The Park City School Board recently adopted their preliminary budget for Fiscal Year 2020, but another public hearing is set this summer for the requested tax increase in the budget.
The Preliminary Operating Budget for the School District is set at about $80 million. District Business Administrator Todd Hauber said the capital budget will be a little over $7 million.
As part of the spending plan, they’re also asking for a tax increase to supply $5.7 million. Hauber said that will amount to $11 more annually for a primary home taxable value of $100,000. For a secondary home or commercial property, the annual payment would be about $20 more.
He said another Truth in Taxation hearing is set for August.
“The intent to raise tax revenues, the statute requires us to have a second meeting in the month of August,” Hauber explained.
“This 5.7 million is basically paying for the whole child programs that we instituted, as well as the teacher salaries for the second year?” KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher asked.
“Correct yeah,” Hauber answered. “So, we're into our third year of contracts with all our employee groups. So, this was envisioned from the get-go, two and a half/ three years ago. So, we're right on track with that being able to keep all those commitments. Then we have redesigned how our learning academy is coming together so that we can address all of the needs of our students, make sure that we have that continuum service in place.”
On a related matter, some 70 to 80 students this year transferred out of Park City to the Silver Summit Academy in the South Summit School District. School Board President Andrew Caplan said they are certainly willing to consider a similar school for Park City.
“We've heard that from educators, we’ve heard it from families, we've heard it from actions of having kids go to different places,” Caplan continued. “We also have the winter school. We have other nontraditional styles of learning in our community and that's certainly something that we're hearing, and I think it's a sign of the times, right? If you look around the country the amount of charter schools that are popping up not only in the state of Utah but everywhere. Some of the highest performing schools out there are charter type programs or STEAM focused institutions. We'd be remiss in not exploring that fully. I think that's one of the reasons why we continue to come back to the possibility of having—whether it's a building, facilities or whatever built which offers that type of programming for kids.”
