Dearest reader,
We've reached the budget and audit portion of Merrill's ledger.
And if you've followed Lady Budgetdown for any length of time, you know the rule:
When the receipts deserve criticism, I say so.
When they deserve credit?
I say that too.
And Merrill gets some credit here. 👏
Let's begin with the 2024–25 General Fund budget.
📜 Final budgeted expenditures:
$8,495,099
💰 Actual expenditures:
$7,790,502
That means Merrill finished approximately:
$704,597 UNDER budget.
But this next comparison caught my attention even more.
The final budget anticipated an operating deficit of:
🔴 $772,377
The actual operating deficit?
$86,797.
Still a deficit—and I'm certainly not going to turn an $86,797 shortfall into a surplus with a wave of my quill.
But it was dramatically better than budgeted.
And Merrill ended the year with a General Fund balance of approximately:
💰 $1.847 MILLION.
Then I opened the audit.
👓🪶
Clean audit opinion.
The auditors concluded Merrill's financial statements fairly presented, in all material respects, the district's financial position.
And there was another positive hiding in the ledger.
🏦 Long-term obligations
2024: $10,314,836
2025: $9,264,881
That's a decrease of approximately:
$1.05 MILLION.
The district paid approximately $1.04 million in bond principal during the year.
So I'm going to do something that occasionally seems to surprise people.
I'm going to give Merrill credit. 😏
The district spent substantially less than budgeted.
Its actual operating deficit was nowhere near what had been projected.
It maintained a significant General Fund balance.
Long-term obligations declined.
And the auditors issued a clean opinion.
Those are good receipts.
Does that erase everything else we've found in Merrill?
Nope.
We still have a decade in which pupil count fell substantially while other portions of the staffing ledger moved in very different directions.
We found a sizable contracted-workforce model sitting outside some of those employee counts.
And Merrill's online historical transparency cupboard is, shall we say...
not exactly overflowing. 👀
But Lady Budgetdown doesn't move the ruler depending upon whether she likes the answer.
Same methodology.
Same standards.
Different districts.
Different stories.
And these particular receipts deserve recognition.
Next, we put the entire Merrill ledger together.
And then the circle comes out. 🔴🪶
With receipts and respect.
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