Spencer school taxpayers to see increase in mill rate for 2024-25 school year
By Cheyenne Thomas While the school budget still has a few details that need to be ironed out over the next couple of weeks as more data comes in, the Spencer School Board approved the 2024-25 school budget at its meeting on Sept. 18. With a current budget projected at $3,072,242.46, district residents can expect to see an increase on the amount of money they will be paying on property taxes in the next year, as several factors have contributed to an increased mill rate.
At the meeting, the board approved a $9.16 mill rate, an increase of 78 cents over the 2023-24 mill rate of $8.38. For a $100,000 piece of property, residents can expect to pay $916.
While the mill rate is higher than previous years, District Administrator Jason Gorst said the increased rate was expected with this year’s budget, with three main factors coming into play. The biggest reason, he said, is due to the added $525,000 residents approved to add to the budget in the district’s operational referendum that passed back in 2022. At the time, he said, financial analysts had actually estimated that the mill rate would be higher this year than what it ended up being.
“We actually had projected a 10.7 mill rate,” he said. “But at the end of the day, it’s just a projection and I’m proud that we were able to get the mill rate down to the 9.16.”
Besides the referendum, Gorst said there were two other factors that contributed to this year’s mill rate. The first was an increase of the amount of state aid given to districts per pupil, with an additional $325 awarded for each student. The second was an overall increase in property values in the area, which will cause taxes to go up for residents.
“Property values were recently reassessed in the area and they’ve gone way, way up,” he said. “When the property value goes up, taxes will go up as well.”
Going over other details with this year’s budget, Gorst said there were a few other items of note within the budget itself that are changing. The first thing, he said, is that the remaining Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds will no longer be available for districts to use. The school district will also continue to have a student resource officer on campus again this year after hiring an officer to share with the Village of Spencer last year.
“We tried to use those (ESSER) funds so we didn’t end up hitting a fiscal cliff,” he said. “We used those funds to make general improvements to the school, such as
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improving the school HVAC system. We didn’t use it to hire more staff because we knew those funds would be going away in a few years and we would have to try to find a way to come up with that money ourselves if we wanted to keep that staff on. I think we were very smart with the way we ended up using our ESSER funds.”
Gorst also mentioned that some projections in this year’s budget will be weather-dependent. Last winter, he said the school did not use a lot of the funds that they had set aside for winter maintenance due to the very mild weather. That may not be the case this winter, and Gorst said they decided to project costs higher than what will likely be needed just to be certain that all their bases are covered.
“In our utilities, we saved a lot of money last year,” he said. “We can’t count on that happening again. We could end up having a very harsh winter. So we’re using a very conservative business model to plan for the worst case scenario. Because we don’t know how bad the winter weather is going to be.”
The budget for the 2024-25 school year is expected to be finalized around Oct. 15 when the last of the state aid and pupil counts are tallied. The board approved the preliminary budget and mill rate that will go into effect later this year.
