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Steamboat Springs — The BOCES board approved the 2009-10 budget Thursday, carrying over a deficit of more than $34,000 from last year.

The Northwest Board of Co­operative Educational Ser­­vices’ deficit figure came from a draft audit.

BOCES will remain $34,000 in the red even after it applies $273,000 in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act federal stimulus funding — which BOCES hasn’t yet received but e-mails presented by Executive Director Jane Toothaker indicated had been approved — and $44,000 in total payments from Steamboat Springs, Hayden and South Routt school districts for the Day Treatment Program.

The stimulus funding and Day Treatment assessments come to $317,000 — the amount BOCES overspent last year. However, it’s not enough to make up for the more than $351,000 deficit it had as of June 30, 2009, the end of the 2008-09 fiscal year.  

BOCES are mandated by the School District Budget Law in the Colorado Revised Statutes to not have “expenditures, interfund transfers or reserves in excess of available revenues and beginning fund balances.”

Vody Herrmann, the public school financing assistant commissioner for the Colorado Department of Education, said Friday that the department would evaluate BOCES’ deficit at a later time. She said the Education Department had not seen the draft audit.

The deficit was revealed during a presentation of the 2008-09 draft audit during Thursday night’s BOCES board meeting in Hayden. BOCES auditor Timothy Mayberry, of Johnson, Holscher & Co. PC, of Centennial, presented the audit based on the most recent figures he was provided by BOCES. The board took no action on the audit.

Mayberry called the audit a “moving target.” He said it would change after BOCES received the federal stimulus funding and Day Treatment assessments. Mayberry said he hoped to have the final audit completed by the Dec. 9 BOCES superintendents meeting.

In September, BOCES re­­vealed that it had overspent last year’s budget and needed to increase assessments for services in 2009-10 by more than $481,000 in addition to what was presented in May, when the districts were drafting their budgets.

BOCES is a cooperative agency that provides state-mandated special education services to more than 600 students in six districts in Northwest Colorado, including Steamboat, Hayden and South Routt. It also provides other services, such as the Yampa Valley School, the Routt County districts’ alternative school.

Board members seemed surprised when told that BOCES would still be in the red after applying the stimulus funding and Day Treatment assessments to what they thought was only a $317,000 deficit.

BOCES Finance Director Chloe Flam said the audit revealed that BOCES was short more than it thought, but she and Toothaker wanted to move forward with this year’s budget. The alternative was waiting for a different solution or requesting additional stimulus funding.

South Routt Superintendent Scott Mader said the BOCES superintendents supported moving on and not picking everything apart.

Flam said she wanted to evaluate this year’s BOCES spending, which has been unclear because of BOCES’ accounting methods in previous years. A line-item budget wasn’t prepared for the board’s review before Flam was hired in June.

The board approved the 2009-10 budget because it wanted to move forward. Toothaker presented the board with assessments at or near what was originally presented to districts in May. The budget also included cuts and eliminated all but $15,000 in contingencies, which Flam said could be used to help offset the remaining deficit. She said BOCES would evaluate how to make up the rest of the $34,000 through 2009-10.

Board members approved the 2009-10 budget by a 4-1 vote. The board member representing the East Grand School District didn’t attend the meeting. Steamboat representative Laura Anderson voted against the motion, expressing concern with using stimulus funds to make up for last year’s overspending.

“I think there are good questions that haven’t been answered,” she said, but Anderson added that she supported the board’s action.

The board also discussed the Colorado Department of Education’s decision to strip BOCES of its responsibility to distribute federal title funding. That funding usually flows through BOCES to the districts, but instead the districts will receive that funding directly.

“When I first saw the letter, I thought it was a vote of ‘no confidence’ in our BOCES by CDE,” Anderson said.

BOCES just distributed the districts’ checks for 2008-09 title funding, which came to more than $777,000.

After the meeting, Hoza said the districts and superintendents finally were getting clarity to make better decisions, but new information still was being revealed.

Hoza said he thought the board was nearing a resolution to the financial situation. But he admitted that the challenge would be trying to find a way, with declining revenue and tight budgets in each district, to provide the same level of service in future years.

He said the board hadn’t settled its personnel questions.

That will come up when the board meets for a special session, tentatively set for 6 p.m. Nov. 23 in Steamboat. At the meeting, which will be held entirely in executive session, the board plans to discuss the BOCES administration team. That will include discussion about how the BOCES management structure — the executive director, director of special education and finance director — works and related personnel issues.