As If You Asked
Collecting money owed is staple of making it through tough times,
and that's part of the reason the Burbank Unified School District is
hounding the city of Glendale for more than $400,000 it claims to be
owed, even warning, a la a credit card company, that the matter will
be "turned over to our legal counsel" if the bill isn't paid.
Incredibly, one of the bills BUSD submitted in recent months was
for work done five years ago under a program that hasn't existed for
two years.
According to officials with the BUSD, Glendale's City Hall has
bungled its role overseeing disbursement of funds locally for two
federal programs. According to Glendale officials, the BUSD has
repeatedly failed to respond to warnings and reminders, and aside
from submitting invoices for work supposedly done five years ago, the
school district is demanding money for more recent programs without
providing documentation the city is obliged to demand.
A closer look indicates truth in each side's claims, though
neither party is nearly as irked by their own failures as they are
outraged by the other's.
The cities of Glendale, Burbank and La Canada Flintridge formed a
joint powers agreement several years ago to create a "service
delivery area" and qualify for federal efforts that pay for various
job placement and training programs. When any of the region's various
institutions perform work that qualifies, their requests to be paid
are administered by the city of Glendale. In Burbank, the school
district's Adult School has been a provider of those services.
The BUSD's finances are infamous these days, with the school board
having had to use to layoffs and other cutbacks to make up a
$3-million deficit for the coming school year. Rising costs and
lower-than-expected attendance played a role, but the Burbank
district was rocked in recent months by a series of discoveries of
major errors in district's books.
For example, in developing the budget for the coming school year,
someone simply forgot more than $1 million in known special education
costs, and the perceived surplus was appropriated elsewhere. In the
midst of a massive building and remodeling program, school board
members also said they hadn't anticipated drastic increases in the
district's electric usage for air conditioning and computer systems
that didn't exist last year.
A years-overdue audit of district books and the hiring of a new
finance manager brought many problems to light. Among the revelations
