There is no magic bullet for the school district's budget situation. However, it would be a start to see the Board and Administration fully appreciate the fact that Real Estate Tax Revenue and General Fund Total Expenditures have outpaced the growth of family incomes in our Community, and that this is not a sustainable state of affairs.
The Administration has footnoted its March 2, 2015 budget summary with references to the proposed millage increases attributed to PSERS and High School Debt ... as if this matters. In reality, it matters little to residents challenged with balancing their family budget with an ever-increasing real estate tax bill.
What does matter is that Total Expenditures in the General Fund are projected to have risen 175% since 2001-2002, compared to Earned Income Tax Revenue (which is a proxy for family income) having only risen 155% over the same time period.
Bill Matthews
7 comments:
Excellent Bill.
Perhaps you can tell taxpayers what drives up PSERS and High School Debt, because the board and administrators surely won't.
http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-05/news/31124407_1_pension-payments-psers-state-and-school-districts
"State payments average about 56 percent of the total employer contribution to PSERS; districts incur the rest. Poorer ones pay a lower percentage. School employees contribute, on average, about 7.4 percent of their salaries.
PSERS has 279,000 active members and 194,000 retirees and pays out about $5.6 billion a year. The average annual pension is $23,897; payments range from a few hundred dollars to more than $100,000 for a handful of high-paid superintendents."
Maybe we need some honesty like the taxpayers in Moon get.
"What is PSERS?
PSERS is one of the oldest and most generous defined benefit retirement systems in the country. PSERS is funded by employer contributions - school districts and the commonwealth, employee contributions - teachers and other school employees and investment returns. It is a defined benefits plan, which means a member’s pension benefit is the result of a calculation and the employer holds the risk of ensuring the benefits are paid out. The formula for benefits under PSERS is the employee’s years of service times the employee’s multiplier, either 2 percent or 2.5 percent, times the employee’s average three highest years of salary. [The more you pay teachers the more they take from PSERS] Very few employees in the private sector enjoy defined benefit retirement plans, and even public sector employees’ defined benefit plans are becoming scarce."
http://www.moonarea.net/203/psers-funding-crisis-frequently-asked-questions
2:02 PM, and yes, the PSERS defined benefit retirement plan has an employee contribution factor...a favorite argument of the NEA, PSEA, MLEA, and all the teachers local unions...but the teachers pay in only 7 cents of each PSERS funding dollar, the balance from the taxpaying general public.
And Bill's bar charts clearly show that cost per pupil has increased most of all, which in turn demonstrates that with steady declining enrollment, cost reductions and cost savings have not been implemented or realized. Instead,annual millage increases have been allowed by PDE waivers to increase without question at above Act 1 limits for far too many years - PDE functions as no more than a rubber stamp & flag waver for school districts.
The school district has been averaging-- that's averaging-- about $2 million per year in expenditure increases since at least 2009 and that's with declining enrollments.
I think that the CAFR's will show that with declining enrollment, there has been continuing increases in staff employment numbers over the years.
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