MONROE — Monroe School District residents will be asked to allow the school board to purchase eight acres of land at the annual meeting on Oct. 14.
The annual meeting of the board will include the presentation of the budget for the 2019-20 school year. The budget includes expenditures of $30.01 million of which approximately $12 million comes from the local property tax levy.
The district’s business administrator, Ron Olson, explained the 2019-20 budget in depth to the school board Sept. 9. Olson said the overall property tax levy would be up about $40,000 from the previous year, but it is down by more than $600,000 from the 2017-18 school year. District expenditures changed very little, increasing by just .54%.
District administrator Rick Waski said the land purchase of eight acres, in two separate lots west of Abraham Lincoln Elementary School, is a move to acquire “property that is useful to the district” as it plans for the future. The district has reached an agreement with the owner of both lots, Robert Mathias, for a total price of $225,000, Waski said.
The purchase of land can only be approved by district voters. The timing of the land purchase comes as the school board is considering the concept of an $85.9 million referendum that would revamp the entire school district and its property needs for the future. The concept under consideration would include the eight acres sought, which would be assimilated into space the district could use for parking and athletic fields.
Waski said not only will school district voters need to approve the purchase, but the Monroe Common Council will have to approve a zoning change for the lots allowing them to be used for educational purposes.
“If both of these don’t happen, the deal is off,” Waski said.
Olson said that the land purchase would be paid for using money in the district’s fund balance, “but through savings throughout the year, we would just be balancing out our budget.”
The school district’s presentation of the budget at the annual meeting is largely set through the state’s budget cap system, Olson said, and some of the numbers regarding aid from state sources won’t be known until after the meeting has concluded.
Olson said the district will see an 8.47% increase in property value and a 7.51% reduction in the tax mill rate from $10.55 per $1,000 of equalized property value to $9.76. Residents owning property valued at $150,000 would see their school property taxes drop from $1,582.45 to $1,463.58.
“Over the last 10 years our levy hasn’t really grown,” Olson said. “This is the lowest mill rate we’ve had in the last 27 years, but it comes with equalized value increasing 8.47%.”
Olson said the revenue the district receives is basically the same it had 12 years ago. Meanwhile, costs have gone up. This is why the Monroe district’s voters have approved an operational referendum allowing the district to collect taxes beyond the state budget cap. Many school districts have relied on operational referendums to be able to keep up with increasing costs under the budget cap system.
The Monroe School District operates with a fund balance of $7.45 million, Olson said. Fund balances allow government entities, such as the school district, to avoid periods of short-term borrowing between payments from outside aid sources.
Although the district’s annual meeting is on Oct. 14, the district may not know the exact amount of state aid it will receive until Oct. 28, Olson said. This is because the annual pupil count for the school district and calculations made because of it don’t take place until Oct. 15.