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Warren County School District has approved a proposed final budget for the 2023-24 school year with no tax increase.
At Monday's meeting of the finance committee, members heard some details of the budget.
Director of Business Services Jim Grosch presented a proposal that included $93,575,406 in revenue and $95,051,992 in expenditures - with a draw-down of the district fund balances by almost $1.5 million.
Those expenditures add up to about $1 million more than the 2022-23 budget's.
The proposal included a tax increase of one mill - which would generate about $400,000. Grosch presented information about how the budget would look with larger millage increases, up to the maximum allowable 3.7115 mills.
Committee members turned the dial the other way and talked about adding to the expenditure line and reducing the revenues.
"I have advocated in the past and would like to advocate today, that we have some type of surplus… that covers teaching positions," Board Member Donna Zariczny said. "$300,000 to $500,000 - being able to reduce (elementary) class sizes where appropriate."
"Class sizes are fairly small in the outlying schools," Zariczny said. "Warren Area Elementary Center gets the bottom of the barrel."
"I would like to make sure that dollars are available in the budget to reduce that burden in the higher populated classes," she said.
Board members were generally in agreement with being able to add personnel to bring those classes down from the top limit of the board's maximum class sizes.
"That's what we're doing with a great deal of our ESSER (federal COVID relief) dollars," Committee Chairman Arthur Stewart said.
He suggested that providing administrative or special education relief at Beaty-Warren Middle School would be another good use of staff contingency dollars.
Committee Member Jeff Dougherty said the countywide reassessment that has been approved by the county commissioners could ease the burden on many residential property owners.
Stewart said the reassessment, which will not be complete for at least two years, will not result in a tax windfall for any government, but will "stop the erosion of the tax base."
"I would like to not see an increase (in taxes) and see the outcome of the state budget," Committee Member Cody Brown said. "I'd be fine with dipping into our savings."
"We have carefully built up the savings," Stewart said. "I'm interested in using that buffer this year… because of the number of question marks."
The board asked Grosch to submit a proposed final budget that included the additional $500,000 in staffing contingency and removed the one-mill tax increase to the state.
The district's final budget must be submitted by the end of June.