So what did happened on December 18?

It seems the local governments and school boards were busy at work spending our tax dollars. The Easton Area School Board approved a $80M capital plan. The capital plan will provide for a new elementary school in Palmer, new high school renovations , energy upgrades to four elementary schools, and improvements to the high school pool.

The Express-Times is reporting the Cheston Elementary School and former Easton Area Middle School on Northampton Street will receive energy upgrades, including new heating, ventilation, air conditioning and lighting during the summer of 2010. The Forks and Tracy elementary schools will receive the same energy upgrades during the summer of 2011.The expansion for the high school or the new Palmer Elementary school will start in in 2011. Finally, the high school pool will receive about $849,000 in renovations.

I was hoping the school board would vote to delay the capital spending until 2011, as we recover from these troubled economic times.  The original plan was passed by a vote of 9 to 0. However, three members of the board did vote no to the administrative building upgrades.

The plan to re-district 600 students was also approved by a 8 to 1 vote, despite objections from some parents.  The basic concept is to create a neighborhood school structure. This means Forks students will attend the two Forks Elementary schools,etc.

The Fork BoS approved a .5 Mill (5.1 to 5.6) property tax increase.  This will cost the average taxpayer about $39 per year based upon a $100,000 of assessed value for a house. This another 10% increase in taxes for Forks citizens. The new 2009 budget has only $49,000 in budget cuts, while the board approved a 10% tax increase. 

The frustrating part of the township budget review process is the lack of transparency of the budget decisions and the lack of accounting notes for the published budget. It is very hard to do an independent analysis of the township budget when these critical pieces of information are missing.

I know  Northampton County will not raise taxes in 09, but I am waiting for the final 09 school board budget to be passed.  We had a 20% total tax increase in 2008 and we have at least a 10% tax increase in 2009.  So far, we have seen about 30% in tax increases in the last two years. Yikes!

 

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