Norwin School District property owners will see a 4.67-mill tax hike for the 2025-26 school year, following a 5-4 school board vote Monday night to approve the budget.

The budget projects expenditures at $95.48 million, but anticipates revenue received at only $93.35 million.

The tax hike is the maximum allowed under the state’s Act I index. The board in January decided to cap any real estate tax hike to the state-allowed maximum. The 4.67-mill hike will generate about $2 million.

Norwin will levy a 96.3-mill rate, of which the revenue from 1.2 mills is diverted to the Norwin Public Library. To balance the 2024-25 budget, the board raised taxes by 5.83 mills, to help reduce a $7.8 million projected budget deficit.

“Please raise taxes to the max, and continue to do so every year,” said board member Alex Detschelt, who joined Christine Baverso, Shawna Ilagan and Ray Kocak in voting against the budget.

“You’ve already shown your supporters that you’re going to do whatever you want,” Detschelt told fellow board members. “There has to be a threshold at which people say, ‘I can’t afford to pay any more.’ So please continue to raise taxes. We need to reach that threshold of pain and suffering in people’s wallets.”

A majority of the school board also approved a $39.5 million bond issue to fund extensive renovation projects to the high school stadium and the high school auditorium.

The stadium project, which has drawn its critics because of the expense, is expected to cost about $25 million. That work will not begin until November, after the end of the upcoming football season, and is not expected to be completed until the summer of 2027. The auditorium renovations are projected to cost around $6.39 million.

The bond issue is expected to increase the district’s $7.1 million debt service to about $7.6 million in the 2025-26 school year, finance and operations director Ryan Kirsch told the board this spring. The debt service will increase to about $1.5 million for the entire 2026-27 school year, he said.

Kocak, Ilagan and Detschelt also voted against the bond issue.

“Because of the way the board has voted on some of these construction projects, taxes have to go up, or else the district will be in a bad financial way,” Kocak said.

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