Proposed budget won’t be final

FRANCONIA >> The almost $6.6 million gap between projected revenue and expenses in what will become the Souderton Area School District 2021-2022 budget has been reduced to a little less than $3 million.

On April 29, the Souderton Area School Board will vote on a $138 million proposed final budget.

Those won’t be the final numbers, though, district officials stressed at the April 14 school board Finance Committee meeting.

“In no way, shape or form is this our final budget,” committee Chair Donna Scheuren said.

The proposed final budget follows the state required timeline

“We don’t want to just throw it in as revenue in our budget to eliminate the budget deficit and then in two years when the recurrent costs are still there, we have a bigger budget gap.” — Director of Business Affairs Brian Pawling of federal coronavirus aid

for the budget process, but isn’t the final vote, she said.

That will come on June 17, before which additional information will be received for changes to the budget, Director of Business Affairs Brian Pawling said.

The proposed budget tentatively includes a 3 percent tax hike, but that’s not likely to be the final number, he said.

“We have that in there as what we would require right now, but there are a lot of things that are still up in the air,” Pawling said.

While the totals aren’t in yet, it looks like both revenue and expenses will be above budget this year, with the net effect being to the good for the district, he said.

Revenue will be more than budgeted because the local economy remained strong and real estate taxes and earned income taxes didn’t have the reduction that had been anticipated, he said. Expenses were more than budgeted because of costs associated with fully opening the schools last fall, he said.

The majority of the district’s students have been taking in-school classes five days a week this year. An online option is also offered.

The district is allocated $3.9 million from the latest round of federal pandemic stimulus funding, Pawling said.

“We are looking at how we can utilize that, if there’s any potential use in next year’s budget, but as we spoke about last month, we want to be careful about how we use it because it’s one-time money,” Pawling said. “We don’t want to just throw it in as revenue in our budget to eliminate the budget deficit and then in two years when the recurrent costs are still there, we have a bigger budget gap.”

The current property tax rate in Souderton Area School District is 30.32 mills. That puts the bill for a home assessed at $156,110, the district median, at $4,733.26. Each mill equals $1 of tax per $1,000 of assessed property value.

In answer to board President Ken Keith’s question, Pawling said the average tax hike in the district over the past six years was 1.04 percent.

“I think it’s a testament to what we’re doing here at Souderton. We’re keeping our programs strong, we’re keeping our kids strong, protecting educational outcomes, and I don’t think that’s commonplace, unfortunately, in our county, in our state,” Keith said, thanking Scheuren, the Finance Committee and the administration for the work done to make that possible.