6-2 vote on budget raising taxes 2%

With a 6-2 vote Monday night, the Owen J. Roberts School Board adopted a $137.4 million final budget for the 2022-23 school year.

The final budget carries a 1.98 percent tax hike, raising the district millage by 0.6587 mills, from 33.2712 to 33.9299.

According to the budget summary prepared by the district, the average property assessment in the school district is $184,112, meaning the 1.98 percent tax hike would increase that tax bill by $121. This does not include earned income tax or real estate transfer tax costs both of which, combined are up by $1 million over the previous year, according to the summary.

Voting no on the budget were Kathy DiMarino and Daniel Dougherty.

Dougherty, who sits on the finance committee and voted for the identical proposed budget in May, said he would vote against the budget even though “I think this is a fiscally responsible budget.” Nevertheless, he said, he is “conflicted” because he worries about the financial impact on families in the district.

“The economy’s not very strong right now,” said DiMarino, who also voted for the proposed budget in May. “I don’t think there’s any way to win.”

School Board President Paul Friel, who is a candidate for the Pennsylvania House of

Representatives 26th District seat, said part of OJR’s budget problem is in Harrisburg, which does not fund school districts fairly, forcing them to rely on, and raise local property taxes.

Local taxes comprise roughly 78 percent of all the school district’s income with the state’s share getting smaller every year.

More funding from the state “would relieve some of that pressure here,” he said.

Previous boards have simply adopted budgets that raise taxes to the state index limit, which in this case would have been 3.4 percent. “But we’ve moved away from that.” He thanked the administration for lowering the budget ask “from every single school building.”

The budget began, Friel said with a $5.5 million deficit and the budget adopted Monday uses $2.5 million of reserves to close part of that gap between expected revenues and expenditures. “We’ve used 100 percent of that fund balance. Beyond that, you’re cutting people,” he said.

Former board member and recent candidate Heather McCreary said the board did not make its deliberations public enough and respond to the public and did not take a single cost-saving suggestion the public made into account in the final budget.

School board member Jennifer Munson noted that none of the suggestions offered by the public would have cut the deficit enough to make a difference in the tax hike.