District chiefs had also in previous years allowed schools to keep "carry over" money — funds that had been saved by frugal school principals for use in future years. That's considered inappropriate, Smith said. Money in a current budget is intended for students being served in that fiscal year. If not used, the money is supposed to revert back to the district's general fund.

Smith said problems were also created by the district's "rollover" approach to setting budgets. Instead of starting from scratch to develop the budget for the coming year, the district instead simply added funding increases from the Legislature to the budget amounts used in the previous school year.

That created confusion because programs that had ended and debt accounts that had been repaid continued to show up as continuing line items in the new budgets even though those funds were being used for new programs or to retire new debt.

Smith said the problematic "budget culture" is slowly changing as problems are fixed.

"The is the first year where you really have a good tracking" of revenues and expenditures, Smith said.

A month ago, the teacher's union voted to take the district to court. Mike McCoy, the Utah Education Association attorney who will pursue the case, hopes a judge will decide that employees are entitled to a post retirement supplementary insurance to Medicare that had been offered in return for teachers accepting smaller pay increases in recent years. The board last year voted to exempt employees under 55 years of age with less than 20 years in the district from the benefit.

The district and employees unions agreed in last year's negotiations to sunset the Medigap benefit, saying that it is too expensive to fund in light of new requirements set by the Government Accounting Standards Board that require millions to be put away for future costs instead of funding on a "pay as you go" basis.

In addition to the teacher's union suit, a Provo private attorney said he may take a similar case on behalf of teachers and classified employees who want to act independent of the unions.

Tonight's meeting begins at 7 p.m. at the district offices, 280 W. 940 North.

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E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com