School budget would raise taxes by 8%

By Chris Frost
Eagle Times News Editor
NEWPORT NH — The Newport School Board recently held budget discussions in preparation for a public hearing on Thursday, Jan. 11 and a deliberative session on Saturday, Feb. 3.

The board has scheduled additional budget meetings on Tuesday, Jan. 2, and Thursday, Jan. 4, to discuss the budget in detail before the public hearing.

The district has proposed a general ledger budget of $22.496,325 for the coming fiscal year. That’s an increase of more than $780,000, or 3.6%, over the current budget. According to estimates district administrators submitted to the school board, the budget would push the local tax rate up by $1 to $13.73, an increase of 7.9%. The total amount of local property taxes collected to pay for the schools is projected to increase by just over $742,500 to $10,247,080.

Superintendent Donna Magoon said the proposed budget didn’t include pending labor union contracts with the district’s teachers and para-educators because they had yet to be approved by the school board.

“You have to ratify that before we can put it in the budget,” she said.

School Board Chair Steven Morris said he wanted to know the rate without any changes. He also asked if the proposed budget moves everyone off the ESSER grants (Federal COVID-19 relief funding), which expires.

The budget is “taking the teachers and staff that were on ESSER and moving them into the general budget, as well as adding the full-time athletic director, the part-time going to full-time, and adding the study hall monitor and adding the full-time sub,” Magoon said.

In addition to the local tax increase, the statewide property tax is expected to rise by two cents, to $1.25 and raise $905,369, an increase of just $16,164 or 1.8% over the current budget.

The district has yet to present the school board with the default budget, saying it hasn’t yet been calculated

Board member Bert Spaulding Sr. said the school tax rate went up 16% in 2022.

“Talk about a gut punch. The first half of that increase didn’t come in the first bill; it all came in the second bill. I believe that was not expected by a large majority of voters so that sets the tone of what comes next,” he said.