The School District has long operated a furniture-refinishing department. The department has provided schools and offices with quality cost-effective refinished and used furniture. It has been the source of furniture needed temporarily for portables in short-term use, for new school startup offices, and for most administrative offices. The operation preserves taxpayer assets, and provides needed resources in a timely way.

The increased volume of major renovation projects, new schools, additions, and short term portable use has increased the need for furniture and the need to move assets around the district in a timely and cost effective way. Responsibility for these tasks has been assigned to multiple divisions. The primary workforce for moving assets has been an ad hoc crew of employees working at overtime rates. This approach has accomplished the moving task, but the labor costs are high and the complexity of the payrolls for the workers has made posting the expense to the proper fund sources difficult. As a result of using this temporary workforce, labor costs have sharply increased, the operating budget has been charged with capital outlay miscellaneous expenses, efforts are sometimes duplicated, and the evaluation of assets for proper disposition is sometimes not effectively completed.

To address these issues, a reorganization of the furniture refinishing and moving operations in the district is proposed. The reorganization consolidates all of the functions in the Business Division to better coordinate inventory management, procurement, asset preservation, expense control, and the equitable distribution of resources. A crew of appropriately graded employees will be created, using new hires and transfers of existing employees to handle furniture moving. The crew will work inside the Business Division in a Furniture Projects Department that will include furniture refinishing and that will coordinate with property control and procurement. Use of overtime and expenses will be reduced more than the costs of the newly created department. Expenses will be more easily identified for posting to the proper budgets. Narratives and charts are attached. The recommendation has been developed in collaboration with the Facilities and Human Resources Divisions.