Fewer than a dozen people turned out Tuesday for the first in a series of public information meetings on the Shawano School District’s proposed budget for next school year, but if their response was any indication, the district could face an uphill climb getting public approval.
Business Manager Louise Fischer laid out a budget scenario for the 2014-2015 school year that recommends a $13.5 million levy, the maximum the district would be allowed to tax. That would be an increase of $600,000 over this year’s levy of $12.9 million.
Depending on how equalized valuation data from the state shakes out when it’s released in October, that could translate into a tax rate of $10.81 per $1,000 of equalized value; a 50 cent increase over this year’s rate of $10.31 per $1,000.
Fischer said she based her calculation on what she hopes is a conservative estimate of no increase in property values.
If property values increase more than expected, it would mean a lower tax rate. If values decrease again, as they did last year, the tax rate could go higher.
Fischer said the Shawano School District has been losing out on additional state aid by not levying to the maximum allowed in previous years. She said that share of the state aid pot was instead going to other districts.
Fischer also said the district has a number of needs, particularly maintenance issues, that are not being met and could start to be addressed with a maximum tax levy.
Several community members, however, voiced objections to seeing taxes go up any more than they need to, saying that property owners in the district — and particularly retired people — can no longer afford the increases.
Shawano School Board member Derek Johnson agreed and said there were places where the district could still make budget cuts.
He also took issue with the list of unaddressed district needs that Fischer presented.
“Several of the needs on that list are wants,” he said.
Discussions veered at one point to lobbying state legislators to change the state aid formula that penalizes school districts that are frugal in their spending.
Some also said that city and county officials need to do more to attract new taxpaying businesses into the community to take more of the burden off of residential property owners.
The district will hold another public information meeting at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday at the the Civic Center, 225 S. Main St., before the proposed budget is officially presented to the School Board on Monday.
Another public information meeting will be held at 7 p.m. July 31, tentatively at Shawano Community Middle School, 1050 S. Union St.
Superintendent Gary Cumberland said the location could be changed depending on what else is happening at the school.