SAC CITY, IOWA – SEPTEMBER 13, 2010
DISCLOSURE: I am a happy Kid’s World customer, and my complaints about how the original deal was put together are in no way a reflection of the professionalism I witness on a nearly daily basis from Kid’s World staff, volunteers, and administration. I view them, as I view myself, to be continuing unfortunate victims of the severe stupidity on the part of the people whose names you can find on the plaque hanging in the entrance hall to this facility.
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Kid’s World representatives, finding themselves once again in early need of the $10,000 allocation the city contributes every year in January, appeared before the Sac City Council.
Kid’s World has an average of 30 full time students per month attending. One year ago there were 38 full time students attending Kid’s World. Unsurprisingly, the number of full-time students kid’s World needs to become self sustaining was not discussed.
To put this into perspective, the last fiscal year, Kid’s World received $284,937.21 in tuition and had $380,911.20 in expenses. This means that without any grants or contributions, government or private (not to mention a negligible amount in rent,) Kid’s world would have had to earn an extra $95,973.99 to meet its expenses in the 09-10 fiscal year.
The council currently uses the handy excuse that due to the interlocked nature of the loan and the legal ramifications of allowing Kid’s World to default on that loan it is almost required that the city continue to use property taxes to pay back the loan. (Someone will no doubt argue that Kid’s World is using entirely different money to pay back the loan, but the technique for explaining how that works is known by its technical name in the world of accounting as “bullshit”.
The most likely scenario is that the Sac City Council will continue to allow Kid’s World to use taxpayer money to pay back taxpayer money until such time as the tax payers have paid themselves off at which time the taxpayers will probably will no doubt just continue to contribute $20,000 or more per year out of the goodness of their hearts and wallets to keep up with rising operating expenses.
The whole thing makes me sick, and I wish that, had there been an actual need for this service, a business person, (as opposed to politicians,) would have put together a facility that could have been profitable.
All of that said, insert your better idea here. Mine is that the entire system should be rebooted. Figure out what it takes to make it run on 30 students, and change course. It seems fairly obvious to me that if some random mom can look after ten kids in her basement and make a profit, the city’s alleged best business minds should be able to figure this out.
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