Dearest reader,
Lady B has received an important lesson in fiscal responsibility from Hemlock Public School District.
Apparently, the first rule of exceptional financial stewardship is making certain everyone knows just how exceptional your financial stewardship is.
Preferably in an article written by your own communications department.
📌There are clean audits.
📌There is Moody's.
📌There is "strategic leadership."
📌There is "shared vision."
📌There is "rigorous scrutiny."
📌There is "fiscal discipline."
And heavens above, there is NAVY. We mustn't forget the navy.
Hemlock's Communications Specialist recently devoted an entire district article to fonts, spacing, typography, logos, and her unofficial appointment as "guardian of the navy."
Lady B is relieved.
For one frightening moment, I feared taxpayers might be left with an improperly stretched logo while borrowing tens of millions of dollars.
Crisis averted.�
🪶 Meanwhile, Lady B has been guarding something considerably less fashionable.
The ledger.
In 2022, Hemlock voters approved approximately $42 MILLION in bonding authority.
Afterward, the district told the community that, aside from its regular operating millage votes and the sinking fund renewal anticipated in 2030:
📌 "There is nothing else in the current forecast."
How delightfully reassuring.
�
Four years later...
It is 2026. Hemlock is asking voters for authorization to borrow another $17.75 MILLION.
Apparently, the forecast developed weather.
To its credit, Hemlock now acknowledges that the original expectation was that the next major facilities conversation would occur around 2029 or 2030.
📌 The district says circumstances changed.
📌 Enrollment increased.
📌 Programming expanded.
📌 Space needs developed.
And circumstances certainly can change. Ledgers, however, have the irritating habit of remembering what was said before they changed.
🪶 Then there is another little breadcrumb.
Much of the public discussion surrounding this proposal has focused on elementary space.
Yet when Lady B followed the proposed projects and the dollars, we found that the MAJORITY of the proposed borrowing is NOT simply going toward that elementary school issue.
Then there is enrollment.
Roughly 30% of Hemlock's students come from outside the district. That doesn't make those children any less deserving of an excellent education. But when resident taxpayers are being asked to assume millions more in long-term debt because the district says it needs additional space, it seems perfectly reasonable to ask:
📌 How much of that need is being driven by resident enrollment?
📌 And how much is being driven by schools of choice?
Pesky little details.
🪶 Then we arrive at Nurse Becky.
Hemlock certainly enjoys celebrating Nurse Becky. And perhaps she deserves every bit of that celebration.
But as Lady B previously learned from the records and explanation provided to us, the employment arrangement isn't quite as simple as a reader might assume from the district's presentation.
She isn't carried internally on Hemlock's payroll in the ordinary way one might expect.
Again, that doesn't diminish her work. It simply raises another question about how services are funded and presented to the public.
📌 Questions.
📌 Questions.
📌 Questions.
Terribly inconvenient things when everyone is busy admiring the navy.
And then Hemlock provided Lady B with perhaps her favorite sentence in the entire article:
"Public dollars should be subject to rigorous scrutiny."
Oh, Dearest Reader. You needn't ask Lady B twice.
A clean audit is certainly something a district should want. But a clean audit does NOT answer whether a proposed expenditure is necessary.
It doesn't tell taxpayers whether borrowing another $17.75 million four years after a $42 million authorization is the best decision.
It doesn't explain why something that wasn't in the forecast until around 2030 arrived four years early.
It doesn't tell us how much of the proposed borrowing actually addresses the elementary problem being emphasized.
And it doesn't answer how schools-of-choice enrollment factors into the need for additional space.
Those questions require something considerably less glamorous than a press release.
Receipts.
So by all means...
Protect the brand.
Guard the fonts.
Measure the spacing.
Preserve the sacred navy.
Lady B will guard the ledger.
Hemlock likes to say:
"PULL THE SLED."
Very well.
But before taxpayers are asked to pull another $17.75 MILLION onto it, perhaps they deserve to know exactly what's already on the sled, who put it there, where it's going, and why nobody saw the extra load coming four years ago.
After all...
Someone has to read the packing list.
With receipts and respect. 🪶
#LadyBudgetdown #HemlockPublicSchools #HemlockSchools #PullTheSled #FollowTheMoney #PublicDollars #TaxpayerTransparency #SchoolFinance #SchoolBonds #MichiganSchools #WithReceiptsAndRespect