Pickett's Plantation

From a few days ago, here's a story that affects all of us as we are all in Spring-Ford Area School District.  This issue is right from state and national headlines:

Spring-Ford residents turn out for town hall meeting on budget

The Phoenix - 7 March 2011

http://www.phoenixvillenews.com/articles/2011/03/07/news/doc4d6cf0f6b362a912264875.txt?viewmode=fullstory

As the Spring-Ford school district faces a $10.4 million deficit in its $131.6 million 2011-12 budget, they are proposing a property tax increase of 7.6%...

Here is the page on the Spring-Ford Area school district that has budget presentations: http://www.spring-ford.net/Administration/business/business.htm

Here's the specific town hall meeting presentation:

http://www.spring-ford.net/Administration/business/Final%20Town%20Hall%20Presentation%202-28-11.pdf

Notes:

 - Slide 11 shows the preliminary budget:   - Note that revenue is decreasing (amounts from federal and state along with tax re-assessments).    - Note also that expenses increase 4.9% (despite spending cuts highlighted on slides 8 and 9).

 - Slide 6 shows the cause of increasing expenses:

Health care costs (which make up 60% of the increase, as per slide 13), PSERS Retirement, special education, utilities, transportation (to be expected with higher gas prices), etc.  Slide 13 also shows that new Support/Admin costs of $1.4m are the second biggest reason for the increase.  I wonder what these are? (new admin for new facilities?)

 - Slide 19 talks about the new fiscal reality regarding revenue... and then Slide 21 talks about which programs to cut...   (no discussion about other types of cuts)...

Our family has been pleased with our experience at Oaks and the 5th/6th Grade Center.  However, seems we should expect an increase in our taxes to help pay for it...

Regards,

John

An Oaks Neighbor

here's a related article:

"Spring-Ford mulls administrative demotion"

Times Herald - 23 March 2011

http://timesherald.com/articles/2011/03/23/news/doc4d8a0a95f02f5498844158.txt?viewmode=fullstory

New Developments:

 - To save money, they may demote the principal at Spring City Elementary School (effectively cutting salary in half)

 - New state budget cuts an ADDITIONAL $1m in funding from the budget
 - GlaxoSmithKline is not playing nice in regards to a reassessment appeal - they refused a compromise.  If they succeed, the school district will have to pay back $5.5m in back taxes and lose $1m a year in tax base.

Ouch!

Ouch indeed.  Don't forget that these numbers do not include ANY of the new monies that they will be obligated to pay to the union during the next round of contract negotiations.  Almost half of the additional cost is union benefits.  Maybe it's time for the teacher to start to pay their fair share of health and pension.  And as for giving them a raise, they should be the same as the rest of the general population is getting...and if you attended the last meeting you'd realize that's just about ZERO.  

I went to the School Board Finance Committee Meeting last night in the High School Cafeteria.  Here are my notes:

 It was a 3+ hour meeting with about 150 people in attendance...

They previously announced and are cutting something like $8m in the budget via furloughs of teacher aids, library closing, outsourcing janitors, cutting 5th-6th grade extracurricular programs, etc.

That reduced the initial budget gap that was about $10m and got the expected property tax rate increase down to 3.86%

However, last night they also discussed and resolved to cut another $600K from the budget to get the proposed tax rate increase down to about 3.3%.

The $600K in additional cuts had two parts:

- $300K - Interest Rate savings by paying down a $9m bond by $2m

- $300K - Net reduction in the extra curricular program budget (a 30% cut in the $1m budget) - this net reduction will likely come from new activity fees (~$100 per participant?) and some reductions (for example, one board member suggested cutting *all* extra-curricular programs for all grades below 8th grade)

The big issues:

- Many large commercial property have appealed (and won) reassessments based on the current economic climate. That has significantly impacted revenue.

- When it comes to spending reductions, there are only a few discretionary areas - there are required spends, union agreements, mandates, etc. that must be allocated.

One thing to note is that the millage (tax rate) in our school district is lower than almost every surrounding school district. When questioned about this, they said it was because we were "blessed" with a large commercial base, which helped us keep a low tax base. However, they also said this was our "kryptonite", because in down times, the commercial businesses demand re-assessments and reduced tax rates, and they come in much bigger chunks than with districts that have a primarily residential base. They seem very concerned about the 70% of residents who do NOT have school-aged children, especially those on fixed incomes. The school board seemed more willing to cut instead of raising taxes...