Facing a legal warning that it had fallen out of compliance with state law, the Lehighton Area School District Board of Directors voted 6-2 Monday night to ratify, confirm and readopt the district’s 2026-27 general fund budget complete with a 3.5% property tax increase.

The board had adopted the same budget once already, on June 22, by a vote of 6-3. But after that meeting, resident Ryan Bowman objected that the district had not complied with public notice and inspection requirements under the Pennsylvania Public School Code.

District Solicitor Jeffrey Sultanik reviewed the objections and recommended the board take further action to put the matter to rest.

Sultanik, who joined Monday’s meeting remotely, told board members bluntly that the district was already out of step with the law.

“Right now, the school board is in technical violation of the public school code because we have not adopted a budget as of June 30, 2026, as required by state law,” he said, urging the board not to let the night pass without a vote.

The budget itself readopts $51.51 million in expenditures against $51.44 million in revenue.

Before the board could get to that vote, member David Bradley made a final push for an alternative: keep spending exactly as proposed, but eliminate the tax increase entirely by drawing down the district’s fund balance instead.

“It’s the exact same numbers,” Bradley said. “You’re just taking it from the general fund instead of the taxpayers.”

Sultanik didn’t dispute that the board had the power to go that route.

“You can legally have a zero-tax budget increase — that is a prerogative of the board,” he said. But he cautioned that Bradley’s motion, as written, didn’t account for the additional revisions a true zero-increase budget would require elsewhere in the document. The amendment failed 6-2, with only Bradley and Jeremy Glaush in favor, and the board turned back to the original resolution.

When the roll was finally called on the readoption resolution, it passed 6-2, with Bradley and Glaush opposed and Joy Beers absent.

At an April workshop, officials projected that without a tax increase, the district would burn through its entire $10 million plus fund balance and land more than $2 million in the red by 2030.

Business Administrator Matt Lentz told the board at the time that local property tax revenue had actually declined $535,615, or 2.7%, from fiscal year 2022 to fiscal year 2025, while federal revenue had fallen sharply with the end of pandemic-era ESSER funding.

By a May workshop, the projected shortfall for 2026-27 alone had grown to more than $1.5 million, driven in part by health care costs rising 11.5% and salaries and benefits climbing 6.35%.

The board’s path to Monday’s number wasn’t straight. The proposed final budget it adopted May 26 was built to the maximum 4.8% increase allowed under the state’s Act 1 index, which would have pushed the tax rate to 53.15 mills, though Superintendent Jason Moser said at the time that the figure was unlikely to survive intact to a final vote.

By the time the board reached its June 22 vote, the increase recommendation had come down to the 3.5%, with help from a district retirement incentive that enabled Lehighton to downsize through attrition.

Lentz laid out further financial reasoning Monday that had shaped the tax increase recommendation, telling the board the district is projecting a shortfall of roughly $1.5 million to $1.7 million this fiscal year, driven largely by special education placement costs that ran over budget. Drawing down reserves instead of raising taxes, he warned, “leads you in a deficit spending pattern that has to be resolved at some point.”

Administrators said Monday that the district would start the 2026-27 with around $8.5 million in its fund balance, down from over $15 million a few years prior, although that number would not be confirmed until an annual audit is completed.

That reasoning was enough for board members who ultimately backed the increase.

“I trust our business manager and administration,” member Heather Neff said as she cast her vote.

Lori Frey, who voted the same way, put it almost identically: “I’m trusting our business manager and administration to give us the correct information.”

Public comment split along similar lines.

Bowman warned that the increase would fall hardest on older homeowners.

“This board tonight is going to enact a 3.5% tax increase that will tax the elderly out of this community,” he said, adding that board members who supported it “should resign” and “should be ashamed of yourself.”

Walter Zlomsowitch countered that the district’s reserves were thinner than critics suggested, comparing the fund balance to a household’s savings.

“Does anybody else live at their house and not have a couple of months of reserve?” he asked. “We wouldn’t have a tax increase this year if we didn’t have a tax decrease last year.”