CSD’s Reasons For a Millage Increase, Public Hearing Info
Decatur Metro | June 3, 2011City Schools of Decatur will hold public hearings on their proposed 1 mill increase to the tax rate on Monday, June 6th at 9a and 6:30p and prior to the School Board’s monthly meeting on June 14th at 5:30p. (1 mill = roughly $147.50 tax increase on a $295,000 Decatur home, according to CSD)
Along with the public hearing, CSD posted a public notice on its website detailing the rather recent history of Decatur tax and millage rates (3-4% tax digest increases, mostly millage rate deductions – good!) and the very recent history (declines in the tax digest and a 2% increase in tax exemptions – bad!).
Though the city’s tax base is projected to increase 1% in the coming fiscal year and CSD has reduced Central Office and individual school staffs, CSD lists a variety of contributing factors that require the millage rate to be raised. They include…
- Opening Glenwood Elementary as a K-3 school and Fifth Avenue as the new 4-5 Academy.
- Adding teacher and paraprofessional positions for Exceptional Student Services due to growing enrollment and the new Fifth Avenue 4-5 Academy
- Absorbing positions previously funded by federal stimulus dollars
- Assuming full cost of the nursing program due to discontinuation of partnership with DeKalb Medical
- Implementing a 1.25% cost of living adjustment for employees
Lots more info and docs on this subject on the CSD website.
Don’t forget that a majority of this increase will be wiped out by a decline in your DeKalb taxes due to the city successfully passing state legislation last year that eliminates “double-taxation” on city residents for county services (general police, recreation, etc) they don’t use.
Whether DeKalb raises taxes (by as much as 4 mills by some accounts) remains to be seen.
h/t: Patch
Latest from Decaturish
Bueller?
Sorry for the delay DM. I’m trying to review the very compressed and difficulty information available. There are a number of things that jump out at me. They include:
There is a (false) distinction being made between teacher pay and overall compensation. Given the large run up in benefits cost it’s hard to imagine how teacher pay can increase when overall compensation is being driven up so much by benefits cost growing so rapidly. I’d like to get a better sense of what amount of control the system has on allocating overall compensation between ‘pay’ and ‘benefits’. It seems that lately all available economic wiggle room has been allocated to benefits. Is this the choice of the state, administration or board? I would guess that some of our teachers would prefer a more generous allocation of compensation to pay and would be very interested in keeping benefits cost from depriving them of current compensation. But I may be missing something.
There are a number of assumptions in the budget drafts provided that deserve more analysis. Student enrollment, future ‘pay’/’benefits’ ratios, the overall value of the digest, state funding levels and greater detail on non-instructional expenses. The later category of particular intrest to me. And that is before considering the prospect of $400k or more of savings from alternative busing options.
It is also important to look at past decisions and evaluate them in light of new budget realities to help inform choices going forward. For example, the administration was interested in combining 4/5 and middle school campuses. How would this have effected busing costs and start times. There now seems to be some thought of combing bus routes among different schools. Have the previous concerns subsided? How are the recent decisions to increase technology and career academy spending by 1.25 million sitting with the propect of milage increases on the table?
Anyhow, just some thoughts. I may be able to put some additional detail to this in the coming days.