An effort at Riverside-Brookfield High School to create an ad hoc finance committee made up of private citizens has apparently collapsed over a disagreement on just what the group’s role would have been.

The ad hoc committee was proposed on June 10 by Bob DeDera, a former District 208 board member and a leader of the unsuccessful petition drive to put a $5.7 million bond issuance to a November vote.

After the RBHS electoral board ruled that there would be no referendum, school board President Larry Herbst telephoned DeDera to express his interest in working with him.

At the July 17 school board meeting, one member of the proposed committee, Mike Welch of Riverside, read a letter written by DeDera that demanded a vast quantity of financial information from RB.

The letter, which at times sounded more like a subpoena, demanded audit reports from the last four years, medical insurance lists, purchase records and a host of other financial records.

“What was asked for on the 10th of June doesn’t even resemble the letter that Mike Welch read,” said Herbst. “He’s asking for a full blown audit, because I guess the one we had by an independent auditor and reviewed by the state isn’t good enough.

“It would be very expensive and takes months and months. I don’t know why an independent audit is good enough for every school in the state and not us.”

Herbst said that he and other RB officials are still willing to meet with DeDera’s group to discuss financing options.

“If he wants to sit and talk about tax anticipation warrants and working cash bonds that offer still stands,” said Herbst who informed DeDera of his views in a letter dated July 24.

DeDera responded with a letter he mailed to Herbst a week later.

In the letter, DeDera asked for an electronic copy of the RB’s check register for the last four years, giving his group the opportunity to examine every expenditure made by RB.

DeDera admits that he has asked for a lot of information.

“We did ask for them to turn their pockets inside out,” said DeDera, who added that it appeared that the board wanted his group to be “cheerleaders for future tax hikes.”

DeDera says that he is more interested in understanding how RB came to be in its present precarious financial situation.

“The question needs to be asked,” asked said DeDera. “Before you get more money how was the money spent. To me the real issue is how they spent their money.”

He also denied that his group was merely attempting to make the current board look bad.

“This is not necessarily designed to make anybody on the board look bad,” said DeDera. “Some will say this is a political game. This is not a politics as much as it is that this is a community that is tired of having its taxes raised.

“People have got to learn to live on their revenues. This is a clear case of a school that hasn’t been able to do it. … We’re seeking answers for this community. We’re not asking for anything that the community doesn’t have a right to know.”

The school board last night held a public forum on the bonds, which are tentatively scheduled to be sold on Aug. 29.

“We’re going to give some background information,” said Superintendent/Principal Jack Baldermann prior to the meeting. “We’re going to explain why we need this, why we think it’s the right thing to do, how much it’s going to cost, what kind of financial situation we’re in.

“Of course, we’re going to make the case that we’ve been fiscally responsible, which we think we have been.”

The District 208 school board voted in May to authorize RB to sell up $5.7 million of working cash bonds to help RB overcome a cash crunch for the next few years. RB had an annual operating deficit last year and projects another one this fiscal year. RB has been spending down its reserves and may temporarily run out of cash this fall until property tax revenue comes in.

Herbst has said that he does not want to ask the voters for an education fund tax increase until 2010 when the RB’s ongoing construction project will be completed.