Schools expected to raise taxes in county
Published 12:00 am Thursday, May 13, 2004
[5/12/04]Taxes will rise in Warren County this fall, public school officials predicted Wednesday, to do the bidding of state lawmakers who did not allocate full funding.
“It’s not as bad as it could have been, but it’s bad,” said Dale McClung, the chief financial officer for the Vicksburg Warren School District. “Legislators have shifted the tax burden from the state to local taxpayers.”
Legislators wrangled over the state’s budget during the four-month session that ended late Sunday.
The $3.7 billion budget lawmakers approved gave K-12 education statewide $45 million less than this year and $79 million less than education leaders requested for the year.
The total hit for the unified district here, which is operating on a $63 million spending plan, is a $1.5 million shortfall to fund state-required expenses, including part of the cost of raises for teachers, for the next fiscal year starting July 1. School trustees will complete their spending plan next month and forward it to the Warren County Board of Supervisors to set a tax rate sufficient to raise the money. Odds are that rate will mean higher taxes on vehicles starting Oct. 1 and real estate starting Jan. 1.
The loss comes from legislators not fully funding the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which was established to ensure equity in funding for all school districts in the state and to ensure that districts meet accreditation levels. Districts were also left to fund most of the cost for an 8 percent teacher pay increase and health insurance.
Superintendent James Price said he will ask the Trustees to approve a three-part approach to counter the loss.
His plan includes:
Leaving some positions in the district unfilled through attrition. Price said not hiring for the available teaching positions will enable the district to give K-6 teachers a more equitable number of students.
“That will eliminate some teaching positions but not teachers,” he said. “I do not intend at all to terminate any teachers.”
Increasing the amount of money requested from supervisors. The millage rate for the current budget year is set at 46.2. Price said it is too soon to tell how much the increase could be. Anything more than a 4 percent increase would require a referendum. Schools have avoided triggering a vote in years past.
Taxes collected by the county on local homes, cars, industries and businesses, make up about 38 percent of the district’s budget. About half of the budget is funded from the state; the rest is from federal dollars.
Redistributing the district’s liquidated assets. Price said the district will need to dip into money that is typically reserved for months when revenues are not being received in large sums (typically the first six months of the budget year), and long-term projects. “We will have to funnel that money into our monthly expenditures.”
Price said it will take a combination of all three to meet the shortfall. Trustees will be asked at their meeting tonight to set dates for a budget work session, public hearing and final approval for the budget.
The 8 percent raises are the last in the multiyear plan approved by the Legislature five years ago. Sen. Mike Chaney, R-Vicksburg, chairs the Senate Education Committee. He had recommended modifying the raise plan in light of the tight state budget, but that idea did not take root.
School officials last raised taxes in 2002. Before that, school trustees had used increasing revenues from developments and new taxes from casinos and hotels to offset higher costs.
For Fiscal 1988, shortly after the consolidated district was created, the annual budget was $27.8 million of which $7 million was from local sources.