October 30, 2017 at 3:48 p.m.
School board approves $40 million budget
Tax levy will make up just under $26 million of that figure
School board approves $40 million budget
Property taxes will cover the majority of the budget.
The total tax levy will be $25,891,955, which represents a decrease of $961,294 from the 2016-17 budget.
The mill rate of 11.09 per $1,000 of fair market value or $1,109 on a house worth $100,000, is down .60 from last year, or 1.65-percent.
Total revenue for the district for the current school year is budgeted at $41,763,809, which leaves a surplus of $1,690,578 that will go into the fund balance. The district's director of business services Marta Kwiatkowski said the board will decide how to deal with these undesignated funds at a later date.
In addition to taxes, the district's income comes from state and federal aids and grants and other sources.
"It seems that the year went by rather quickly, that this is coming around already," district superintendent Kelli Jacobi said, addressing the annual meeting.
During her budget presentation at the annual meeting, Kwiatkowski started by going over the third Friday in September count of students in the district.
"This year, the number is 2,453 students," Kwiatkowski said. "It is up from last year. Last year it was 2,448 students."
She said salaries and other benefits and purchased services make up just under 80 percent of the district's total expenditures.
"Purchased services is where we have outsourced custodians and thing like that," Kwiatkowski said.
One thing that kept that figure lower this year was the cost of health insurance premiums went down 5 percent after staying flat last year.
"We are able to keep our premiums down, we are either seeing negative or no increases, which affects the budget because health insurance is one of the biggest benefits we have," Kwiatkowski said, noting that the revenue limit increased for the third year in a row, up $164,947 to $28,874,158.
The board then voted on a motion to adopt the tax levy of $25,891,955 for transportation, sites, buildings, vehicles, maintenance and operations of the school $1,326,456 to retire debt and pay interest and $400,000 for community service. This motion passed unanimously.
The meeting also included approval of other motions including reimbursement of expenses for board members who travel in the performance of their duties, that the district can provide prosecution or legal defense in any action or proceeding it is interested in, that the district will provide school lunches, minimum distance for student transportation.
Finally, the next annual meeting was set for Oct. 22, 2018.
Following the annual meeting, the school board went right into a special meeting to formally approve the 2017-18 district budget, with the most up-to-date numbers Kwiatkowski had provided since Oct. 9. This meeting lasted just under 6.5 minutes.
In an interview Friday, Kwiatkowski said state aid was increased in the 2017-19 biennial budget, including an additional $200 per student hike.
"That is not part of the base for the revenue limit," she said. "We got an additional $250 last year, so that is a quarter of a million dollars more."
She said that increase in state aid is only for the next two years and could be cut in the 2020-22 budget.
"We're not counting on this money going forward after the two years," Kwiatkowski said.
Still, she said the additional state aid is a boon to the local taxpayers as it reduces the tax levy.
"Because of that, our mill rate dropped, which is great news to the taxpayers," she said.
Jamie Taylor may be reached via email at [email protected].
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