The average school district tax bill will go up 14% in 2024, after the Manhattan-Ogden school board passed its budget on Wednesday.
The 2024 budget is set at $135.36 million, up from $120.21 million in 2023. That’s a difference of $15.15 million, or 13%.
The board approved the budget 6-1. Christine Weixelman was the lone board member to vote against the measure.
“I just think taxpayers in Manhattan need some relief,” she told The Mercury.
The budget includes a mill rate of 60.095, down from 60.595 in 2023.
A mill is $1 in tax for every $1,000 in assessed, taxable property value.
The 2024 rate is lower than the previous year, but it will still mean an increase in revenue for the school district and in taxes for property owners because of the increase in property values.
That means the owner of a $100,000 property would have paid $605.02 in school district taxes in 2023; that same person would pay $689.63 on a home now valued at $113,100 in 2024, given the average increase of 13.1% for existing single-family homes in Riley County.
That’s $84.61 more in taxes, for an increase of 14%.
The general fund for 2024 is $47.91 million, up from $43.57 million.
Climbing taxes
Resident Gary Olds voiced concerns about the budget during the public hearing. He was the only person to speak.
“With regards to the budget, you’re right,” he said. “You have lots of buckets or lots of plates that you’re spinning, and it’s difficult for the ordinary taxpayer to understand how complicated it is.”
Olds said he was concerned for people who are poor or on fixed incomes.
“If assessed values continue to climb, the area — the jurisdictions — will become very much of what I call a class society,” Olds said. “Basically, what that means is if you don’t have the money — even though Manhattan may be wonderful — you ain’t going to live here. Now, the reality for that is we’re all not going to be as young as we are in 20 years and if we’re still in Manhattan, are we going to be able to pay that?”
He pointed out the number of people who have moved east of Manhattan as the cost of living has increased.
“Those people moved over there for a reason,” Olds said. “So I’m just — I guess I’m putting out a caution during this budget time.”
Board members pointed out that four of them live outside Manhattan.
Carryover
Director of business services Andrew Hutchinson said the district is expected have a balanced budget, by state statute.
Olds asked about carryover. He asked why the district didn’t use some of its savings and carryover from last year to cover expenses.
Hutchinson said some of the funds Olds had identified as carryover were allocated to items such as special education.
Inflation and student population numbers were the biggest factors, said Superintendent Eric Reid.
“It’s all funded based on the number of students you have and the needs they have along the way,” he said. “If you have more students living more than 2 1/2 miles away, that generates money that feeds into all this.”
Reid said that — working of off last year’s base student numbers — there was an increase of 140 students over the previous year. The district also takes into consideration how many of these students are considered “at risk” and the impact this can have on transportation and special education numbers.
Reid said the district may not receive what it passes as its budget from the state.
“Because we’re anticipating — when we’re working on this budget in July and August before school starts, before enrollment even happens — we have to — we call it guesstimate,” he said.
He said the state advises the district to be as close as possible on the high level because going low could result in more students coming in than anticipated, which in turn can lead to the district having to amend its budget mid-year.
“What we’ll do throughout the year is adjust budgets down,” Reid said. “Because we know we’re not going to get that money along the way, but we try to get as close as we can without going over because when we go over we fall short of that.”
Determining needs
Reid said the district arrived at the mill rate by assessing student needs and last year’s audit of the student body.
“We work backwards,” Reid said. “The mill levy’s the last thing. The last thing we look at is mill levy. We’re not looking at the mill levy, we’re looking at what our students have, what the students’ needs are.”
Board member Jayme Morris-Hardeman compared the district’s budget to the city’s budget. The district does not have the ability to bond projects as the city does, she said.
“If they want to do something, they can say ‘we want to bond this street repair,’” Morris-Hardeman said. “That’s going to be paid for maybe by a special assessment, right? The district does not have that ability.
“So any maintenance or repair that has to be done on any of our facilities either has to be a bond issue passed by the public — which we have some of those to make, usually, improvements, right? But general maintenance has to come out of this piece of what we’re levying as part of our mill. It can’t be bonded as a project.”
The city budget is also decided by individual city departments approaching the city manager and making requests which can be approved or denied, which also differs from the school district’s budgeting process.
“Things aren’t really prescriptive in the way they are with the school district,” Morris-Hardeman said. “For us, we have to provide special ed services for any student that qualifies, right? And so that is a specific amount of money and a specific pot of money that has to be allocated out.”
Staff retention
Morris-Hardeman said some of the increase likely would go to maintaining the staff and dealing with inflation.
“It comes down to people,” she said. “It comes down to making sure as you noted that our staff get the raises, the step increases that we are putting money back into their benefits — their health insurance costs — those are the sorts of things that are worked out through the negotiated agreement.”
Reid said roughly half of the increase in the district’s spending goes to keeping educators on staff, 20% goes to classified and administrative staff and the rest to items such as transpiration.
Board member Darell Edie before casting his vote said he’d like to see the district pay paraprofessionals more.
“The only problem I have with the budget is the turnover rate we have with paras and title ones,” Edie said. “Someday I would like for us to really figure out a way to slow down that turnover and give them a salary that slows it down.”
Food service costs are also going up by about 20%, according to member Darrell Edie.
Students who qualify for free meals from the district have increased as well.
“We have to put this out,” he said. “We have to cover that and that means our budget goes up. We have more kids this year — our budget goes up. The CIP — our budget goes up. So for the RNR to go up is pretty easy as far as I’m concerned.”
Board member Brandy Santos said she hated to see any increase in taxes, but believes funding the schools will help the community, the district’s staff and the district’s families.
“Adequately funding education is a benefit for this community,” she said. “I believe that it brings families in here, it brings entrepreneurs into Manhattan.”
Board member Kristin Brighton said the tax system was incredibly complicated and encouraged members of the public to talk to their elected officials.
“I would encourage everyone who is concerned about their taxes to continue to talk to their legislators and say, ‘How can we simplify our tax codes — especially how our schools are funded — so that we better understand what our taxes mean and how to change them and shape them,” Brighton said.
