Tyler

By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer

Tyler ISD trustees discussed options for the school district's maintenance and operations tax rate during a budget workshop Tuesday afternoon, including keeping it at its current rate or lowering it.

Tosha Bjork, director of financial services for TISD, said the district will receive an increase in its targeted revenue per student, keeping the district from having to raise its tax rate by a penny as it had previously believed it would need to do.

The current total TISD tax rate is $1.215 per $100 valuation. That includes a maintenance and operations (M&O) tax rate of $1.0297 (about $1.03) and a debt service tax rate of .1853 per $100 valuation.

The state's adjustment in a calculation resulted in TISD receiving $127 more per student in targeted revenue than in past years. The increase, expected to account for possibly about $2.8 million, is allowing the district to not raise its tax rate and address other proposed increases in the budget.

Because of the recalculation, the district has received from the state a payment of about $2.8 million for the 2006-07 school year and expects to receive around that amount for the 2007-08 school year.

The expected $2.8 million for the 2008-09 school year is being used to balance the proposed 2008-09 budget and is included in the proposed budget total of about $130 million.

The use of the possible extra $5.6 million the district expects to accumulate from the 2006-07 school year and the 2007-08 school year because of the adjustment became a topic for discussion at Tuesday's meeting.

Superintendent Randy Reid said the district is working on a plan for how that money could best be used. Some of the areas include purchasing buses, some of which the district put off purchasing previously, technology purchases or replenishing funds in the incentive program that is paid to teachers when schools do well.

Trustee Therelee Washington reiterated the point Reid was making, noting, "We have this money, but there are potential things we will have to use this for."

But Trustee Gene Shull said he sees the district about to call one bond election, then quickly calling another to address facilities needs and suggested the board could consider lowering the tax rate, possibly just a penny. Shull said that could help "buy goodwill with the voters" and still take care of some of the district's needs.

Reid said that option has been discussed, but he has concerns with it.

"It's likely that the penny that we reduced, we'd have to turn right around the next year and answer for that and maybe ... it's possible we might be asking for other, additional pennies for the maintenance tax rate," Reid said. "We certainly want to honor our voters, but if we're taking the money out of other needs we currently have, we're postponing the pain because we're going to have to fill those needs at some point."

Trustee Orenthia Mason said during the discussion she hopes citizens see that board members have been good stewards with taxpayers' dollars, and also noted that while the extra revenue, "sounds great ... we don't know, of course, what the future holds" in terms of unforeseen needs.

The board tabled a vote until its next meeting at 10 a.m. Aug. 12 on setting a proposed rate and a date to discuss the budget and proposed rate.

The board will consider setting the date to adopt the budget and the tax rate for a meeting Aug. 26.

Board President Ron Vickery recommended postponing the setting of the proposed rate until next Tuesday to give time to reach a consensus on the issue. He also said he'd like to see the board get in the habit of figuring out what the needs are and computing what the rate is going to be to pay for those needs.

Trustee Brad Spradlin noted that he believes the administration "has worked very hard ... and squeezed and cut" despite increasing costs.

Reid said it's a blessing that the district can even have this conversation and said it is a blessing to have Ms. Bjork working on the budget. Vickery agreed she does a great job.

Washington added he believes the board has been "very prudent" with taxpayers' money, also noting the savings from the last bond election.

Vickery said after the meeting that the rate could be maintained or lowered based on the discussion Tuesday.

He said Tuesday's discussion was a "healthy dialogue."

"To me that is one of our top two responsibilities," Vickery said. "When you get past hiring and supervising the superintendent, the next one is monitoring the fiscal responsibility of the district and setting a budget and setting a tax rate. We've had a good healthy discussion. The administration has done a great job of preparing a proposed budget for next year."

Reid said after the meeting that lowering the tax rate is an option, but the district needs to be careful with that. "If we didn't have specified needs, I would be more prone to consider that," Reid said. "But certainly if that's the direction the board feels we need to move with this, we'll find a way to make it work."

The proposed 2008-09 budget is about $130.4 million, $5 million more than the 2007-08 budget of $125.3 million.

The $5 million increase is mostly for proposed payroll and related payroll expenditures. TISD is proposing to give teachers a $1,200 pay increase, raise starting teacher pay from $38,000 to $39,500 and give 3 percent of the midpoint pay increase to other employees.

Ms. Bjork reviewed some additions to department budgets with the board during Tuesday's meeting.

That included an extra $500,000 for technology purchases as well as $578,000 extra in the transportation budget for fuel and $500,000 extra for utilities. The communications de-partment is also proposing a $60,000 increase for a program called Connect Ed, which helps send messages to parents and other designated persons in times of emergencies, bad weather, power outages or other events or to notify groups about other items.

The district is also proposing to put $350,000 toward the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) program, officials have said.

Reid said after the meeting, "We're incredibly excited about the fact that we've got a little bit of breathing room," adding that the extra revenue enables the district to "reach further down that list of needs" it has for things that may have been put on the backburner as well as buys the district the opportunity to hopefully delay having to go to voters to ask for extra pennies to put on its M&O tax rate.

Texas school districts must ask voters for approval to go above a $1.04 on their M&O tax rates.

"We've been really, really good stewards of not only the bond dollars but also the maintenance and operations dollars," Reid said.

"We've had good fiscal management, and I think that's important for our voters to understand."