The Pleasant Valley School board approved a 1% tax increase for the general fund budget during their meeting on Thursday night.

It represents a 0.2486 mill increase, which brings the property tax levy to 25.1083 mills. It was 24.8597 mills.

The Act 511 earned income tax is 0.5% and the real estate transfer tax is 0.5% each, which is unchanged from the year before.

Current assistant business manager Tammy Smale said during a school board meeting in April 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. Smale will take over as business manager after current business manager Michael Simonetta retires at the end of June.

At that meeting, Smale said the average tax increase over the last 10 years has been 1.49%. 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 increase is the renovation project of the high school, which at last count had an estimated cost of $100 million. The school district has cut costs in several areas including administration support and purchased services, but is factoring into the budget a $2.2 million increase in debt due to the renovation project.

“To just be clear, we’re not incurring that debt yet,” Simonetta said in April. “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 costs more than basic education.

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

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

The total budgeted expenditures for the 2024-2025 school year are $111,576,444. The unassigned fund balance equals $4,020,064.

The estimated fund balance with revenues and other financing sources available for appropriation equals $130,584,521, according to the budget.

Revenue from local sources equals $57,122,531. From the state, revenue equals $52,958,913, and from the federal government, revenue equals $1,495,000.

“I want to commend the business office for their due diligence and hard work,” said school board President Sue Kresge. “We are only proposing a 1% tax increase, which is really good considering we are going into a major renovation project around $100 million.”

The school board also approved the 2024 Homestead and Farmstead Exclusion. As for assessment amounts, the maximum homestead exclusion and the maximum farmstead exclusion will be $31,545. The maximum tax exclusion will be $792.04 for both homestead and farmstead.