West Linn–Wilsonville
School District 3JT

The district's own adopted budgets show new-money General Fund revenue (State School Fund, property tax, local option levy, ESD allocation — excluding carried-over fund balance) rising in nearly every year on record: $117.4M (2021-22) → $127.5M (2022-23) → $126.1M (2023-24) → $137.5M (2024-25) → $143.9M (2025-26).

What is true, and different: revenue growth has not kept pace with cost growth (roughly 7%/year for PERS, insurance, COLA, and unfunded mandates). That is a real and serious problem — but it is not the same claim as "revenue is declining," which the video states directly and which the district's own numbers do not support.

The FY2025-26 adopted budget projected a $6M ending fund balance (4.3%). The same presentation later notes a revised projection near $10M (6.74%) — a swing of roughly $4M — disclosed only as a passing aside inside a budget-process webinar. Each shortfall projection, by contrast, has prompted its own standalone superintendent's message to the full community.

Modeled on 3.46% annual payroll growth with a projected $49.1M present-value savings. Actual payroll has grown at roughly twice that rate. PERS employer rates rose from 7.92% to 14.33% for 2025-27, eroding most of the bond's annual savings.

A CFO memo from April 2021 documented this same payroll-growth mechanism had already overstated the district's 2004 pension bond's savings by $3M — one month before the board approved a bond 2.6 times larger, built on the same assumption.

At the March 2021 special board meeting, underwriter Piper Sandler called the deal "fairly risky," disclosed its own conflict of interest, and recommended the district hire an independent financial advisor. The board proceeded on informal consensus, without a recorded vote, and no independent advisor was retained — then or in any bond issuance since.

Combined side account balance was $103.5M as of December 2024. At the current draw rate, it is projected to deplete around 2032 — eight years before the bond matures in 2040.

Adopted Budget: 1,044.49 FTE (all funds, internally consistent). ODE Staff Position Collection: 1,160.04 FTE (+115.55 vs. budget). ACFR Statistical Section: 877.25 FTE, General Fund only (−31.29 vs. budget). No single reconciled figure exists across the district's own official filings.

A documented 2022-23 statewide ODE reporting-methodology change inflated support-staff counts across Oregon districts — but WLWV's own budget and audit documents never reference it, leaving the gap uncontextualized in the district's own record.

The granular format held stable across four audit cycles (2017-18, 2020-21, 2022-23, 2023-24) under the same audit firm, then collapsed in FY2024-25 — the same year as the district's closures and a GASB 101 restatement. Because three stable cycles preceded it under one firm, an auditor-driven explanation is ruled out; the change originated with the district's own Business Office.

The district's prior auditor was terminated in April 2022 and sent an exit letter within 48 hours. The successor firm did not review that letter until after finishing its own audit — which defeats the purpose of professional standards requiring predecessor-successor communication before an audit is planned, not after it's done.

Whether the same firm held the audit engagement in years prior to its predecessor as well — a return, rather than a one-way switch — has not been confirmed against board minutes or engagement records, and should not be treated as established until it is.

The district's ACFR discloses only a water-association abatement. Tax increment financing, urban renewal district, and enterprise zone abatements — which reduce the district's own revenue under Oregon's state/local equalization formula — do not appear at all.

Clackamas County's own GASB 77 filing shows roughly $5.57M foregone on the general operating levy across 14 tax code areas; this does not appear cross-referenced anywhere in WLWV's own disclosures. Washington County's filing omits WLWV entirely.

The ten-year statistical table appears to mislabel the local option levy as a debt service levy, causing the government-wide Statement of Activities to overstate "Property Taxes — General" by roughly $12–13M.

The district's capital-projects architect controls educational-adequacy scoring, the Capital Improvement Plan, the Long Range Plan, and bond consulting — a single firm across the full pipeline that determines and then fulfills its own workload.

Funded substantially by construction and architecture firms doing business with the district. The board chair used an official title in PAC solicitation materials.

Changes bar group complaints, require board members to deflect individual complaints, make superintendent decisions administratively final, and make charter-school complaint appeals unreviewable by the district board.