West Greene considering raising school taxes for first time in 14 years
ROGERSVILLE – Property owners living in West Greene School District could see their school taxes increase for the first time in 14 years.
The board is expected to vote at its agenda meeting tonight on the district’s 2016-17 operating budget and decide whether to raise property taxes by 0.46 mills to help pay for increasing costs for staff salaries and benefits.
The proposed $16.896 million operating budget would be only a modest 1.2 percent spending increase over last year’s budget, but the district has had to make small cuts across the board to offset a nearly $1 million increase to salaries and benefits, district Superintendent Thelma Szarell said.
“Every administrator was asked if they could cut back anything that wasn’t needed,” Szarell said. “I don’t think anything was cut where it would be detrimental to programs. There were several things in the budget you would like to have, but can be held over for another year.”
Some of those cost-control measures include keeping older athletic uniforms an extra year and reducing the amount given to teachers to purchase classroom supplies, Szarell said.
The biggest reason for cuts was because of an increase in staff salaries, medical benefits and the district’s contribution to the pension plan, which account for 67 percent of the overall budget, business manager Jessica Bissett said. However, Bissett said it’s “still up in the air” whether the board will pass the tax increase, which would raise the district’s millage rate to 19.96 mills and bring in about $236,000 in additional revenue.
If the tax increase is passed, a homeowner with a property assessed at $50,000 would pay $23 more in school taxes a year.
The school board will meet at 7:30 p.m. today in the high school cafeteria. The district has not raised taxes since 2002.
The district might be facing even larger financial issues in the future. The school district did not receive a $1.6 million allotment in property taxes from Alpha Natural Resources last year after the company declared bankruptcy, although Bissett said their expenditures were low enough this past school year to absorb the loss of that revenue. School officials are expecting that annual revenue to return, however, and have budgeted to receive that tax money this coming year from whatever company buys Alpha.