Madison County treasurer to expedite payments to schools

Madison County Treasurer Chris Slusser has announced that his office will be expediting property tax distributions in September to help some local school districts — at least temporarily — avoid a funding crisis. Slusser said that his office will now make two distributions next month, the first Sept. 12 and the second Sept. 26.

The September property tax distribution was originally scheduled for Sept. 20. However, during a recent meeting with Bethalto School District Superintendent Jill Griffin and Business Manager Barrett Diest, Slusser was informed that the district was in jeopardy of not making payroll in September due to the state funding crisis. With the new school funding bill (SB1) now held up in the legislature, the schools have not received their General State Aid payments in August.

“The legislature can’t seem to get its act together, and unfortunately, we can’t control what they’re planning to do or when they’re planning to do it. In the meantime, schools are held hostage, and some are in jeopardy of closing their doors,” said Slusser. “What we can control is when we distribute our local tax dollars that we’ve collected, so this was an easy decision for me.”

District 8 was supposed to receive a General State Aid payment of $407,430.91 on Aug. 10 and then a second payment on Aug. 20. Those payments are not expected to be made until the school funding bill is passed. Even then, it’s not been made clear as to when the payments will be caught up.

“These local property tax dollars will help us stay afloat, as our state is currently not sending the most basic funding necessary for our school doors to stay open, our General State Aid payments, which for Bethalto is about $814,000 a month and $9 million annually,” Griffin said.

Alton School District Superintendent Mark Cappel said his district also needed the extra cash infusion.

“We’ve been crunching numbers to find a way to stay afloat while the state makes a final decision,” Cappel said. “We’re very appreciative of Chris Slusser’s willingness to look out for us and give us a little more breathing room. This will allow us to make our September payroll obligations and keep our doors open.”

School leaders in Highland said the district here would be alright in the short-term, but approved of Slusser’s plan.

“We support his effort, although currently we are okay with cash balances on hand,” said Tim Bair, Highland School District’s business manager. “(We) will wait to see what legislature does in the next week or two to better gauge cash flow going forward.”

State law requires that the county treasurer distributes property tax dollars at least once every 30 days during the tax cycle.

“There’s nothing in the law that says we can’t distribute dollars more than once every 30 days, so we decided to move up the regularly scheduled September distribution allowing schools to meet their mid-month payroll obligations, and we’ll do a second distribution later in the month to assist in their end-of-month payroll,” said Slusser.

Slusser said all taxing districts in the county will be receiving two distributions in September.

“The school funding crisis triggered this decision, however, we felt it made sense to go ahead and distribute funds to all taxing districts at the same time,” he said.

This story was originally published August 25, 2017 at 11:22 AM with the headline "Madison County treasurer to expedite payments to schools."