STOWE PA – Faced with a $1.2 million shortfall between what it might receive in revenues during the 2011-2012 school year and what it might spend, the Pottsgrove School District Board of School Directors voted unanimously Tuesday (Jan. 18, 2011) to advertise a proposed preliminary budget of $58.5 million for public review, and said it would seek permission to raise next year’s taxes above a state-imposed 1.8-percent cap.
The spending plan presented to directors by district Business Administrator David Nester consists, he said, of conservative expectations, aggressive calculations and best guesses. Nester’s problem, he explained during the board’s meeting at West Pottsgrove Elementary School in Stowe, is that the state hasn’t yet announced how much money it intends to give Pottsgrove for its annual basic education subsidy.
Some kind of budget, however, must be submitted by Jan. 27, or Pottsgrove would be locked into the tax cap, known as its Act 1 index. Raising property taxes by no more than 1.8 percent next year, or about $74 for the district’s average home, “would just be painful,” Nester told directors. The preliminary budget approval was their response.
Next year’s preliminary budget amounts to $58,550,072, which is $896,000 more than this year’s adopted budget. Of that amount 64 percent, or $37 million, pays for salaries and benefits alone for all district employees. Although the budget covers anticipated longevity or “step” increases for district teachers, it does not include any amounts for raises that could result from contract negotiations already under way.
A tax increase of about 5.2 percent, representing an additional $215 in taxes above this year’s level on a district home valued at $120,000, would be needed to erase the preliminary deficit. Directors made it clear they didn’t want to go anywhere near that number, and will start to look for budget items to cut while Nester petitions the state for the ability to increase taxes more, possibly by up to 3.6 percent.
The preliminary budget was expected to be available for public inspection Wednesday (Jan. 19) at the district offices, 1301 Kauffman Rd., Pottstown PA, and also for download from the district’s website, Nester said.
Related (to the Pottsgrove Board of School Directors’ meeting of Jan. 18):
- Best Guesses, Deficit Launch Pottsgrove Budget Season
- Pottsgrove Canceled Tuesday School Board Meeting
- Few Change Orders, So Far, At Ringing Rocks
When do we get to vote for Mr. Nester’s replacement? This guy has got to go !!! He unrelentlously crusades for higher and higher taxes each and every year. A few years back he was quoted in the Mercury as saying he wanted to increase tax property taxes 10% even though the district only needed a 5% increase. His reason? He figured he would need a 15% increase the following year and wanted grab as much as he could in the current year so he didn’t have to fight for such a large increase in the following year. In other words, he knows how to spend your money better than you do !!!!
How about cutting some of the Fun & Games programs in the district??? As a long time district property owner who never had any kids in the Pottsgrove system, I don’t want to hear anything about a tax increase until the district strips out music programs, frivolous sports programs and foreign language courses (in that order) – especially in these difficult economic times.
Come on ELECTED School Board Members rein in this Money Grabber and do the job the people elected you to do. Better yet, put somebody in his office who knows how to Save Money rather than Spend more and more of it. At the very least forbid him from petitioning the state for that 3.6% or 5.4%, or whatever. Pottsgrove Citizens: have your incomes increased by 4% this year???
Wolfgang, as usual you’ve pulled no punches in your comments and your straight-forwardness is refreshing.
I have a suggestion in follow-up.
The school district is preparing to assemble a community task force into six different groups to make recommendations on the coming budget. New details will be in a story we’ll publish Monday (Jan. 24), but we’ve already written about the school board’s desire to get input like yours, here, here, and here. I’d like to encourage you to join that group. Its first meeting will be Tuesday, Feb. 1, at the high school auditorium. And, in advance of Monday’s story, let me give you the most compelling reason I can think of for you (or for that matter, anyone else who’s interested in the district’s finances) to be in attendance:
10 percent.
