The Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board held its annual budget meeting earlier this week and, once again, taxes will rise if the budget goes through as is. This is the proposed final budget that school board directors will vote on next week and, if approved, will vote on again in June, though some of the numbers may change before then.
Superintendent of Schools Tim Hoffman opened the session, saying the proposed budget is balanced, “that also accomplishes a number of important objectives.”
Those objectives include an additional $500,000 toward the debt service in the operating budget.
“This gives us the flexibility to continue to invest in our facilities,” he said.
In addition, “This budget sets us up well for future budgets, as it brings us up to a manageable and more realistic level with our actual expenditures. We’re hoping to reduce another trend from over the last five years, which has been ending the years with a deficit.”
The main presentation came from Director of Finance Joe Deady.
Deady repeated Hoffman’s comment about the budget being balanced, saying expenditures and revenues each total $111,265,549, but with a tax increase. Taxes for the next school year, as things stand now, are 34.95 mils for Chester County property owners and 20.21 mils for Chadds Ford Township property owners. The different milage rates between the two counties are based on how the counties assess property. [A mil is a tax of $1 for every $1,000 of assessed property value.]
The expenditure figure is $2,847,819 more than the current school year, with the biggest increase coming from salaries and benefits, mostly medical benefits, PSERS, and payroll taxes, according to Deady.
“The biggest driver is the medical benefits,” he said. “Eighty percent of the increase is medical.”
The district anticipates $49.631 million for salaries and $31.985 million in benefits.
Those increases reflect a 3.07 percent increase in Chester County and a 4.99 percent increase in Delaware County, with a weighted average of 3.47 percent, which is just slightly less than the Act1 Index of 3.50 percent. If the increases were more than the index, the district would need to go to a referendum.
Deady added that the numbers could change by the final vote in June.
On the revenue side, Deady said, $89.8 million comes from local sources, while the state kicks in $20.822 million, and the federal government adds another $635,437. Of the $89.8 million that is from local sources, $84.118 million comes from real estate taxes, while $5.688 million comes from other sources. So, of that total revenue, 81 percent comes from local sources.
Directors will vote on the proposed final budget next week, on May 11, and vote for the final budget at the June 15 meeting.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
