Riverdale school district to see slight decrease in tax mill rate

The Riverdale School Board certified the 2015-2016 district budget and tax levy at a special meeting on Monday, Oct. 26 with an unanimous vote.

School district taxpayers will see a small decrease in the mill rate this year. The mill rate for 2015-2016 is $10.29 per $1,000 of equalized value, down 43¢ from last year.

The district tax levy is $2,950,568 for 2015-2016. In 2014-2015, the levy was $3,009,896.

Total expenditures in the final budget are $13,050,190 and total revenues are $11,295,273.

“While the total budget deficit is $1,754,917, most of it is in Fund 49 where we are spending the remainder of our $8.5 million bonded money on capital update and energy exemption projects,” explained District Administrator Bryce Bird. “With a zero revenue limit increase per student and continuing cost increases, our Fund 10 budget, where we account for most of our general expenditures, will show a reduction in our general fund balance this year.”

Factoring those projects out, since the district has the money to pay for them sitting in a separate account, actually leaves the district with a functional deficit of $282,302, according to Bird.

“We budget very conservatively, assuming higher costs to operate every year,” Bird said. “So we show a similar loss in our budget at the beginning of each year. In practice, we are making decisions at the end of the year to bring the budget into balance. We may buy a bus or make some other expenditure, or we may not, depending on where we are at with actual expenses.”

The school board passed a separate resolution for levying a tax to pay for debt service payment on the money the school district borrowed last year through the energy efficiency exemption. That total, $1,039,780 is included in the total tax levy. That amount is short $10,200 of revenues in the budget.

“Our bond payments in the debt service fund must be budgeted for one payment in advance due to the way our payment schedule falls,” Bird explained. “Therefore, revenues and expenditures will always be different in that fund.”

Resignations

The board accepted two resignations at the meeting, one for bus driver Becky Bremmer effective Oct. 29, and the other from head volleyball coach Jessi Kinney. The district will post immediately to fill Bremmer’s position.

Keegan Franklin’s contract was approved as the new middle school girls’ basketball coach. Also approved were volunteer coaches Brett Hach, middle school boys’ basketball, and Lindsay Frazier, middle school girls basketball.

The board also approved keeping public depositories local.

“We could have used a non-local bank for a scholarship CD (certificate of deposit) and received a higher intrest rate, but the board made the decision to continue staying with the people supporting our community,” Bird said.

The district had historically worked to keep business transactions local whenever possible, Bird noted.

In other business, the Riverdale School Board:

• approved a list of change orders for the energy exemption project; and

• approved a one year energy efficiency resolution for $173,715 for the additional change order items.

The Riverdale School District will hold their next regular monthly on Nov. 9 at 7:30 p.m.

Education

Education