COMMENTARY: ‘This is the best and cheapest budget’ without harming our school system
April 28, 2024 | By Life LeGeros I am a Duxbury rep on the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board, but I am not speaking here in that role. I am writing to share my personal opinion that Duxburians—and all district voters—should vote YES on the school budget.
If you are frustrated by your tax bill and the seemingly impossible situation that you are being put in, I totally see where you are coming from. I've helped work on this budget for the past several months and have closely followed the trials and tribulations of our state government: I can tell you that it makes me no less frustrated to know more about the complexities of the system or the historical context that got us here.
We have a bit of a perfect storm at the moment related to school funding. Federal COVID money ends after this year, which means we lost 13 positions already even though the student need is still there. Operating costs are on the rise largely due to health care increases and other factors beyond local control. A new funding formula has hurt HUUSD because of reallocations to districts with more higher-need students. And the biggest blow: real estate sales in our area have increased at a much faster rate than the rest of the state, which means our taxes go up a bunch due to the CLA calculation (meant to correct for differences between assessed value and market value) even though these gains are only on paper.
Here a few details that might be helpful from the budget info slide presentation.
70% of Vermonters do not pay the full property tax rate - if your income is less than $128k per year then you are eligible for an education property tax reduction (slide 20). The numbers shared below are for somebody in the 30% who pays full price.
The district's budget accounts for a 2.1% tax increase, or $31 per year per $100k of homestead property value (slide 15). Yet when CLA is applied, the tax increase is $254 per $100k of property value. So that means the district budget increase represents only 12% of the tax increase. We could decrease our budget compared to last year and we would still see tax increases.
The tax implications (slide 18) shows the estimated amount of tax increase for each town for different levels of property value. For a median homestead in Duxbury of $450k, the increase would be $1143. This is a lot! But based on other budget scenarios we know that for each $1 million we decrease the budget, the tax bill decreases by $260. So if we cut 9 more teachers to save $1 million, the tax bill for a Duxbury homestead valued at the median of $450k would save $260 per year or $22 per month. It's proportional, so a $200k homestead would only save $115 per year or $10 per month. The unfortunate truth is that making more devastating levels of cuts right now wouldn't save that much on these too high tax bills.
The board has cut three additional positions (on top of the original 13 from federal money) and a bunch of one time cuts to shave this $2 million from the original budget (slide 13). Those cuts are out of the budget permanently and so next year and beyond we will be staring directly at further personnel reductions. The board has created an ongoing Finance Committee to delve into this in preparation for next year.
For the moment, this is the best and cheapest budget that we are going to get without hamstringing our school system. Hopefully, the perfect storm will recede, and the state will create a better funding system, but in any event, we need to let our school system adjust to these cuts for a year while we craft a strategy for future reductions.
Although the high taxes are hurting many of us, please vote YES on this budget to allow our district and board to move forward in a deliberate way that doesn't put undue burden on our students.
Life LeGeros is one of two Duxbury representatives on the Harwood Unified Union School Board.