Greensburg Salem school board approves '17th tax hike in the last 19 years'

The Greensburg Salem School Board approved a $47 million budget with a 1.5-mill real estate tax increase this week.

The tax hike brings the total millage to 89.72, and will cost the average property owner an extra $25.51.

The votes for the budget and the tax increase were both 6-2.

Board members Ronald Mellinger, Charlotte Kemerer, Frank Gazze, Nick Rullo, Rachel Shaw and Lynna Thomas voted in favor of both. Jeffrey Metrosky and Robin Savage voted against them.

Stephen Thomas voted in favor of the budget and tax increase by phone, but his votes were invalidated. District policy requires board members who participate in a meeting by phone to be present for the entire meeting. Thomas ended the call partway through the meeting.

Metrosky said he would not vote for a tax increase and an unbalanced budget.

“Just to clarify, this is the 17th tax hike in the last 19 years,” he said.

The budget has an operating deficit of $129,000. An additional $580,000 will be taken from the district’s reserves to pay for major building upkeep projects, including replacing faulty heating and air conditioning systems.

Board President Ron Mellinger said the tax increase is a necessary evil.

“We have to keep things going without furloughing teachers, without cutting programs,” he said.

Mellinger argued that bad schools would keep new taxpayers from moving into the district.

Savage said it’s high taxes and other factors, not schools, that keep people out of Greensburg.

“If people don’t want to move here because there’s no place to build, because there’s high taxes, then they’re not going to come,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if we have pretty buildings.”

Gazze said the district’s income is hamstrung by state-mandated charter school payments.

“We overpay them by $1 million,” Gazze said. “One million dollars in this budget — what would it do?”

The final budget is unchanged from the proposal introduced last week.

The district expects to have about $3.3 million in reserve by the end of the 2019-20 school year.