The Daily Local (dailylocal.com), Serving Chester County, PA
Coatesville school board approves preliminary budget
Spending plan includes a tentative 3.5 percent tax hike and anticipates district using $3.4 million from general fund balance
Thursday, February 10, 2011
By ERIC S. SMITH
Staff Writer
CALN — The Coatesville Area School Board approved its preliminary budget for the 2011-2012 school year during a special meeting Tuesday by a 6-1 vote.
The preliminary budget includes a tentative tax increase of 3.5 percent, according to Ken Lupold, director of business administration. Board member Diane Brownfield voted against the budget and members Laurie and Robert Knecht were not in attendance. Brownfield did not return requests for comment about her dissenting vote.
The preliminary budget also shows the district using about $3.4 million of its general fund balance. That would bring the district's fund balance below $500,000, according to the preliminary budget.
"This budget is only tentative and anything can change before we vote on the final budget," said board member Richard Ritter.
The board's vote on Tuesday does set the ceiling for a tax increase at 3.5 percent, but that hike can be lowered before the board approves a final budget. Under the state's Act 1 index, the board cannot increase taxes beyond 1.7 percent unless it asks the state for exceptions, Lupold said. The district would be seeking exceptions for special education and the increasing pension obligations for the district, he said.
According to the preliminary budget, the district expects a more than 5 percent increase in local revenues for 2011-2012 over the current school year. Some of this increase is accounted for with the proposed real-estate tax increases, but a large majority comes from the district's anticipation of a 50 percent increase in real-estate transfer taxes. The district is budgeting for 1.5 million in transfer taxes for 2011-2012.
The district is also anticipating a small decrease in state revenues and a rather large decrease in federal revenues due to the termination of the federal stimulus package.
Overall revenues are expected to increase by slightly less than 2 percent from the budgeted figures of 2010-2011. Projected revenues from this year are slightly lower than what was originally budgeted.
Expenditures are expected to increase by about 2 percent over what was budgeted for this year. Both special education and debt service costs are expected to go up by about 6 percent each.
The expected fund balance usage is still only half as much as the district needed to balance its budget in 2009-2010, but at that time the district had about $12 million in reserves. Therefore, when it used $6 million it had $6 million left for future needs.
To contact staff writer Eric S. Smith, send an e-mail to esmith@dailylocal.com.
URL: http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2011/02/10/news/srv0000010891854.prt
© 2011 dailylocal.com, a Journal Register Property
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated. Although I asked people to sign their comments (or at least use their initials), I have only been getting 'anonymous' comments. I have changed the settings to that the posts will need some sort of identifier.