creative in the way they raise funds is not such a bad idea, especially if the ban on door-to-door fund-raising is honored.
Taylor, when asked by Treasurer Toni Ordway to make a recommendation, said he is uncomfortable with doing so at this early date because there still are too many unknowns. He noted that the schools may have between two and four teacher retirements, which would impact expenses, and the state won’t announce what the per-pupil state aid allowance will be for next fiscal year until October.
Trustee Pete Zondervan said, “We don’t know what we have on the revenue side, but we need to show fiscal responsibility.”
Another unknown is the student count. An optimistic view is that the district may increase by 25, but it’s just a guessing game right now.
So the board decided to keep things the way they are now and react to changes when they come.
So it appears the casino spending priorities will be about the same as last year.
