Tax hike unlikely in 2021-22 budget
POTTSTOWN » With school budget season now underway, the Pottstown School Board was informed that despite a deficit, a tax hike is unlikely for the 20212022 school year.
Board member Thomas Hylton, who heads the board’s finance committee, and Business Manager Maureen Jampo explained to the board that because of reduced costs due to virtual learning, the board added more than $3 million to its reserves over the course of this current school year.
As a result, the administration plans to use reserves to cover the $1.7 million gap between anticipated revenues and expenditures in the coming school year. The millage will likely remain at 41.96 mills.
Hylton said if the budget is adopted in June with no tax hike, it will mean the Pottstown School Board has only raised property taxes twice in the last seven years.
Nevertheless, Pottstown’s local tax effort will remain among the top 10 in the Commonwealth.
Jampo said the draft budget is built under the assumption that none of Gov. Tom Wolf’s expansive budget proposals for increasing and more fairly distributing state aid to education will come to pass.
Wolf’s budget would distribute all basic education funding through the fair funding formula adopted in 2016, which would mean an additional $13 million to Pottstown’s budget, in addition to reforms to charter school funding, which would provide nearly $1 million savings to Pottstown.
But Republican politicians, who hold a majority in both houses of the General Assembly, “have already called Wolf’s budget ‘dead on arrival,’” Jampo said.
So, as an exercise in caution, the budget is built on the assumption that state funding “will be flat or reduced,” she said.
Board members John Armato, Laura Johnson and Raymond Rose are not ready to make that assumption yet.
Armato reminded the board that he is a “strong believer in the power of positive thinking; that if you have a positive view and think about things positively that positive things will happen.” He said he prefers to exercise hope as well as caution.
Johnson, who is in regular contact with state legislators, said she has heard from them that “nothing is going to happen with school funding unless people show us they care.”
All too often, she says, state legislators tell her they “don’t hear from public school parents.”
“I do think we’re making progress, but I also think it will take more voices,” Johnson said on the issue of fair school funding.
Johnson, who was just named chairperson of the
Montgomery County Legislative Committee, and Rose have jointly helped create a statewide advocacy group called Pennsylvanians For Fair Funding. Previously, Johnson had created a Facebook page for Advocates for Pottstown Schools.
Both are easily found on Facebook and both regularly share links and suggestions for how taxpayers and parents can make their voices heard more clearly in Harrisburg.
“It’s time for legislators to hear from public school parents that this system needs to be fixed,” said Rose.
In other budget news, Jampo reported although assessed property value dropped again in 2020, the budget impact is minimal, a little over $21,000. “Still we’d like to see it going in
the other direction,” she said.