In the near future, I plan on introducing legislation that will protect school district residents from unnecessary property tax increases.
 
Currently, school districts are prohibited from approving an increase in property taxes unless they adopt a budget that includes an estimated ending unreserved, undesignated fund balance that is less than a certain percentage (depending on the size of their budget). For the majority of school districts in our Commonwealth, the unreserved, undesignated fund balance must be less than 8%.
 
The problem is that often times, school districts will conduct accounting and procedural measures to shuffle money around in order to satisfy the 8% requirement. School districts can, and often times have, authorized property tax increases while having tens of millions of dollars “designated” for arbitrary or non-descriptive causes … tens of millions of dollars that the school district could be utilizing instead of further taxing its residents.
 
My legislation applies the statutory percentage limitation to the entirety of a school district’s unrestricted fund balance. It will incorporate a school district’s committed, assigned and unassigned fund balances.
 
The goal of my legislation is to require school districts to more fully use the money that they already have before imposing tax increases upon residents.
 
Please join me in cosponsoring this important legislation.