Palmerton Area School District’s board of directors voted 7-1 on Tuesday night to reject the proposed 2025-26 budget for the Carbon Career & Technical Institute, citing concerns about spending, raises, and a large fund balance.

“We’ll be sending a memo to CCTI tomorrow, expressing the areas of the budget that we still have a question about,” Superintendent Angela Friebolin said after the vote.

CCTI’s proposed budget of $9,584,132 for the 2025-26 fiscal year, which runs from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026, requires approval from four of the five participating Carbon County school districts to move forward.

According to CCTI Business Administrator Jeff Deutsch, Jim Thorpe, Weatherly, and Lehighton have approved the budget. Panther Valley and Palmerton, however, voted no.

“We need four of the five districts to approve the budget for it to become official,” Deutsch said in an email Tuesday night.

Brandon Mazepa was the lone Palmerton director to vote in favor of the budget.

During Tuesday’s meeting and a workshop session earlier this year, Palmerton board members Earl and Danielle Paules voiced concerns over several aspects of CCTI’s budget, including administrative raises and discrepancies in how extracurricular costs are managed.

Earl Paules, on Tuesday, objected to the amount of CCTI’s fund balance.

“They got over a $5 million fund balance that they’ve been sitting on for about 13 years,” he said. “That’s our taxpayers’ money, by the way. We need to get some control. We finally got a superintendent with a backbone to back us up. This is going to get interesting.”

In an earlier workshop, Deutsch provided an overview of CCTI’s $9.5 million budget, noting that about two-thirds of the funding, or $6.3 million, comes from the five participating districts. He also said that Palmerton’s contribution has decreased by about $77,000, reflecting lower enrollment from the district.

“It marks the third consecutive year for a decrease,” Deutsch said, adding that CCTI’s overall budget increased by 3% due to inflation and rising costs for supplies in technical programs. “We are heading toward a budget deficit, with expenditures outpacing revenue for the second time in a decade,” Deutsch said. “I don’t think it’s something that is going to result in district contribution increases yet, but I have told our board it’s something to keep an eye on.”

Earl Paules, in an earlier meeting, said he also objected to the size of the raises for CCTI administrators.

“Act 93 staff there got 6 and 7% raises,” he said in a prior meeting. “That is more than anyone in Carbon County. Normally, it’s about 3%.”