Plum School Board passes final budget with 2.26% tax increase

The Plum School Board finalized a 2.26% tax increase on Tuesday in a unanimous vote to approve its final budget.

The budget increases the tax rate from the current 23.3896 mills to 23.9159 mills.

That’s partially the result of board discussions in favor of smaller incremental tax hikes rather than large tax jumps like this school year’s 6.2% increase.

The board passed a balanced budget with total revenue and expenditures set at about $77.6 million, which is about a $3.3 million increase from this school year’s budget.

After initially eyeing around a 5% tax increase and later a 2.5% bump to mitigate the effects of inflation, the board cut that number by about one-quarter of a percent to 2.26%. That is below the state limit of 5.3%, which the board voted not to surpass in December.

That means for a home at the school district’s median assessed value of $117,500, a 2.26% increase would increase the annual tax bill by $62 to about $2,810, before any exclusions or discounts are applied.

The budget will not cut any personnel or academic and extracurricular programs.

The bulk of the budget is slotted toward salaries and benefits for district employees, totaling more than $53 million. Another $8.7 million will go toward debt service payments.

As for revenue, the preliminary budget projects about $44.2 million from local sources, around $1.6 million more than the current budget; $32 million from state sources, around $1.2 million more than the current budget; and about $753,000 from federal sources, about $82,000 less than the current budget.

Mark Stropkaj, the board’s lead finance liaison, said the district took a “conservative approach” to funding because of uncertainties and timing regarding state and federal funding.

The budget initially had a deficit of several hundred thousand dollars, which Stropkaj said the board closed with cuts to substitute staffing as well as transportation and technology costs.

“As a board, we want to keep that (increase) as minimal as possible,” he said. “We’re not anticipating any large increase any time soon.”