Pleasant Valley School District is considering a 1% tax increase in the 2024-2025 budget.

Current assistant business manager Tammy Smale gave a presentation about the proposed budget to the school board at its meeting on Thursday evening. Smale, who will soon take over as business manager after current business manager Michael Simonetta retires in June, told the directors that the average tax increase over the last 10 years has been 1.49%.

Smale said that based on an average net assessment of $142,217 for a property, the net tax would be $3,571. It comes out to an increase of $35 annually or $3 monthly.

According to a chart in the presentation, the highest increase was 3.5% in the 2022-2023 budget. There has been some amount of increase every year since the 2017-2018 budget.

One reason for the proposed increase is the renovation project of the high school, which at last count had an estimated cost of $99 million.

The school district has cut costs in several areas including administration support and purchased services, but is factoring a $2.2 million increase into the budget in debt due to the renovation project.

“To just be clear, we’re not incurring that debt yet,” Simonetta said. “We’re just building up, so we can get the whole project funded in advance.”

The school district is also seeing increasing costs in special education, which routinely costs more than basic education.

Smale said, “We have an increase in our students with IEP’s (individual education plans) and our IU20 (Intermediate Unit 20), they have a 3½% increase in their budget that goes through to us.”

Simonetta added, “The cost of special education increases much more than regular instruction on an annual basis.”