SHARPSVILLE, PA. School board passes budget on third try

The average residential taxpayer will have to pay about $18 more a year in school property taxes.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARPSVILLE, Pa. -- It took three votes, but the Sharpsville Area School Board has finalized a new budget for 2002-03.
The board first considered a $10,940,510 spending plan Wednesday calling for a 3-mill property tax increase, but that failed in a 4-5 vote with school directors Terry Karsonovich, Joyce Grandy, David DeForest and Susan Pokorney voting for the budget.
Robert Timmerman, Charles Rice, Donna Murray, Chris Ruffo and Kimberly Baringer voted no.
The board then considered the same budget but with only a 2-mill tax increase, and that failed in the same 4-5 split.
Finally, the board looked at a slightly reduced budget of $10,900,510 with just a 1-mill tax increase, and that passed 6-3, with only Rice, Murray and Ruffo casting the dissenting votes. They wanted no tax increase.
One mill will cost the average residential taxpayer about $18 and generate a total of $60,000 in revenue.
That's one "new" mill, which is triple the value of 1 mill of last year's taxes.
Mercer County changed its tax assessment ratio from 33.3 to 100 percent of a property's assessed value this year and that increased the cost and value of each mill.
The new millage rate stands at 54.
Budget cut
Timmerman, chairman of the school board's finance committee, said cutting $40,000 from the final version of the budget will be done by reducing a special account set aside to pay bonuses to teachers who take early retirement.
The district sets bonus money aside every year to cover all teachers eligible to retire but never uses it all, he said, adding that some bonus money will still be available.
The spending plan calls for using all of the district's $770,000-fund balance (a savings account for school districts) to cover expenditures, but Timmerman said it is unlikely all of that money will be spent.
The district will probably still have about $500,000 in that fund at the end of the 2002-03 school year, he said.
The final budget is $173,000 less than the current budget, but no staff and no programs were cut.