The Council Rock School Board could be drawing close to a property tax increase for next school year of somewhere around 2 percent, based on discussion at the Thursday, May 4, Finance Committee meeting.
“I’m recommending at least 2 percent,” Director of Business Administration Anthony Rapp told school board members and fellow administrators. “I would ask for at least 2 percent, and that would kind of have me using $3 million in fund balance (to balance the 2023-24 budget).”
The district’s current fund balance, or surplus, is $21.27 million, according to figures presented by Rapp at the meeting.
Board President Ed Salamon and members Ed Tate and Mariann McKee expressed agreement or near agreement with a tax increase of around 2 percent.
“I’m in the ballpark, I’m pretty close,” Salamon said of Rapp’s recommendation.
Other board members at the meeting weren’t committing yet.
“I’d like to see more efficiencies,” Michael Roosevelt said. “I think there are more efficiencies in this. You can’t do zero (tax increase). Zero causes problems.”
He was referring to a trend that holding the line on taxes in any given year only seems to lead to bigger hikes in the following years.
“I don’t want to raise taxes and find out on June 30 we have an extra $10 million in our pocket,” school board member Bob Hickey said. “It seems like every year, we have this extra money in the pot.”
The gap between revenue and expenses in the projected $261.59 million budget for next school year is currently $7.63 million, according to Rapp’s figures. School board members and administrators will continue working over the next few weeks to arrive at the best way to close that gap, which stood at about $16 million a few weeks ago.
“We’ve gone through everyone’s budget line by line,” Superintendent Andrew Sanko said of the effort he and other administrators have made to reduce the difference between revenue and expenses. “Everybody across the organization has been involved with that.”
In January, the school board passed a resolution pledging not to raise property taxes more than the state’s Act 1 Index for 2023-24 of 4.1 percent. A tax hike of 4.1 percent, which seems unlikely given the current discussions centering around 2 percent, would equate to 5.5131 mills, or $210 for a Council Rock resident with a property assessed at the district average of $38,060. Current total millage is 134.4673, or $5,118 in annual taxes for the owner of that average assessed property.
In addition to a variety of other revenue sources, the district also levies a 1 percent earned income tax it splits with its five municipalities of Northampton, Newtown, Upper Makefield and Wrightstown townships and Newtown Borough. There was discussion at the May 4 meeting of moving toward raising the EIT rate (which would require approval in a voter referendum) and eliminating the district’s occupation tax, which charges working residents somewhere between $50 and $350 a year based on their occupation.
Rapp said hiking the EIT rate would give the district more revenue growth potential as peoples’ incomes increase year to year, whereas the occupation tax is a rather static income source. Relying more on the earned income tax would also reduce the property tax burden, especially for retired residents on fixed incomes who don’t pay the EIT, he added.
Recommended program and staff additions by Sanko and other administrators for 2023-24 – pared down from a list that was originally much longer – are $2.1 million for a new reading program ($1.2 million in 2023-24), one additional gifted teacher for both the elementary and middle schools, two ELD (English Language Development) teachers, an end point technician and two security officers.
Tate said the school board is scheduled to consider adopting a preliminary budget at its May 18 regular meeting, and a final budget at a meeting sometime in June ahead of the state’s June 30 deadline for school districts to adopt final budgets.
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