schools
may7
11
2020
Vernonia School District Begins Budget Process
The Vernonia School District (VSD) Budget
Committee met by teleconference on Thursday, April
30, 2020 and began their budget process for the 2020-
21 fiscal year.
The Budget Committee is made up of the six
current members of the School Board – Chair Greg
Kintz, Vice Chair Stacey Pelster, and Board members
Susan Wagner, Steve Whiteman, Brittanie Roberts, and
Jeana Gump (there is currently one vacant seat on the
Board), along with two community members – Kellie
Murray and Kimberly Titus (there are currently five va-
cant community seats).
Kellie Murray was elected to serve as Chair-
person of the Budget Committee and Susan Wagner
was elected as Vice Chair.
The Budget was prepared by Superintendent
Aaron Miller and Business Manager Marie Knight.
Superintendent Miller will serve as the Budget Officer
for the budget process.
The General Fund includes revenue of
$8,395,870 which is based on the State School Fund
(SSF) estimate of $7,373,670, using the Governor’s
Budget of $9 billion, and the District’s beginning fund
balance. The District receives funding from the State
based on the number of students they project to be en-
rolled in the upcoming school year. VSD is estimating
enrollment for the 2020-21 school year at 555, which
includes students enrolled in the Vernonia Family
Academy; the VSD had 573 students enrolled in 2020.
Miller said the conservative number projected for the
next year takes into account a large class of seniors this
year, and said if enrollment is higher it would be an
advantage to the District.
During the initial meeting of the Budget Com-
mittee, Superintendent Miller addressed concerns about
the COVID-19 shutdown and its impact on the VSD
budget. “At this point we don’t know what that impact
is, which is why we continue to base our funding and
expenditures on the $9 billion number that came from
the Governor in February,” said Miller. He went on to
say that he and Knight will develop a contingency plan
that includes places to make cuts if there is a funding
shortfall from the state.
Proposed changes from the 2019-20 budget in-
clude contractual increases for salaries and associated
payroll costs; one additional student contact day paid
from the general fund, two additional student contact
days and one additional staff only contract day funded
by the Student Investment Account (SIA); two added
licensed teaching positions – one at the Vernonia Fam-
ily Academy and one Vernonia High School math in-
structor, funded through the SIA.
The General Fund budget includes a contin-
gency fund and an unappropriated ending fund balance
totaling $360,000, 4.29% of the general fund budget –
this represents an increase of approximately 1% from
2019-20. Ideally, these funds should be at 5% of the
general fund. This budget also includes a special sec-
tion designated for revenue and planned expenditures
of the District’s $515,000 Student Investment Account
allocation from Oregon Department of Education
(ODE), through the passage of the SIA. This alloca-
tion will provide much needed funding to the District to
increase capacity to meet the academic needs of tradi-
tionally underserved students, and the social/emotional
needs of all students.
Personnel expenses are a large portion of the
general fund program costs for instruction, support,
and administrative functions. Payroll costs continue to
rise and are one of the most pressing concerns for the
District as they attempt to balance student needs with
the provision of a realistic compensation package for
staff.
Estimated employer rates for the Public Em-
ployees Retirement System (PERS) increased in July
2019, while rates remain stable for 2020-21 in this sec-
ond year of the biennium. 2020-21 rates are 32.03%
of salary for Tier 1 and 2 employees and 26.58% for
OPSRP employees.
Revenues come from two main sources: state
funding and local property taxes. The state revenue, lo-
cal property taxes, and timber revenue are components
of the State School Fund (SSF), which make up ap-
proximately 88% of all General Fund revenue.
The Budget Committee will review the pro-
posed budget, make recommended changes, and send
an approved budget to the School Board for final ap-
proval, which is expected to take place during the June
11 School Board meeting. The Budget Committee will
meet again on May 14.
Vernonia City News...
continued from page 5
management and support. This software will enable
the City to better control and maintain all City of
Vernonia records.
Police Department Report – Chief Conner told the
Council he has hired Dave Brown to fill a vacant of-
ficer position. Brown is from Columbia County and
recently ran for Columbia County Sheriff.
City Administrator Report – City Administrator
Josette Mitchell told the Council she is having dis-
cussions with the Jamboree Committee and Vernonia
Intercultural Society about whether there will be any
events this summer. No final decisions have been
made.
