Pottsgrove OKs Final Budget: 1.8% Tax Hike, About $74

Categorized | Education, Pottsgrove Schools

Pottsgrove OKs Final Budget: 1.8% Tax Hike, About $74

Posted on 28 June 2011. Tags: Pottsgrove 2011-’12 budget, Pottsgrove Board of School Directors, Pottsgrove School District

POTTSTOWN PA – A divided Pottsgrove Board of School Directors, whose members spoke in passionate tones about balancing property owners’ need for pocketbook relief against the district’s financial survival in coming years, on Monday (June 27, 2011) approved a 2011-2012 final budget that

raises taxes 1.8 percent,
anticipates $374,000 in state funding that hasn’t yet materialized, and
includes a $90,000 deficit to be covered by a withdrawal from savings.

Officially, directors adopted a $57.32 million budget that is accompanied by a real estate tax of 34.999 mills. Effectively, that costs owners $35 for every $1,000 of assessed value on their properties within the district. For Pottsgrove’s average home owner, whose residence is said to be valued at $120,000, taxes next year will rise $74, to a total of about $4,200.

The board’s 5-4 roll call vote came after more than an hour of debate, and the introduction of seven different budget options that ranged from no tax increase whatsoever to one of 2.8 percent. The spending plan was finalized only four days before the state’s June 30 deadline. Voting in favor were directors Jodi Adams, April Kontostathis, David Faulkner, Fred Remelius and Philip Keogh; opposed were Michael Neiffer, Scott Fulmer, Nancy Landes, and Patti Grimm.

The majority’s willingness to dip into the district fund balance to cover the deficit, rather than raise taxes higher, concerned not only opponents but Business Administrator David Nester. “Nobody’s talking to each other in Harrisburg over the state budget,” he noted, and speculated the lack of discussion meant a potential deal to spread more basic education funding to school districts – that $374,000 on which Pottsgrove is counting – might fall though.

If the money fails to arrive, the expected deficit will balloon to about $466,000. It would still be paid for from savings, but the district’s fund balance would drop from about 7 percent to 6.23 percent.

“We have to do what’s right for our kids, yes, but we’ve got to do what’s right for taxpayers too,” Kontostathis said in arguing for the 1.8 percent rate. Despite dire predictions of decreased state funding and the imposition of taxing restrictions in the future, “we cannot continue to budget and tax Pottsgrove taxpayers for what might happen five years from now,” Remelius added.

“We’re only jeopardizing our kids sooner rather than later” by spending the fund balance,” Landes countered. “We have a responsibility to students in this district to do what we can for them without chopping programs.” Neiffer agreed: “I’m not prepared to abandon our kids like this, now or later.”

It was board President Neiffer who, earlier Monday, called Nester and asked him to prepare additional budget options that included no-tax-increase scenarios. “I wanted to make sure that we got everything on the table,” he said. If board members seemed willing to spend savings to cover a deficit – a first for Pottsgrove in several years – “then we should determine just how much of a deficit we’re willing to sacrifice,” Neiffer mused.

Ultimately the zero-tax options, which proposed deficits of $725,000 and $1.1 million respectively, were passed over. Neither was “viable,” Nester noted with some relief; “they would have meant some pretty drastic cuts” in the following budget year and beyond, he said.

By comparison, final budgets recently approved by

the Pottstown school board carry a 1.9 percent tax hike amounting to $52.76;
Spring-Ford, 3.23 percent, $76.10;
Owen J. Roberts, 2.48 percent, $108,
Daniel Boone, 1.8 percent, $54
Boyertown, 5.4 percent, $113;
Methacton, 2.89 percent, $130.52; and
Perkiomen Valley, 1.6 percent, $81.03,

according to various reports in The (Pottstown PA) Mercury and Reading (PA) Eagle newspapers.

Although he voted and actively participated in Monday’s discussion, director David Faulkner was not physically present during the board’s meeting in the district offices on Kauffman Road, Pottstown PA. Instead, he attended via speaker phone from a hotel room where he and his family were vacationing.

Related (to the Pottsgrove School District 2011-2012 budget):

Related (to the Pottsgrove Board of School Directors’ June 27 meeting):