By Ron Rosko
Eagle Times Correspondent
LANGDON, N.H. — At Monday’s Fall Mountain Regional School District board meeting, members questioned how best to handle the district’s approximately $1.8 million surplus.
The amount includes more than $1.5 million dollars from a budget surplus, $280,400 in extra state adequacy aid and $79,696.91 due to a teaching position erroneously being double budgeted in Walpole.
The budget surplus has been caused by a hiring crisis as the district has been unable to fill positions. The district was one of a handful across the state to receive additional adequacy aid. Typically, the aid is about $3,700 per student to offset school tax rates. The potentially permanent $280,400 addition increases by 2% annually.
“In the beginning,” Charlestown school board representative Shelly Andrus said, “I used to always think it’s really great to give the money back to voters. And it is, it is their money. However, it nosedives tax rates … One of the biggest problems is maybe as a board or maybe as a district we’re not very good at explaining what this does to people and how it affects them and can [affect them] in a very negative manner.”
In the future, when the excess isn’t there and the rates go back up, people won’t see that anything has changed operationally.
“Our tax rates are going to nosedive and then come right back up the year after and that’s not a comfortable place,” said at-large representative Jamie Teague.
Newly hired district business administrator Lori Schmidt said the surplus is significant enough that she share Teague’s concern.
The board agreed they would consult with school leadership to see if they had a pressing need for the funds before they move the $79,696.91 for the reaching position out of the Walpole budget and into the shared budget amongst the member towns of the district or back to the taxpayers.
Minutes from the June 26, school board meeting summarized improvements the board is hopes to make to the Fall Mountain Regional High School property, including spending $1 million to plan, engineer and design paving upgrades for the school access road, parking lots and second egress in phase 1. Phase 2 would be the actual construction and paving work for the bus deopt and existing areas and phase 3 would be the creation of the second egress funded by “capital reserves or through the 2024-25 budget cycle.”
According to these minutes, “any funds committed and not used in the fiscal year would be turned back as surplus at the end of the 2024 fiscal year.”
The motion was not approved at Monday’s meeting due to advice of legal counsel due to a lack of contract. However, during a motion was approved by a 5-2 margin to hold a special meeting in September to get approval of a warrant article to use the additional state adequacy aid of $280,400 for the engineering and beginning phases of the project.
“I’m very concerned if we add another $300,000-$400,000 to that surplus I think it would be crippling to some people,” Andrus said explaining her yes vote.
Referring to RSA 197.3, Teague suggested that the warrant article could be broad in nature rather than specific as to how funds will be allocated.
According to Andrus, the approximately $1.8 million surplus could lower taxes by potentially $4 to $6 per $1,000.
“You should give the money back,” she said, “but it really hurts people to do it that way. That’s why I think there is a budget committee.”
Full coverage of the August 28th zoom recording can be found on YouTube via the SAU 60 website under meeting minutes, found under the explore tab under school board.
As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.