Seven months ago, candidates who won seats on the Hamilton County Board of Education in August were clear the school board's budget and budgeting process were in need of help.
Most board members are not business people, District 1 school board member and candidate Rhonda Thurman told the Times Free Press editorial board, adding the board needs zero-based budgeting (essentially beginning anew each year). They don't know how to "meet a budget," she said.
"We need a financial strategic plan - something that could be done by somebody from the outside," District 2 then-candidate Kathy Lennon told the newspaper. "We must do it."
It's not an accountable or transparent board, District 4 then-candidate Tiffanie Robinson said. The board, she added, conceivably could begin student-based budgeting in the 2017-2018 school year.
"The budget bothers me," District 8 then-candidate Joe Wingate said. "There's a vagueness. It's hard to track 25 percent [of it] to the source."
That was then.
On Thursday, when the district's assistant superintendent of finance, Christie Jordan, reviewed the 2017-2018 budget, there was little pushback to the $365 million operating budget board members were seeing for the second time - and is similar to the budget for 2016-2017 - and the $32 million in extra funds the district is seeking.
Only Robinson suggested the board should begin forecasting budgets for future years that might reflect in what direction the district should go and how those budgets might affect the needs for additional funds.
"My hunch is," she said, "that our funding body (the County Commission) would want to see that same thing."
Jordan said the district has not prepared multiple-year budgets in the last decade.
Thurman, who had to leave the meetng early, challenged Jordan on administrative positions that were said to be cut and were later added back under new titles but did not provide evidence.
Wingate, in the previous meeting, had asked about cuts. Jordan, on Thursday, said "it's not like we don't try to look for cuts."
Perhaps, then, members are saving their firepower for the board's next finance committee meeting. But for new board members who believed things weren't up to snuff in the district's previous budgets, $365 million (plus $32 million more) is a lot of money not to be curious about.
Interim Superintendent Dr. Kirk Kelly and board member Karitsa Mosley Jones said the only problem with the budget was it wasn't larger.
Kelly noted the county hasn't raised property taxes to help school funding in 12 years (though the district gets more revenue each year from growth in county property tax collections and from state funds), and Mosley Jones said everyone knows the district needs more funding.
But this is the same district which was given more than $10 million in federal grants and extra support for its low-performing schools (three of which are in Mosley Jones' district) and had to be reminded to spend the rest of its funds before the money ran out this year.
We hope interest in the budget and budget process wasn't only election-year talk.