Important Upcoming Dates for Public Library Districts

Apologies in advance - I'm breaking the 250 word limit for this important topic.

Over the next few months, from a financial standpoint, there are quite a few important dates and deadlines for public library districts to consider:

June 30: Last day to adopt the Prevailing Wage Ordinance, a certified copy of which must be filed with the Office of the Secretary of State and Department of Labor and published in the local newspaper. (820 ILCS 130/9)

July 1: Schedule of regular Library Board of Trustees' meeting dates including the time and location, must be prepared and made available to the public. This information, however, may be presented at the beginning of the calendar year instead of the beginning of the fiscal year. (At least 5 meetings must be held.) (5 ILCS 120/2.03 and 75 ILCS 16/30-50)

August 23: Last day (30 days before adoption of ordinance and hearing thereon) to make the tentative budget and appropriation ordinance available for public inspection and publish notice for hearing thereon. (50 ILCS 330/3 and 75 ILCS 16/30-85)

August 30: Last day (within 60 days from July 1) for treasurers to file a sworn, detailed and itemized statement of all receipts and expenditures of any character for the preceding six months and showing the names, addresses, positions and salaries of every employee. [The statement shall be furnished for reference on request to all daily newspapers, the library, the Circuit Court Clerk and City, Village or Town Clerk.] (50 ILCS 305/1) AND Last day for library to authorize payment of obligation incurred in prior fiscal year with funds from that year in amounts up to 20 percent of those appropriations. (75 ILCS 16/30-90).

September 1: Last day to prepare and file written report including Secretary's audit, boundary changes, outstanding liabilities and bonds, etc. to State Librarian. (75 ILCS 16/30-65)

September 22: Last day (no later than the fourth Tuesday of September) for board to enact a budget and appropriation ordinance which shall be published once thereafter. (75 ILCS 16/30-85)

September 28: Last day (90 days after end of fiscal year) for audit of the records kept by Board's secretary to be filed. (75 ILCS 16/30-65)

September 30: Last day to pay obligation incurred in prior fiscal year with funds from that year in amounts up to 20 percent of those appropriations. (75 ILCS 16/30-90) AND Last day to transfer unexpended funds from prior fiscal year to Special Reserve Fund. (75 ILCS 16/30-90 and 16/40-50)

There are similar categories, but many different dates for Municipal and Township Libraries. These can be found in the Library Days and Dates to Remember Calendar at the Alliance Library System website.

Make sure that you have your ordinances reviewed by your library's attorney prior to finalization and publication.

Eating Better For Less

This comes courtesy of Feedthepig.org - a personal finance/savings website created by the American institute of Certified Public Accountants.

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With food prices still on the rise, it's not only important to be frugal when you shop, but also to consider the types of foods you buy. With the right ingredients, affordable and healthy meals are just around the corner. Here are some tips:

• Eggs and beans are inexpensive and versatile ingredients. Look for recipes in your cookbooks or on the internet.
• When food runs out, it’s tempting to order out or reach for ready-made meals. Planning your grocery list ahead of time makes it easier to buy in bulk and repurpose ingredients. The more you can cook from scratch, the further your dollar can stretch.
• Consumers often pay an additional “convenience expense” when purchasing certain foods. Grate your own cheese, make pizza dough from scratch or buy a fresh head of lettuce instead of bagged lettuce. Be creative with these ideas and you’ll reap the rewards in savings.
• Make use of the leftovers in your fridge. Web sites like Allrecipes.com let you search for dishes based on ingredients you have at home. Also, certain dishes, such as lasagna, chili and soups, are easily made in large quantities that can be frozen or eaten throughout the week.

Visit www.FeedthePig.org for more money-saving tips.

Link: The Simple Dollar

I ran across another blog that contains a lot of great ideas in personal finance. The blog is known as "The Simple Dollar" and according to its author, "is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two." The blog can be found here.

One of the things that attracted me to this site was a post titled, "Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on the back of Five Business Cards." This post contains a lot of simple, straightforward, common sense ideas, quite a few of which I've blogged about already or covered in my Retirement Seminars series that we presented last year.

There's even a free e-book that explains the "Five Business Cards" theme in greater detail.

Personal Finance Information

I ran across a website called carnivalofpersonalfinance.com.

This site is a "is a weblog post that brings attention to some of the week’s most interesting and informative blogger-written articles within the broad spectrum of personal finance. It is a showcase of weblog posts, submitted by their authors or by casual readers for consideration.

Some of the topics considered for inclusion are budgeting, saving money, earning money, managing debt, living below your means, and any other topic somewhat related to personal finance."

Since they're on to weekly issue #202 - this site/blog seems to have staying power. A quick look reveals links to a variety of blog posts on many personal finance issues.

Tax Hit For Cracking Nest Egg Early

In these difficult economic times, people are taking different actions to make ends meet. One avenue that some may be tempted to follow is taking money from their pre-tax retirement accounts such as IRA or 401k accounts.

Here is a link to a Wall Street Journal article which shows the pros and (mostly) cons for taking this action.

Here is the link to list all previous posts in this blog with the label "IRA"

Funding for Libraries in Illinois from the Illinois State Library

In March, Governor Quinn presented a budget to the Illinois legislature. This budget made some small cuts, but the Governor is relying on an income tax increase to make up most of the budget shortfall.

The Illinois State Library, which is a department of the Illinois Secretary of State's Office, is a funding source for Library Systems, Public Libraries, and School Libraries through per capita grants as well as to all types of libraries through various other special grants.

An analysis of the budget for the Secretary of State's Office shows that the majority of submitted budget line items for the grants to libraries are either flat requests (the same amount as last year) or show slight increases. While this is, in a sense, good news that there appear to be no cuts to library funding through the Illinois State Library, the budget that the Governor submitted was only a first step.

Rumblings are that the submitted budget does not do enough cutting while asking for too much of an increase to the income tax. The Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate both have to pass and reconcile a budget that then must be sent to the Governor to be signed. Current estimates are that the legislature will complete their process by the end of May. So, stay tuned!

Creating A Budget

Over the past few months, I've worked with employees and vendors of the Alliance Library System to create a budget for our next fiscal year. Last week, I presented it to the board of directors at ALS and it was approved.

As libraries, we tend to know in advance roughly how much money will be coming in...whether it comes from grants, property tax revenues, our parent organization, etc. The challenge, then, comes in fulfilling the mission and goals of our libraries within these incoming dollars.

There are two main types of budgeting:
(1) Zero-based budgeting, where you start from scratch every year and justify every expense that ends up in your budget.
(2) Incremental budgeting, where you start with either last year's results or last year's budget and add a certain amount or percent to each line item.

Here at ALS, we completed our budget using a combination of the two methods. We used incremental budgeting to determine our personnel expenses and we used zero-based budgeting to determine the non-personnel expenses.

If you're a member library of ALS and would like tips, pointers or help during your budgeting process, contact me or one of our Library Development Consultants. You can find our contact information here.