There wasn’t any movement on the support staff contract nor the 2022-2023 budget at the Pleasant Valley School Board meeting Thursday night.

The district was supposed to give a presentation at the meeting about the support staff contract agreement, but didn’t. Instead, a vote to approve the contract was tabled for June 30, which is also when the school board plans to convene for a special meeting to approve the budget.

The state requires by law that school districts approve their budgets by June 30 for the upcoming school year.

There wasn’t any presentation about the budget at Thursday night’s meeting either.

School board President Susan Kresge asked Michael Simonetta, the district’s business manager, for an update on the proposed tax increases. She was not at the district planning meeting on June 13, and she is not a member of the finance committee. Kresge wanted to know if a 2.9% increase was going to be recommended or the 3.5% increase.

“I guess what I would like to see possibly is that we actually have a motion with the right one included,” Kresge said.

There are no minutes for either the finance committee or the district planning meeting, but the school district does put an outline of the district planning meeting on its website. According to that outline, the budget was discussed, although it was not on the agenda. The budget was on the agenda for the finance committee meeting. The meetings are open to the public to attend.

Simonetta told Kresge that it was recommended at the district planning meeting to offer both tax increase options to the school board at the special meeting on June 30.

He said the 3.5% increase would yield an additional $300,000 over that of the 2.9% increase. Any money not used during the school year would be placed in the district’s capital reserve fund for future expenses. The district has been discussing for years renovations to several school buildings.

“I personally am at the 2.9,” Kresge said. “I realize we definitely need money for our capital budget, but I feel that there are some things that are also in this budget that we might not realize.”

Kresge said the dollar amount that is placed for unemployment might be too high, since they have called back several teachers from the furlough list. Plus there are funds in the budget to hire additional teachers if needed.

“I’m not sure we are going to need to do (that),” she said.

Kresge said that the school district doesn’t typically spend 100% of the amount that is budgeted. It is usually about 97%.

“I realize we do need money in the capital budget, but we do have I think $1.5 million going in already from this budget into capital,” Kresge said.

The outline from the district planning meeting stated that a 2.9% tax increase would be a 0.68-mill increase. The district may still need to borrow from the fund balance to meet unresolved contract negotiations, capital projects, and busing expenses.

Both the 2.9% and the 3.5% options would be presented to the school board, but the outline did not state what the mill increase would be for the 3.5% increase. It did state that the district budget is expected to grow by about $2 million per year.