Lower Dauphin property owners will not see an increase in their taxes for the upcoming 2023-24 school year in a proposed budget given preliminary approval by the school board May 1.

The $77,210,000 budget would hold the line on taxes and keep millage rate would remain at 18.97, which means that a home with an assessed value of $100,000 would pay $1,897 in property taxes.

Superintendent Rob Schultz said the district will need to use $5,425,000 from its fund balance to supplement the district’s revenue sources. Using that much from the fiscal reserves will leave $9,497,247 remaining in the district’s rainy day fund.

The budget has been challenging with revenue showing growth but still lagging behind the pace of expenditures. Local revenue sources, which includes property taxes and earned income taxes, is budgeted to increase 5.98 percent or $2,461,873. The district receives the bulk of its revenue through property taxes and the property tax line is growing 3.5 percent from the previous year.

Other factors impacting the budget come on the expenditure side where the district continues to see increases in state-mandated tuition payments to charter schools and medical costs. Charter school tuition payments are projected to increase $150,000 for next year, resulting in a $2.3 million line item (for reference, costs for charter schools in 2019-2020 were $1.48 million). Medical benefits will total more than $7.8 million next year (for reference, costs for medical benefits were $5.4 million in the 2019-2020 school year).

Overall, the spending plan for next school year represents a 4.34 percent increase over the 2022-2023 budget.

A copy of the Budget is attached here