Are you frickin' kidding me? UPDATED 2X

I just checked the Mt. Lebanon School District Budget website. Weren't the school board directors talking about a .55 mill increase at the most? Nooooo! They are talking about a mill and a half increase!!!!!!!

The Board discussed using a combination of cost reductions, increased revenues and use of fund balance to balance the budget. After much discussion, the consensus of the Board was to look at the use of $500,000-$1 million in fund balance and a millage increase of approximately a mill and a half. (Saved in Google Docs)

A MLSD 1.0 mill is equivalent to about $2.6 million.  0.55 mills = about $1.43 million. 1.50 mills = about $3.9 million.

Last year at this time, the school board hosted a School District Budget Forum on April 2, 2013. You may remember that is when Elaine Cappucci was rude to Bill Matthews and me. Jo Posti called me a liar. See:

No way! UPDATED 2x
As promised, more on the budget forum Bill Matthews' presentation
I had it right, Josephine.

So while the Municipality is appealing assessments, the School District is secretly pulling a fast one while they talk about fake budgets. No school district budget forums this year. Welcome to Mt. Lebanon!

Update March 30, 2014 12:40 PM The website has been updated to read:
The Board discussed using a combination of cost reductions, increased revenues and use of fund balance to balance the budget.  After much discussion, the consensus of the Board was to look at the use of $500,000-$1 million in fund balance and a millage increase of approximately half a mill.

Oops. It was just another typo by our highly paid Director of Communications. A mill and a half vs. half a mill. What's the difference? Same same. I never heard back from any school board director.

It starts at the top, Tim

In The Almanac "Mt. Lebanon mulls raising school taxes" (Saved in Google Docs) article:

School superintendent Dr. Tim Steinhauer explained that given a .55 mill tax increase, he believed the district could find the necessary cost savings without significantly impacting student programming. Staff attrition, adjustments to data warehousing and reductions in travel expenses for school board, teachers and administrators would all help close the budget gap.

Pay freezes for Tim Steinhauer and Jan Klein would also help close the budget gap, as their USC counterparts did last year. But nooooo, that will never happen. The board will continue to give them increases. Instead, the board continually bad mouths Governor Corbett, never taking responsibility for the mess we're in. I rolled my eyes when Bill Cooper said that .55 millage increase is like no increase at all. Huh? It would put us over 28 mills, Bill. An increase is still an increase.

Dale Ostergaard and Scott Goldman would like to see a zero millage increase.

The preliminary, a.k.a fake, budget presentation made by Jan Klein and Tim Steinhauer is available here.