School board members have said they want to find 10 percent, or $5.7 million of the district’s proposed $57 million budget, in savings. They’re not committing to that entire amount in the first year, but simply their interest in that kind of goal should also interest you. Find the information you need on the district’s website, here: http://www.pgsd.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=d249bD_TS1c%3d&tabid=38&mid=470
Hi Joe,
Yes, I know about that Task Force. Superintendent Landis has been bandying about the idea for a few months now. The most recent issue of “The Pottsgrove Achiever” carries a front page “Message from the Superintendent – Involving Our Community” in which Dr. Landis outlines the reasons and goals of the proposed Task Force. I think Dr. Landis is being a little disingenuous with his district constituents. I have a number of reasons for believing so. Let me state few here and I’ll fill in more later.
1. Any $57 Million business that I have ever been associated with can trim 2 to 5% off their operating expenses in about one week. In fact, any resposible CEO of a company of that dollar magnitude should have a contingency plan already outlined to deal with unforeseeable and surprize downturns in business or revenues. I’ve seen it happen more than once in my professional career. Whack! It comes like a bolt out of the blue! Non-essential and non-key employees are laid off, research projects are put on hold, the brakes are put on the payables, and people are on the phone trying to accelerate receivables. Employees, especially “exempt” employees such as managers, accountants and engineers are told they have to put in more hours for free until the situation improves.
That’s for 2 – 5%, 10% takes a bit longer, say one month, but measures will be taken as the situation worsens. 10% in any company is “fat” and can be trimmed when the going gets tough in order to preserve the company’s financial and operational viability while the higher-ups figure out how to correct the long-term course of the business.
I don’t think the $57 Million Pottsgrove School District is any different. Dr. Landis and that evil tax-dollar-mongering Nester know what to do, why don’t THEY JUST DO IT? What makes them think the public sector knows how to run their business any better than they do? What the heck do you think we are paying them those big salaries for? Not so they can ask a bunch of wanna-be CEO’s how to do that which they should already know and be planning for constantly.
2. Will Dr. Landis commit at the outset of this Task Force to eliminate jobs, non-3Rs courses or other non-academic activities if the Task Force suggest to do so? I doubt it. Check out the reverent language he uses for the teachers and their contracts in the above cited Achiever article. This is important for the following reason.
Have you ever read the Pottsgrove School District budget? I have. A large percentage of the budget is for employee compensation and their many benefits, a large percentage is for debt service, a large percentage is for building maintenance and utilities. Once you subtract those big ones off the 57 Million, how much do you think remains? That’s the amount Dr. Landis wants to shave $5 million from. 5 Million ain’t 10% of that lesser amount it is much more, probably 30-40%. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I think you see the picture. Cuts in these non-essentials will be very painful because the cuts will have to be very deep and will be quite difficult to sell to the public, let alone get the public to suggest (via the Task Force) such cuts. The real meat is in the employee payroll and debt service, that’s where you can get the quickest, most significant and simplest-to-execute savings.
3. Dr. Landis has stated in prior news articles a number of times that the Public Task Force idea has been used “successfully” in other local school districts. I think he was primarily referring to the West Chester School District which went thru the exercise in preparation for their 2010 budget.
If Dr. Landis is so confident that their program was so successful, he should have participating public members (not school employee members)of the WCSD Task Force come to a public Pottsgrove School Meeting and explain to his constituents all of the savings they were able to suggest and just how many have been implemented into the 2010 West Chester School District Budget. Oh yeah, and ask them to bring along a written report from the WC School District describing how many of those suggestions were actually implemented into the 2010 budget, how much money the public’s suggestions were intended to save, and how much money the WC School District is actually saving as a result.
Joe, I’ll be keeping myself apprised of the Task Force activities as they unfold in the following months and will comment as appropriate, but I will not be joining it. I am a critic not a practicioner. Does the Art Critic pick up a brush and pallet to do the artist’s work better? Does the Literary Critic write the Great American Novel? Does Wolfgang intend to be patronized by the Pottsgrove School Administration? No, no and no. Just stop raising my school taxes and I’ll stop criticizing.
Wolfgang, your comments – critical or otherwise – are welcomed here. That’s why the comments forum exists. Thanks for expanding on your thoughts!
If I am correctly reading the tone of the related article in today’s (1-23-11) Mercury, Nester is not a very willing participant in Dr. Landis’s Grand Plan. Mr. Nester is of course the expert, the citizens mere sheep who must be nudged by his gentle staff to their correct place in the school district’s scheme of social order.