A $1.5 million loan obtained by the Polk School District Board of Education last week is intended to shore up the budget and cover operational costs and salaries through the end of the year.

The loan is to be repaid sometime after Dec. 31. Local property tax collections should occur by that date. Until then, the school board has no local revenue coming in and, without the loan, would have insufficient reserves to pay teacher salaries, utility bills and other normal, monthly expenses.

“It gets us through until the tax revenue begins coming in,” explained Dr. Billy J. Pack, Polk County Schools Superintendent.

The school system’s bank had been apprised of the situation. The loan was issued the next morning after the vote.

“We did it Wednesday because we needed the money,” Pack said. “We were pretty low on cash.”

The action, taken in a brief meeting on Sept. 16, was anticipated. The board is operating with a slim margin of reserves, having earlier resisted proposals to hike taxes.

The tentative budget adopted by the board on Sept. 2 includes only a .5-mil increase, which was needed to adequately fund an employee retirement benefit to comply with Internal Revenue Service rules.

The tight budget is a result, in part, of earlier spending decisions, but is also due to federal and state cuts in funding. The result is that the board has a reserve fund of only about $1.5 million — compared to more than $3 million for the same period last year.

“We had to do something because we had $1.5 million in the bank and a $3 million payroll,”board member Regina Roberts said.

Roberts had a prior commitment and was not at last week’s meeting. However, she was aware of the vote, which she said was necessary under the current circumstances.

Last week’s special meeting was called primarily to gather public input on the budget. Only board members were in attendance, however, and the meeting ended after about five minutes.

There was little public comment on the vote. Privately, though, several board members said they are unhappy with the board’s financial position, which they blame partially on infighting between board members.

While some board members have pointed fingers, others say there is plenty of blame to go around on the board: Spending on pet projects; refusal to cut programs or personnel that other board members feel are unneeded; and failure to listen to dire fiscal warnings that school staff began airing more than a year ago.