School property tax rate will remain same

Salado ISD Trustees unanimously proposed a $14.8 million operating budget for the 2017-18, an increase of 5 percent over the current operating budget of $14.1 million. Trustees propose maintaining the current tax rate of $1.2238 per $100 valuation.

On a motion by Darrell Street and a second by Jeff Kelley, the trustees voted to propose the budget and set a hearing for June 28.

With the proposed budget  for next year, Salado ISD will become one of more than 200 Texas school districts to transition to a July 1-June 30 fiscal year. Most districts, including Salado up until now, operate on a Sept. 1-Aug. 31 fiscal year.

The move to the new fiscal year, according to Superintendent Michael Novotny, is being done “so that when teachers come back to school  in August they have their new budgets in place instead of having to wait until Sept. 1.

However, the final property values from the Bell County Appraisal District have not yet been certified. Preliminary values were sent to local taxing entities in May. Final values will be certified later in July.

The difference between the preliminary and final values, however, is usually minimal as a result of values that are contested by property owners.

The proposed budget calls for increases in both local and state revenues.  Almost 60 percent of the budget is funded by local revenues, principally ad valorem taxes. Local revenues are budgeted for $8.6 million in 2017-18 compared to $8.2 million budgeted in 2016-17.

State revenues reflect a 2.4 percent increase in enrollment and average daily attendance.

“This is a smaller increase than we have experienced the past four years,” Dr. Novotny said. “That is because we anticipate our number of transfer students will decline this next year since we stopped taking new transfer students unless they meet one of the three exceptions: child of an employee, child of active duty military or disabled veteran, or sibling of a current transfer student.”

State revenues are budgeted to increase by 8 percent, or more than $400,000 over the previous year to $6.0 million. State revenue for 2016-17 was budgeted at $5.6 million.

The budget increases expenses about 5 percent from $14.1 million to $14.8 million ($725,00).

The largest increase is in Instruction, which comprises  about 55 percent of the total budget. This increase of about $480,000 to $8.1 million is driven by a raise for teachers and additional staff positions.

Additional staff positions funded by the budget include these:

• 18+ program: Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN), special education teacher assistant (the salary and benefits for these two positions are reimbursed by our Bell County Special Education Cooperative).

• Salado High School: health/medical science teacher, part-time Spanish teacher, special education teacher, and special education teacher assistant.

• Junior High School: special education teacher assistant, part-time counselor and English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher assistant.

• Salado Intermediate School: special education teacher assistant

• Transportation: bus driver.

The budget calls for a 5 percent increase in plant operation and maintenance to $1.6 million. According to Dr. Novotny, the $135,959 increase in maintenance is mostly the $60,770 custodial increase from switching back from GCA contracted services to doing custodial in-house. “This was still less expensive than staying with GCA because the cost to stay with them would have gone up over $100,000 for next year,” Dr. Novotny said.

Other increases for plant operations include replacing two air conditioning units that need to be replaced which will cost $16,000 and a projected increase of $16,000 on our property/liability policies because of statewide increases.

Co-curricular and extracurricular costs also increase by 5 percent in the proposed budget.

According to Dr. Novotny, the biggest increases in athletics were an increase cost in professional services ($24,850) to pay for officials, an increase in extra-curricular stipends ($16,714), an increase is athletic field maintenance ($14,000), and an increase in high school uniforms ($8,500).

“We moved around some coaching positions and assignments,” Dr. Novotny said, “however, we didn’t add any coaching positions.”