A Jim Thorpe School Board member believes that the district can afford to give its taxpayers a little break this year.

But the officials who are actually assembling the district's 2016-17 budget say that once final numbers are in, there will be no room for the proposed tax decrease.Board member Gerald Strubinger made a motion Monday night to lower the district's tax rate by 2 mills, something he does nearly every month at the board's regular meeting."The reason I'm contemplating it is our fund balance keeps going up. I think it's going to go up another $2 million this year, despite teacher contracts being paid and everything. I think the taxpayers deserve for it to come back down," he said.The district's fund balance, all of its assets, minus its anticipated expenses for the year, is around $13 million. That is about 30 percent of its annual anticipated expenses. The district's unassigned fund balance - which is cash with no designated purpose - is about $1.5 million.The district is working to prepare a budget that would keep the district's tax rate at 45.52 mills.Strubinger said the district's proposed budget for 2016-17 includes another $2 million in the fund balance, warranting a tax decrease.Business manager Lauren Kovac told Strubinger that she hasn't even gotten final numbers for 2015-16 to determine whether that number will continue to increase, or go down next year.She said the district is still doling out back pay to teachers based on a new contract that was approved in 2015."I think it will go down this year," she said.Others on the board asked for clarification over exactly where the district is financially, and whether Strubinger's idea has any merit. Board member Randall Smith said that it was in the public's interest to clear it up."We sit here, and we hear that we're fund balance rich. Yet the information we receive from our finance committee and business manager dispute that. I would like to somehow come to terms with how fund balance-rich are we or aren't we, because I think some of the things that are being said are very deceiving to the public," he said.Board member Dr. Clement McGinley, who chairs the board's budget and finance committee, said that he does not know what the district's fund balance will be when the new fiscal year begins July 1. But he said it would be less than $15 million.Kovac said repeatedly that the district's fund balance is not just a cash account. She said that the account has grown in recent years because the district saved $2 million by refinancing bonds."When you save that kind of money in a bond refinance, and we choose to take that money and put it in a fund balance, if our fund balance doesn't go up, there's something wrong. At the end of the day, yes it went up. Were we anticipating a bond refinance? No we were not," she said.