I was one of the "no" votes. The comment I made was with regard to questioning where people were going to find this money. In the past, the earnings of our residents would have been able to cover some of this kind of tax hike. But in the times we have today, people will be forced to cut expenditures in other areas of their lives in order to make things work out.
How do I know this? Our state income tax receipts are down this year. This is a reflection of lower earnings throughout the Commonwealth. Additionally, according to the Census Bureau, real median income has been declining the last few years.
The other comment I made was that the tax hike we are seeing now was predictable. I don't even know how many posts I have on this blog with regards to this, but there are quite a few. If this Board was serious about reducing the base budget in an effort to lessen the impact of this tax increase on our residents, we certainly had enough time to make serious changes. Unfortunately, these changes have not taken place.
This is the first of many tax increases coming your way. We borrowed approximately 2/3rds of the money we will need to complete the high school project. The next bond float is still a few years away. The PSERS spike will have a massive impact on us in 2012-2013. Again, these are expenses we know are coming. Without making significant adjustments to the base budget to lessen the impact these events will have on our taxpayers, I cannot support this budget.
Finally, I have updated my chart from the white paper I put out there in January. It is my opinion that these tax increases will put us in a difficult competitive situation with other school districts with which we like to compare ourselves. Below is a graph showing the combined historical school district and municipal millage rates from 2002-2009:
The chart above does not include the projected 2010-2011 school district tax increases.
While many people like to say that Bethel Park and Penn Hills are embarking on similar high school projects, the one major difference is that neither one of those school districts need to raise taxes to pay for their schools.
From the Penn Hills Website:
What This Means to the TaxpayersAs for Bethel Park, they made sure that their construction project coincided with the pay off of bonds. They collected money from taxpayers for a year (maybe two) without lowering their millage in order to build up a fund to help pay for their school. The new debt taken on to pay for the new building was similar in size to what they had been paying for the old, retired bond.
The proposed budget presented in April and tentatively scheduled for passage in June maintains the real estate millage in the District at its current rate of 24.81. The purpose of this plan is to provide the best facilities for our children while allowing Penn Hills to be a more affordable place to live. The District is planning on accomplishing this without raising taxes, calculating that properly done and well-thought-out consolidation can reduce the District’s overall operating costs in order to offset the bond issue planned for the new construction/renovation.
While Mt Lebanon will certainly see some savings due to more energy efficiencies (a good thing), we will most certainly be distancing ourselves from other school districts in the total tax department as long as we make no meaningful adjustments to the base budget.
