DUBOIS – Thursday night members of the DuBois School District met to discuss items before voting proceeds at meeting next Wednesday.
One of the main topic of discussion were a proposed preliminary budget.
The proposed budget for the 2008-2009 school year predicts an estimated cost of $52,530,615 before taking into account the impact of any members of the faculty and staff retiring, at least six requests for retirement will be voted on next week. However, the school district will only be seeing a 1.6 percent increase of revenue with the costs rising by 2.48 percent.
Most of the budget is non-adjustable, with the largest two sections being salaries and benefits making up 68 percent of the preliminary budget combined. The slack is expected to be made up for through the district’s savings and no tax increase is expected.
When asked about how the gambling money would influence the district’s income, the presenters Larry Robb and Sam Kirk, jr. explained that the gambling money offsets money paid through taxes in favor of the tax payers. That is the districts don’t receive more money from the gambling program, but it pays for a section of the school taxes in the place of the citizens of the area.
Before the budget proposal, Christopher Gibbons of Concord Public Finance proposed refinancing two outstanding loans that the school district current has on the books. The proposal concluded that at a certain interest rate the school could save $100 thousand, more depending on offers by banks.
The decision was made to go ahead with the plan and asked Gibbons to approach banks to see if any deals could be made. If the threshold is met the district will decided they will apply the savings towards capital projects.