Mt. Vernon Register-News

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September 14, 2011

RLC board approves budget, levy

By RORYE O’CONNOR rorye.oconnor@register-news.com

INA — The Rend Lake College Board of Education adopted its final Fiscal Year 2012 budget at the Tuesday full board meeting.

Bob Carlock, RLC vice president of finance, said the budget shows revenues of $24.1 million in the Education Fund and Operations and Maintenance Funds with a surplus of about $664,000.

Carlock said the Education Fund revenues are budgeted at $21,208,164 and the Operations and Maintenance Fund are budgeted for more than $2.8 million.

“It looks like we should have a fairly decent year if there are no problems coming up,” he said, adding that the state had been paying some bills but there was no telling what the future could bring in terms of waiting for bills to be paid. “We anticipate a decent year depending on how the cash comes in.”

There were no public comments during the public hearing before the full board meeting on Tuesday.

Carlock said the budget was up about 5 percent because of pending raises for faculty and staff as well as the ongoing effort to install a new Enterprise Resource Planning computer system across the campus.

“We had to hire three to four additional people for that because of the intensity of the effort,” he said. He added other items such as utilities had increased as expected.

In other business, the board approved the 2011 Tax Levy, payable 2012. RLC President Charley Holstein said the college’s tax levy will increase by 2.74 percent over last year’s levy, increasing from $4.6 million in 2010, payable 2011, to more than $4.7 million for the 2011 levy.

Because the increase is less than 105 percent of the previous year’s levy, the district is not required to hold a Truth in Taxation hearing for the public to discuss the tax increase.

The RLC 2011 Tax Levy includes $1.67 million to be levied for educational purposes; $402,831 for Operations and Maintenance purposes; $700,000 for a special tax for purposes of the Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act; $163,000 for Social Security and Medicare insurance purposes; $40,283 for financial audit purposes; and $125,000 to be levied as a special tax for protection, health and safety purposes.

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