Budget Meeting

There will be a budget meeting tonight at 6:00PM in the elementary school library.  The school board will review the preliminary budget presented by the administration.  The budget building process was difficult this year for a couple of reasons.  First, the school district is still feeling the effects of the poor economy.  This has curtailed collection of some of the taxes that the school district uses.  Secondly, the school district is currently facing a lawsuit requesting that the school district not be allowed to collect occupational taxes.  If this lawsuit were successful, the school district would realize a $400,000 deficit in the budget.  To make matters worse, because of Act 1, the school district would not be allowed to raise property taxes enough to offset that amount.  The school district could raise taxes only enough to recover less that $120,000 of that amount.  I hope you can see where this places a great burden on the school district during the budgeting process.

With all of that being said, I am pleased that we will be able to present a preliminary budget for the school board that allows the school district to continue to move forward.  The total budget  amount is $12,714,669.  This is $140,000 less than last year's budget.  The school board will review the budget tonight, make adjustments and suggestions over the next week, and then vote on the preliminary budget at the April board meeting.  The budget will then be available for public viewing until the June board meeting where final approval of the budget will be passed.