The Pembroke school district is on track to end the fiscal year with a $1 million surplus.
The figure is welcome – but not necessarily a surprise – to school officials. After a revenue shortfall helped spike taxes this fall, the school board put in place a spending freeze on all discretionary items in hopes of creating a surplus to offset taxes the following year. The board had set a $1 million surplus as the goal.
With less than a month to go before the end of the fiscal year, which concludes June 30, SAU 53 business administrator Amber Wheeler told the Pembroke school board last week that the district looked like it could meet that goal, and was projecting, at that point in time, a $1,089,184 surplus.
Wheeler emphasized in an email later that the figure was “by no means final.”
“There are several invoices that we are still waiting for and the books will not be reconciled until the beginning of August,” she wrote.
The anticipated surplus was one of two strategies the school board put in place to reduce next year’s tax rate after the average tax bill saw unexpected hikes of well over $1,000 this year.
In March, the board put a $25.3 million 2018-19 budget before residents – which they approved – that itself cut spending by more than $1 million from this year’s approved budget. That budget was projected to bring the education tax rate next year down 95 cents, or about $238 on a $250,000 home.
School officials declined Tuesday to estimate how much the surplus, if unchanged and applied in its entirety to offset next year’s taxes, could additionally bring down the tax rate.
“There are too many variables that could come into play. With the assessments and revenue shortage that occurred this current year and not knowing what assessments will be made in the fall it will be best to wait until we have all of the data to make that determination,” Wheeler said.
(Lola Duffort can be reached at 369-3321 or lduffort@cmonitor.com.)