Prelim budget calls for 2.88% tax increase
By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times
EAST MARLBOROUGH — Conservatism is on the outs for the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District.
Well, at least, when it comes to its budget process.
District officials announced Monday night during the Board of Education’s work session that the district would be moving away from its time-honored conservative budgeting process, to a more tightly governed approach. Instead of budgeting for potentials and maybes — i.e. guessing a desktop computer might fail and budgeting for it — the new budget process calls for spending only for those things specifically planned for purchase or expenditure.
Should a computer — or heating system — fail unexpectedly, the new proposed budget will have a catchall reserve, which officials suggest is a smaller total amount than was previously stashed within budget lines, said the district’s Director of Business and Operations, Robert Cocrhan.
The new system is the result of input from board members during the recent board/administration retreat. Board members sought to move away from the decades-old conservative approach that often led to budget surpluses at the end of the school budget year — and the administration shifted to a new budgeting process.
While the public will gets its first detailed look at the budget during the May 2 public budget hearing, the initial proposed final budget looks a lot different from the preliminary budget adopted last December. While the old budget document called for a more than 5% tax increase, this new budget calls for a 2.88% weighted tax increase.
“That essentially was a placeholder budget,” Superintendent of Schools John Sanville said, noting that not only did the district not have an idea of state funding would be for the 2016-17 school year, it didn’t know what the numbers for the 2015-16 school year would be — and any impact that might have — due to the ongoing state budget drama in Harrisburg. This budget is based on the funding proposals of Gov. Tom Wolf, whose funding plan shifts more money to needy districts, as opposed to the funding formula of legislative Republicans who wish to stick with the formula that gives more money to wealthy districts, such as Unionville-Chadds Ford.
The proposed budget uses $191,059 from the pension reserve fund and $284,000 in exceptions above the state Act 1 limit of 2.4%. Cochran said that about 30% of payroll expense is now being eaten up by pension costs, and by using the pension reserve as planned, it softens the impact for the taxpayer.
The budget does expand expenditures in a few areas, including technology with the purchase of Chromebooks for the entire middle school student body, as well as a few additional staff hires to address concerns with class size.
In other district news, a final solution to the ongoing issue with rain noise for the roof of the Unionville High School auditorium may be on the horizon. After some squabbling over who would pay for acoustic tests, the architect and insurers finally came to agreement, and those tests are slated for next month. If all goes as planned, work on a remedy could happen this summer, Buildings and Grounds Supervisor Rick Hostetler said.
