Budgeting on this year’s cost and revenues from long ago
This is the time of year when school boards decide how much they will ask of the voters.
This is also the time of year when voters start grumbling about how school boards have their hands out and should live within one’s budget.
Jane and Joe Taxpayer have to live within their budget. They aren’t forever harping at their boss for a raise.
Why should school districts be any different?
They aren’t.
School districts do live within their budgets as much as they can. But there are three things that stress that budget out of whack.
First is the state General Assembly. The legislators have the best of intentions. They just don’t always have the money to see those intentions through.
The legislators believe that for Ohio students to be competitive, they should have more science, math and foreign language to graduate from high school.
Noble endeavor. The legislators, however, did not provide funding to pay for such a bold move. That will come out of the local district’s pocket.
Imagine the look on Jane and Joe’s face when they open the letter from the state informing them that, henceforth to preserve the public weal, they will be required to triple their car insurance.
Messes up a budget big time.
Second, the cost of everything is going up. Jane and Joe are paying at least a buck more a gallon for gas than they did a year ago.
So they drive less.
The local school district is paying about a buck-and-a-half more for diesel than it did a year ago. Problem is, you can’t stop busing kids in the middle of the year. Just as you can’t up the price of lunch mid-year to cover the increased food costs.
That would put any budgeteer behind the eight ball.
And finally, let’s crack on the state legislators — and ourselves — again.
Most people see a cost of living raise every year. If you collect Social Security, you got a 2.3 percent increase last October. Most salary and hourly wage earners see annual raises.
School districts can expect nothing year-to-year. While Social Security payments were increased 2.3 percent, revenue to the Brookville schools, for instance, dropped 2 percent.
Part of the decrease is the state’s phasing out of a business tax. Part is because voters in 1980 passed a constitutional amendment.
It began back in the hyperinflation days of the 1970s, when the taxable value of houses began outstripping income. To protect homeowners, the legislature in 1976 passed House Bill 920, which locked in the property tax rate. If a levy raised $4 million when passed in 1977, it would collect $4 million for the life of the levy, even if the value of the property increased 10-fold.
In 1980, voters made that permanent by approving a constitutional amendment. In essence, the voters froze a major source of school income. The only way to increase income was to go back to the voters again and again.
We taxpayers are asking school districts to live within budgets that have this year’s costs but revenues from the past.
My family, just like Jane and Joe, would have a hard time paying 2008 costs on 2000 income, for instance.
And that’s what we expect from school districts.
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