The treasurer of Chinook's Edge School Division told trustees that the budget process for 2012-13 is progressing well and will be ready for preliminary adoption in June by trustees.Susan Roy told trustees that staffing levels were still being worked on at the last meeting on May 9 and that all the factors related to the budget were being refined to present to trustees. Roy said that upon further review, she is projecting about 10,750 students in 2012-13, about the same as this year's enrolment. The finance committee will be reviewing the latest numbers at the end of the month, going over the budget line by line before it goes before the full board, which is expected to be at the June 13 meeting.“We're certainly challenged to make it all work, but we're working through (the budget) and we're certainly dipping into reserves a little bit to make it all work,” Roy said, noting that at this preliminary juncture, reserves appear to be declining by about $1 million in order to balance the budget. If that scenario holds when the preliminary budget is presented to the board in June, Roy said she would still be comfortable with the $1 million going into the budget to preserve a balanced budget because the division would be within the three to five per cent of the total budget that would still be held in reserves.“We're still in good solid shape (in terms of reserves),” she said, noting that trying to put together a budget is as much an art as a science because it's a best guess about what may happen. “We're really conservative when we do that.”
