{"id":38041,"date":"2018-01-10T15:51:37","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T20:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=38041"},"modified":"2018-01-11T08:53:08","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T13:53:08","slug":"ucd-board-oks-preliminary-2018-19-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=38041","title":{"rendered":"UCD board OKs preliminary 2018-19 budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JP Phillips<\/strong>, Staff Writer, The Times<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Unionville-Chadds Ford School District Board of Education President Jef Hellrung and Superintendent John Sanville share a moment during Wednesday’s special board meeting.<\/p><\/div>\n

Because Monday\u2019s work session was cancelled due to bad weather, the Unionville Chadds-Ford school board met on Wednesday morning to approve the preliminary 2018-19 budget.<\/p>\n

Just shy of $88.0 million, the preliminary budget represents a 3.56% increase over last year.<\/p>\n

Superintendent John Sanville explained, \u201cThis proposed preliminary budget is really an estimate budget because we do not yet have revenue data from the state.\u00a0 The state does not approve their budget or at least announce the governor\u2019s budget until March.\u00a0 So, what we have done with the leadership of Mr. Cochran (the district\u2019s Director of Business and Operations) is put together a budget that leaves all options open to us.\u00a0 This is a budget that utilizes all estimated exceptions at this point.\u00a0 This allows us maximum flexibility moving forward.\u00a0 And as we have more concrete information as to revenues and expenditures moving forward the board will have continued discussions as we refine this budget.\u00a0 So, this is really just a budget that will leave all options open to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania laws known as Act 1 and Act 25 dictate many school budget rules.\u00a0 Act 1 states that a district cannot raise taxes more than a prescribed index without voter approval (via a special referendum).\u00a0 Act 25 allows for the district to apply for exceptions (for example, increases in special education and pension costs that exceed the index. \u00a0\u00a0According to Cochran, this budget includes almost $119,000 in exceptions.).<\/p>\n

For taxpayers, this preliminary budget represents increases of 1.9% and 8.08% for properties in Chester and Delaware counties, respectively.<\/p>\n

Because our district encompasses parts of two counties, the tax calculation is complicated.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a simplified explanation:\u00a0 The district estimates all revenue expected from state, federal, transfer taxes, interest, tuition, and student fees.\u00a0 Revenue is then subtracted from the projected budget, leaving the balance to be funded by property taxes.<\/p>\n

The state separately calculates the total market value of our Chester and Delaware county properties.\u00a0 The district takes that ratio and applies it to the balance needed to satisfy expenses.<\/p>\n

The fact that total Delaware County property values grew from 19.058% to 19.944% of the total for UCF generally caused their larger tax increase.\u00a0 The market data used by the state is two years old.<\/p>\n

This budget will be discussed and modified over the next few months, with final budget approval in June.<\/p>\n

Read more about the district\u2019s preliminary budget calculations and state filings here:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.boarddocs.com\/pa\/uncf\/Board.nsf\/goto?open&id=AUTM7G558DF2<\/a><\/p>\n

Next up:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 The rescheduled School Board Work Session at 7:30PM on Tuesday, January 16th<\/sup> at the district office (adjacent to the high school).\u00a0 \u00a0Board meetings are open to the public.\u00a0 They are broadcast live (and archived) on the UCFSD web site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By JP Phillips, Staff Writer, The Times Because Monday\u2019s work session was cancelled due to bad weather, the Unionville Chadds-Ford school board met on Wednesday morning to approve the preliminary 2018-19 budget. Just shy of $88.0 million, the preliminary budget represents a 3.56% increase over last year.    Send article as PDF   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[485,144,7426,1286],"class_list":["post-38041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-board-of-education","tag-budget","tag-featured","tag-unionville-chadds-ford-school-district"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38041"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38044,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38041\/revisions\/38044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}