Significant boost likely in
Brandywine school tax rate

Property owners in the Brandywine School District will see a tax increase in the neighborhood of 25% in the coming fiscal year if the school board accepts the advice it will receive from its finance committee and voters agree.

When the board next meets, the committee will propose that 38.2¢ for each $100 of assessed property value be added to the local current expense rate. That component accounts for 44% of this year's total tax rate, $1.4925.

The additional levy would add about $225 a year to the tax bill for the average residential property in the district, which chief financial officer David Blowman said is assessed at $68,700. Property assessment in New Castle County is considerably less than market value, which Blowman said averages about $200,000 in the Brandywine Hundred-north Wilmington geographic area that the Brandywine district encompasses.

The eight-member advisory committee, which includes two school board members and six people with finance-related qualifications from the community appointed by the board, also will propose that the entire

The board may or may not include in the proposal, as it did in 2002, a promise not to return for a another tax increase authorization during a  stated period of years. That point was not raised specifically during discussion at a finance committee meeting on Feb. 20. There was apparent consensus, however, that there was correlation between the length of the gap between referendums and the district's present budget situation.

"We will squeak through [this fiscal year] with maintaining our five-year commitment," Blowman told the committee. As previously reported, he now expects to have a $2 million carryover to next year when this fiscal year ends on June 30. With anticipated state revenue that will be received, that amount  is barely enough to meet payroll during the summer months.

Superintendent James Scanlon referred to a carryover of less than 1% in the total $126 million budget as being "dangerously low." He said it should be somewhere between 5% and 8%.

Included in the committee's proposed 38.2¢ rate increase is 15¢ which Blowman said "will reset the financial health of this district."

The magnitude of increases in energy and pension costs was unanticipated at the time of the last referendum. "We can't predict what they will be," but with the additional 15¢ built into the rate "we'll be able to ride through whatever the unanticipated changes may be ... without having to make the hard, painful [cost-cutting] decisions we've had to make in the last two to three years," he said.

Also built into the proposed increase is 10¢ to meet anticipated growth in basic operating expenses, including salaries and other personnel costs. The committee decided to up an original projection in the spreadsheet model Blowman presented to pay for what members agreed would be more realistic maintenance of the district's 18 buildings.

The remaining 13¢ of the rate increase would be earmarked to implement the district's just-adopted five-year strategic plan.

In the arcane world of public education financing in Delaware, the tax rate involves some relatively complex arithmetic.

In addition to the local operating rate, set within the limit imposed by referendum, there is a 46.8¢ countywide operating rate carried over from nearly a quarter century ago when the present four northern districts were a single district. Proceeds from that tax are apportioned among the districts based on their enrollments. There has been talk in the General Assembly in recent years about the possibility of removing that tax. If that happens, it is probable that districts will simply be allowed to  tack the amount onto their local rate without having to seek voter approval.

Brandywine taxpayers also are paying at a temporary rate of 12.2¢ authorized at the 2005 capital referendum to pay for improving athletic fields and playgrounds. That will go away when the work is finished.

At the capital referendum, voters authorized the board to levy each year whatever debt service tax rate is required to meet interest and principal payments on bonds sold to finance extensive building renovations. That rate currently is 13.8¢.

And it doesn't stop there. The school board is allowed to set, without going to referendum, rates to finance tuition and some other expenses related to educating children with special needs, technology, and minor capital improvements. Those rates currently are 17.2¢, 1.45¢ and 2.4¢, respectively.

As would be expected, much of the discussion at the committee meeting involved how large a tax increase voters, who have been willing at past referendums to support the district's proposals, will accept as necessary this time.

Timing of the Brandywine tax increase could prove critical since county government is all but certain to also impose a not insignificant tax increase for the coming year. County tax and school tax are unrelated although both are based on the same assessment and county government collects them at the same time.

"If you don't ask for it, you'll never get it," said committee member David Adkins, who formerly was a member of the school board. "We have to ask for what's needed," Barbara Schoenberg said.

"You wouldn't want your personal expenses to be like this. If they were, you'd really be stressing out," said Debra Heffernan, a school board member who also serves on the committee.

Scanlon said that, if voters reject the increase, substantial cuts in programs and probably closing some school buildings will be required. "We don't want to use scare tactics," he said. But he added that it would be realistic to expect having "to take $4 million out of the [operating] budget."

"There's a real fine line between articulating the seriousness of the situation and [using] scare tactics," Blowman said. "We have to protect our investment in kids."

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