BUS BUDGET BREAKDOWN

MANATEE COUNTY — As acting transportation director for the Manatee County Public School District, Don Ross maintains his department is running as leanly as possible. On any given school day, in fact, transportation department employees with CDL licenses can be found out driving school buses, because bus drivers are short in supply.

“There is no fat in this office,” Ross said. “There are times when there are only three people left in the office, because (our employees are out driving). There’s nobody to cut. You still have to do payroll. You still have to do routing. There’s no room to cut.”

Ross said the department’s only option, at this point, is to cut personnel, but he needs more staff — not less.
Employees arrive at 5:30 a.m. — well before the first school bus rolls out, and leave around 6:30 p.m., after the last one has returned. Many employees, despite 13-hour days, are not being compensated accordingly because of the type of contracts under which they work, he said.

“Everybody’s been asked to do more with less; that’s the sentence of the day,” Ross said. “Right now, we’ve been reorganizing the transportation department. We’re real efficient, and when you’re real efficient, there’s no room for inefficiency. If it’s not there, the job doesn’t get done. We look at budgets every single day. It’s a tool we use. We run it like a business.”

The Manatee County School Board in February approved $200,000 in funding for 11 school bus drivers, a training officer and full-time transportation director to meet the department’s staffing needs.

“I knew that we were trying to hire drivers and substitute drivers, but, for whatever reason, we were having trouble getting them,” School Board Chairman Robert Gause said. “Don (Ross) coming forward (with this request) was really the first we realized it was reaching a critical stage. You know you’re tight. Everybody’s focused on reduced spending.

“You just don’t realize you have pushed them to the breaking point,” he said. “They’re there now. I didn’t realize how seriously understaffed he was at until he came forward.”

In general, departmental budgets have been cut 5-10% annually for the last six years or so, Ross said.

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].

Transportation Budget
Total: $6,618,919.52 (as of March 19, 2012)

Personnel
Administration: $164,098.15
Supervisor and Managerial Personnel: $205,550.16
Non-bargain support personnel: $541,632.58 Pay for office personnel, including clerical, payroll, routing and other positions.
Bargaining support personnel: $3,170,127. Pay for all bus drivers, just less than 200 people, who are paid hourly.

Employee-related costs
Retirement- Pupil Transportation: $200,397.13
Social Security: $499,564.32
Life insurance: $16,325.63
Health insurance: $612,211.18
Workers’ Compensation: $111,830.57
Flexible benefits: 0

Training-related costs
Professional and technical services: $61,152. For services that can, by their nature, only be performed by persons with specialized skills. Includes services of architects, engineers, consultants and others.
Out-of-county travel: $1,668. Funding needed for out-of-county training that allows trainers to stay current on licenses. In-house training, Ross said, saves the district thousands of dollars per incident and also allows the district to set its own training schedule more easily.
Class C meal reimbursement: $11,059. ASME negotiated contract item that covers meal reimbursement for bus drivers when they are sent out on eligible field trips.
Rentals: $1,400. For rental equipment. “That’s kind of an old item we don’t need any longer,” Ross said.

Expenses
Postage: $6,843. For costs associated with sending out 14,000 to 15,000 cards to riders.
Cell phones — $1,286. For cell phones for administrators and area coordinators.
Printing: $4,163. For cards sent to bus-riding students and for manuals for in-service training.
Other purchased services: $26,473. For a contracted employee hired through a labor group. Individual helps with answering phones and other tasks, as needed.
Supplies: $16,467
Periodicals: $608
Other materials and supplies: $48,569. For uniforms for bus drivers. Drivers are given a flat fee every year with which to buy their uniforms. It does not cover a complete set of uniforms.
Non-capitalized FF&E Transportation: $2,004 For warranty on GPS software.
Non-capitalized software: $37,395.80. For costs associated with GPS software, including an annual licensing agreement and a two-way radio system.
Dues and fees: 0
Substitutes for personal leave: $871,363. For substitute bus drivers. “We are three-quarters through the year, and we’ve only used about one-third the budgeted subs for personal leave,” Ross said. “That’s an indicator we are very short on staff. Right now, all of our subs are driving permanent routes.”
Curricular Transportation: Pupil Sv: $2,737. For transportation costs related to school trips for which the district pays
Extra-curricular transportation — Pupil: $3,995. For transportation costs related to activities the district promotes, such as the Stuff the Bus campaign and parades.

One-time expenses
School bus acquisition: $4,989,361.47. For the purchase of 47 new school buses. “We removed 12- and 13-year-old buses that were less fuel efficient and had higher costs of repair,” Ross said. “They didn’t have seatbelts or air conditioning.”
Capitalized software: $1,810. For a software package for parts of the buses, similar to a warranty.

Other
Non-capitalized FF& E Facilities: $17,350. For activities concerned with the acquisition of land and buildings, remodeling of buildings, initial installation or extension of service systems and other built-in equipment and improvements to sites, etc.

Capitalized and non-capitalized software: $334.20. For software for routing program

Vehicle Maintenance Budget
Total: $5,280,369.08 (as of March 19, 2012)

Vehicle maintenance
Freight inventory — $3,129
Administrator, transportation: $82,782.05
Other personnel: $109,722.52
Non-bargain support personnel: $59,886.58
Bargaining support personnel: $859,512.44
Retirement, pupil transportation — $61,713.97
Repairs: $89,399.20. For repairs to equipment
Rentals: $2,538. For leasing or renting land, buildings, films and equipment for both temporary and long-range use.
Other purchased services: $25,348. For tow charges for bus accidents, or other items, not covered by the shop
Diesel fuel: $2,126,585
Supplies: $62,150
Oil and grease: $21,672
Repair parts: $398,715
Tires and tubes: $226,634
Other materials and supplies: $13,699
Dues and fees — $2,058
Inventory Adjustment/balances: -$79,552.68. Deduction for inventory taken out of the parts department

Secondary Equipment 
$104,973. This category covers the repair of secondary equipment used by schools, such as weed-wackers, lawn mowers and others. About 2,500 pieces of equipment are repaired annually, Ross said.

Support Fleet
$628,832. Costs in this category reflects costs associated with the district’s support fleet, or all services vehicles used to support schools, whether electricians or painters.

Repair for charter buses
$5,280,369.08. Category covers costs associated with charter buses maintained and repaired by the district’s maintenance department.

Employee-related costs
Retirement, pupil transportation: $61,713.97
Social Security: $153,845
Life insurance: $5,027.62
Health insurance: $188,535.54
Workers’ Compensation: $34,439.16
Flexible benefits: 0
Professional and technical services: $130