The Threat Below Mount St. Helens continued from page 7
nance, the Forest Service suggested an
additional alternative to the road: bring-
ing in equipment and personnel via he-
licopter. But in early April, the agency
decided to go ahead with the road, and
Strebig hopes that the work, which could
take up to five years, will begin this sum-
mer.
Scientists prefer using helicop-
ters, arguing that they would minimize
the impact on research while still allow-
ing for drilling and maintenance work.
“No one is opposed to the project, but
the Forest Service needs to find a better
alternative than building a road,” said
Carri LeRoy, an ecologist at The Ev-
ergreen State College who studies five
new watersheds that formed on the Pum-
ice Plain post-eruption. She recently re-
ceived a big grant from the National Sci-
ence Foundation, and the proposed road
would cross all five watersheds, ending
her project before it can really begin.
But the helicopter alternative,
with its tougher logistics and higher
price, was a hard sell. A few scientists
who attended planning meetings late last
year left fearing a decision had already
been made. “I just came away with a
sense that (the Forest Service) is bound
and determined to build that road,” Le-
Roy said.
In outreach meetings, too, For-
est Service officials have talked up the
destructive mudflow Spirit Lake could
unleash, showing pictures of flooded
towns from 1980 while de-emphasizing
that such an outcome is only a distant
possibility. The project is being sold to
the public as essential for safety reasons,
according to Arne Mortensen, a com-
missioner for Cowlitz County, where the
downstream towns are located. “Absent
a near-term and long-term cost analy-
sis to show otherwise,” he wrote in an
email, “using the road approach looks
better.”
Scientists fear that they were
subtly scapegoated, and the importance
of their studies brushed aside, in an ef-
fort to cut costs. “I’m worried they’re
just paying lip service to researchers’
concerns,” LeRoy said. Hoffman, the
monument manager, denies this: “We’re
working with specific researchers, and
will continue to work with the research
community to limit the amount of im-
pact that occurs,” she said.
But Susan Saul, a conservation-
ist with the Washington Native Plant
Society who was instrumental in get-
ting the blast area designated a national
monument, said project planners have
been cavalier about the road’s possible
impacts on research. For example, a For-
est Service staffer wrote that the physi-
cal environment “will have returned to
baseline” within two years of the proj-
ect’s completion. To Saul, that phrasing
betrays a fundamental misunderstanding
of the relationship between science and
the landscape at Mount St. Helens. Ecol-
ogists want to study how life responds
after an eruption. But a road will change
everything, with effects that extend far
beyond its physical footprint: Vehicles
crush vegetation, ferry in introduced
species and change animal behavior,
among other things. Slap a road through
the Pumice Plain, and the research there
would effectively be reduced to how life
responds after a road is built — a much
less interesting project. “So it seems like
the writer wasn’t taking the research se-
riously,” Saul said.
For ecologists, this serious-
ness, or its lack, could have profound
consequences. What is the value of a
monument devoted to the processes of
disturbance and ecological succession
if those processes are themselves irre-
vocably disturbed? That is a question
as yet unstudied, but as Crisafulli, the
Forest Service ecologist, points out, no
one has invested more in the research at
Mount St. Helens than the federal gov-
ernment. “The agency has spent millions
of dollars on multiple studies for the past
four decades,” he said. “There’s no get-
ting around the fact that building a road
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through the heart of it would put that
legacy at risk.”
This article was originally published
in High Country News on May 1, 2020.
Eric Wagner lives in Seattle with his
family. His book After the Blast: The
Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Hel-
ens was published in April by the Uni-
versity of Washington Press.
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A public meeting of the Board of Directors will be held on May 21, 2020 at 7 pm via virtual meeting at https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/833536261 or Toll
Free 1-866-899-4676 Access Code: 833-536-261. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2020 as approved
by the Mist-Birkenfeld Rural Fire Protection District Budget Committee. A summary of the budget is presented below. A copy of the budget may be inspected or
obtained at Main Station, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. or online at https://www.mistbirkenfeldrfpd.org/20-21-budget-information This budget is for an
annual budget period. This budget was prepared on a basis of accounting that is the same as the preceding year.
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