Central Bucks budget took effect Monday with largest tax increase in a decade

The Central Bucks School 2024–2025 budget raises property taxes by 5.3%, the maximum permitted by state law without seeking a special exception, leaving the average property taxpayer to pay about $300 more this year.

Much of the new revenue is going toward teacher compensation, building repairs, and new initiatives, including full-day kindergarten and the grade realignment. Board members also cited the risings costs of fuel and supplies, and the influx of special education students to the district.

More: Central Bucks OKs plan to realign grades, adds full-day kindergarten

The 5.3% tax increase is the district's largest in at least a decade; for several years in a row, the district had not raised taxes at all.

Enrollment declined throughout the 2010s, leaving the district with a surplus some years. It was hard to imagine voting "to raise taxes when we [had] some money left over at the end of the year," said board president Karen Smith, who has served on the board since 2015.

But underbudgeting was part of the problem, COO and board treasurer Tara Houser said. Previous boards had not kept up with needed building repairs. The district expects to spend $200 million on buildings in the coming years, and part of this year's budget was allocated to pay the debt for those renovations.

"Our buildings have been maintained so that they're usable; they haven't been maintained so that they're durable," director Jenine Zdanowicz said. "When it rains at Warwick, there's buckets in the hallways, because the windows leak."

In hindsight, Smith said, she sees Houser's point. "We did not focus on the facility renovations that we’re going to need."

And more recently, Smith added, the district was grappling with COVID, and then "wasted two years with the previous board majority focused on banning books and banning pride flags."

Smith said she wished that taxes had been raised more gradually over time, but pointed out that even with the new increase, the district had only raised property taxes by 10% in ten years. Central Bucks, which is the third-largest district in Pennsylvania, has long had lower taxes rates than most Bucks County school districts.

During public comment before the budget vote, a resident described the impact that the tax increase would have on her family. "Not all of us who live in Doylestown drive a Mercedes," she said. She works two jobs, and her family covered last year's tax bill with their savings. This year, they were on a payment plan with the IRS.

"There are a lot of families who can barely put groceries on the table," she said. Even a few hundred dollars per year would be more than her father in Plumstead Township could afford, meaning she would likely need to cover his tax hike, too.

“I know the pain this causes to folks on fixed incomes,” Houser said. “I’m not happy that I have to bring this to the community." But, she added, Central Bucks has hundreds of school buses and thousands of employees to account for, and "we have to make sure we’re preparing every student for 21st century learning.”

The district's grade realignment, which is funded in the budget, will move sixth grade into middle school and ninth grade into high school, and make room for both full-day kindergarten and more special education classrooms. All three high schools will be renovated to accommodate the ninth graders.

Also looming over the school district's budget is a potential settlement in a pay discrimination lawsuit filed by female teachers alleging that the district paid them less than similarly qualified male teachers. The plantiffs in the collective action suit have offered to settle with the district for about $151 million. The district has so far declined to settle, and the case is set to go to trial later this month. If the district were to settle, that lump sum would represent more than a third of its annual budget.

More: $119M settlement rejected as 'irresponsible' in Central Bucks equal pay lawsuit. Now what?

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: New Central Bucks budget raises taxes to pay staff, fix buildings