Bethel Park School District officials eye tax hike to balance 2021-22 budget

Bethel Park property owners should expect to pay a little more in real estate taxes next year as school district officials eye an estimated 3.5% tax hike in next school year’s budget.

The board unanimously voted last month to advertises its proposed 2021-22 budget with a 0.7618-mill tax hike.

If adopted later this month, the tax rate would be set at 22.5272 mills.

It equates to about a $116 increase in the tax bill to the median household of $152,400.

The board also plans to use about $477,400 from its near $25 million reserve fund to balance the budget with no program or staff cuts.

The district cut taxes by a little more than 8% in 2019-20.

“We’re really just trying to get back to where we would have been,” district business manager Doug McCausland said. “The millage rate is still below the rate in 2015-16. They didn’t raise taxes for four years, and then they cut taxes by almost 2 mills. The last two years there has been a steady increase to get back to that funding level.”

One of the reasons for the tax hike is for an estimated $1.1 million purchase of new computers for the high school and one grade level at the middle school.

“We have developed a rotation schedule, so we’re going to start upgrading everyone’s laptops and computers over the next two to three years,” McCausland said. “We have Chromebooks that are almost 10 years old. They haven’t done a significant upgrade to the technology for staff and students in quite some time.”

The proposed budget is available for review on the district’s website, bpsd.org.

Projected revenues were listed at about $93.756 million and expenses at $94.233 million.

District officials were looking at an estimated $5 million deficit in January.

“We were able to rework the budget in such a way that we were able to keep all the programs, all the existing staff besides those that are retiring and wipe out $4.5 million worth of deficit,” McCausland said. “We used a different process to budget this year. We used what we called a zero-based budget.”

All department heads started with $0 and had to justify every purchase. The budget was also based on actual expenditure and revenue trends from audit reports instead of previous budgets.

“We found gaps in the budget from prior years that we tried to eliminate,” McCausland said.

The district also saved millions in transportation and substitute costs due to covid closures and received some federal financial assistance through pandemic funds.

Barry Christenson, board member and finance committee chairman, said the district would be in better financial shape had former board members not approved a tax cut.

“The millage cut two years ago was completely irresponsible because there was no plan to cut the expenses while still ensuring a high-quality education,” Christenson said. “When you look at some of the other expenses like technology, it’s on a refresh cycle. We plan it into our budget to ensure students don’t have obsolete equipment.

“Our technology refresh does include more modern equipment, more Windows-based equipment, especially for our high school students. A lot of our default technology had been Chromebook-based, which isn’t that popular out in the commercial world. When you look at the technology we’re investing in, it is going to prepare students more for college and careers beyond that because the platform is more of a commercial-based platform. When you look for the bang for the buck, we still are focused on reducing costs.”

The district has reduced staffing costs based on attrition and not replacing many people in some positions.

The proposed budget lists retirements of one part-time nurse, one maintenance person and one administrator all not being replaced. One police position also will be eliminated.

Christenson also addressed the pandemic savings.

“Covid is not a solution for balancing your budget, but it worked out for us,” he said. “It obviously doesn’t deliver the quality of education that you hope for.”

No significant changes to the budget are expected prior to its June 22 adoption.