Platte Canyon School District Claims $6 million in reserve-PACE FACT CHECK

FROM THE DISTRICT:

“PCSD Auditor and State Auditor Confirm District's Strong Financial Health

At last Monday's regular PCSD1 Board of Education meeting, Uli Keeley of Prospective Business Solutions LLC (Certified Public Accountants), the District's independent auditor, discussed the District's audit report for fiscal year 2022. During her presentation, Ms. Keeley noted that the District's net financial position had improved, mainly due to a reduction in reported retirement liabilities, and that the District maintains a healthy financial reserve in excess of $6 million dollars.

FALSE- Based on the analysis below the district does NOT have a $6 MILLION reserve. Platte Canyon School District DOES have restricted funds totaling $1.7 million.

The current audit draft is posted here . Past audits can be found here.

Equity of the District is measured in two ways:

Fund Balance and Net Position

Fund Balance – Governmental funds are used to provide information on inflows, outflows and balances of spendable resources. Unassigned balances is a useful measure of the District resources available for spending at the end of the year. This balance is necessary to fund operations, it is not a reserve.

According to the financial statement draft, the District had a total of $7.5 million in fund balance and $5.8 million was unrestricted.

Based on the financial audit draft, the district required $11.8 million in total outflows in the year ending June 30, 2021 of which $11 million was related to operations, not debt.

Based on the information above the District could operate ($5.8/$11 million) for about half of one year with the resources it had on hand as of June 30, 2022.

Net Position – Reflects the equity of the District after all assets, deferred outflows, liabilities and deferred inflows. It is separated based on net investment in capital assets, restricted and unrestricted.

Net investment in capital assets is significant because it reflects buildings, equipment, etc.; resources that are not available for expenditure.

The District’s restricted net position reflects resources required to be maintained for TABOR.

The remaining unrestricted net position is a negative ($6.5) million. This is an improvement from the prior year unrestricted negative net position of ($13.1) million.