Edison Board of Mythomania's $227.9 million - another in your face yank on your money chain!

You know, as a general rule, I never kick anybody when they're down nor do I try and rain on anybody's parade - but in this case with the Board of Mythomania's 2015-16 School budget presentation by Super Dr. Richard 'Looking for the Exit Ramp' O'Malley, it's time for a little rain.

It's just another in a long line of Out-of-Control $pending pots of money they call a budget. It comes with a $11 million increase in $pending and a whopping 8.7 cent increase in the school tax rate, which takes it up to $2.820 from $2.733 or 3.2%. From hoarding taxpayer relief money that should of come back to us in the form of a tax reduction but was instead used to increase $pending to continuing on with the practice of hiring additional staff and not disclosing it in their budgets.

Same old, same old with only one difference. You don't get to vote on the budget anymore, which means all that bloat was carried forward and will increase to the max cap allowed every year, adjusted for exceptions to the cap and banked cap of course. And don't you think it's a tad bit gosh to claim credit for not raising the tax levy when all they did was use hoarded taxpayer relief money to cover the increase in the $pending? It's not like they did it by saving any money by doing things better and smarter. Savings to them means if they don't spend all the money on one line, they use it on another line and nothing ever comes back to us. That's not savings - it's a re-purpose of money to increase spending somewhere else. So, understand that the Board of Mythomania never saves money and any claim that they do save money is just as silly as these self-serving budget presentations they put together.

Don't think so? Take a look at Super Dr. Richard 'Looking for the Exit Ramp' O'Malley's numbers since he took over:

Geez, ever wonder how he covered an increase of $29,303,650 or close to 15% in $pending? You should.

And let's not even get into my favorite on-going practice of theirs; the Staffing Shell Game - you know, that's where they hire additional staff but fail to disclose it to you in their budgets. Apparently, it's still alive and well over there on Mythomania Lane in the 2015-16 school budget. Seems they added an additional net 23.5 non-budgeted heads in 2014-15 and failed to disclose that to you. Now, for as long as I've been looking at this practice, that brings the total up to 419.8 heads they failed to disclose to you in their budgets.

The problem with this stuff isn't that they shouldn't be allowed to hire and or fire with fluidity, of course they should - the problem is they do it and don't disclose it to you and that puts you at a disadvantage in understanding if the staffing level in their budget makes sense. For example, if you knew they hired a net 23.5 non-budgeted in 2014-15, wouldn't that be important to know when they're asking for an additional 16 heads in the 2015-16 school budget? It sure would.

For the single largest cost in their budget - salaries, there's just no meaningful manpower reporting they're willing to provide.

Here's the net non-budgeted heads added in 2014-15:

And here's how you can see it if you have both this year and last year school budgets (General Summary Page 32):

And here's the cumulative heads:

Anyhoo, you really have to live in the Land of Mythomania to think that the rain isn't coming down on you and your pocketbooks.