Jim Thorpe school board members are committed to passing a 2020-21 budget with no property tax increase.

But they must still address an existing budget deficit and the economic impact of coronavirus.

“(The board is) of the position that now is certainly not a time to raise our property taxes. They are certainly to be commended for that. That said, it’s going to be a tough year, it’s going to be a tough couple of years,” said interim business manager Joseph Surridge.

During a special meeting Monday night, the school board voted 8-0 to advertise a proposed general fund budget with a proposed property tax rate of 45.52 mills. Glenn Confer was absent.

Under the proposed budget, the property tax bill for a home assessed at $50,000 would remain at $2,276.

Administrators said the proposed budget includes $48.6 million in expenses, about 4 percent more than last year’s adopted budget.

The adopted 2019-20 budget was $46.7 million, with the school board budgeting $3 million from its reserve funds to close a deficit.

If those figures hold true, the district will have about $11 million in reserve going into the 2020-21 fiscal year.

Since last year’s budget was adopted, the district has a new superintendent, a new interim business manager, and four new board members who took office in January.

A new full-time business manager is joining the district next month. Ken Marx currently holds the same position at Panther Valley.

Surridge said he is projecting that local tax revenue will drop due to the economic impact of the coronavirus. He said the district already relies heavily on local revenue because it has a relatively small share of funding from the state.

He said he doesn’t expect Harrisburg to increase its funding for the school district because the state’s tax revenues are down as well due to coronavirus.

“It might be a good thing if we at least get what we did last year,” Surridge said.

He added that he’s concerned that the virus’s impact on tax revenue will affect budgets beyond next year.

Board President Gerald Strubinger said there are other local districts that receive twice as much in basic education funding per student from the state.

“That’s the shame of it, we’ve got to get our fair share of funding per student,” Strubinger said.

Board member Cindy Lesisko-Henning said in order to cut expenses, she wants the district to look at its existing contracts and ask for discounts. She said she wants to look into competing vendors for electric and gas to save money.

“There’s a lot of doom and gloom but I think there’s other avenues we need to look at,” she said.

Board member Paul Montemuro said he wants Surridge to provide the board with an updated year-to-date accounting of all expenses before he votes on a final budget, after he gave them a similar report in March.

“I’m looking for a physical number of what we have so we can start cutting, what we’re going to have to do to prepare for the fall,” Montemuro said.