News Photo by Crystal Nelson Melissa Cook, business manager with the Alpena-Montmorency-Alcona Educational Service District, addresses the AMA ESD Board of Education during its regularly scheduled board meeting on Thursday.

ALPENA — A $5 million proposed general fund budget for the Alpena-Montmorency-Alcona Educational Service District’s 2021-22 fiscal year will be making its rounds to school boards within the educational service district for approval.

School district officials and boards of education within the three-county service district are afforded the opportunity to provide feedback before the AMA ESD Board of Education adopts the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, beginning July 1.

Business Manager Melissa Cook provided the educational service district’s board with a first-look at the $5 million general fund budget.

The proposed budget, which is about a 5% decrease from the budget adopted for the current fiscal year, has a $80,000 shortfall. The educational service district will use money from its fund balance to balance the budget. Cook said she is anticipating an ending fund balance of $1.2 million.

Cook told the board it is “a very preliminary budget” and will likely be different when it comes back to the board for approval later this year.

“At this time we have no idea what the state’s going to do for their budget next year, we don’t have our taxable values yet, things like that are still quite unknown,” she said. “But we’ve prepared a budget with revenues of just over $5 million.”

Cook pointed out several projected decreases in revenue, including a decrease of $7,500 in local sources, $260,000 in state sources and $72,000 in federal sources. She said those decreases are related to grants the educational service district either spent down, carrying over, or does not anticipate receiving again.

Cook said there was money included in operations and maintenance for facility upgrades at the central office building. The budget includes a 36% increase to about $153,000 in operation and maintenance spending, according to the budget documents.

District officials have recently been discussing facility upgrades for its central office location in addition to the ongoing facility work at Pied Piper School.

The general fund budget is separate from the AMA ESD’s special education budget, which has yet to be presented to the board for the 2021-22 fiscal year.