Peters School Board approves new real estate tax rate
Peters Township School District has instituted a real estate tax increase for 2017-18, but not in anything approaching a conventional or easily understood manner.
The school board voted June 26 to set the rate at 13.19 mills, which on paper is 100.21 mills less than the current year.
With recent property reassessment disrupting Washington County’s long-established system, though, local districts have been employing various calculations to establish what are known as tax-levy-neutral rates. For Peters Township, that number works out to 12.8818 mills, based on district real estate taxes generating nearly $40 million in 2016-17.
The difference between the rates, .3082 mills, effectively represents an increase of 2.4 percent. Under Pennsylvania Act 1 of 2006, that represents the maximum by which the district can raise the rate without seeking exceptions through the state Department of Education.
The relative impact on property owners depends wholly on the county’s new assessment figures.
For example, a home now assessed at $300,000 – 100 percent of market value, as opposed to the previous 25 percent – would be subject to a tax of $3,957. The extra amount attributable to reaching the Act 1 limit over the levy-neutral rate is $92.46.
The new real estate tax rate was set in conjunction with the final 2017-18 general fund budget of $64.25 million, which the board adopted Monday. The amount of expenditures is the same as in the preliminary budget, approved in May.
To address future financial considerations, the board also voted to assign $8.5 million in surplus funds, $4.5 million of which is for employer contributions to the Public School Employees Retirement System. Just for the coming year, the district’s contribution is estimated to exceed $5 million.
State House Bill 205, introduced in April, would remove future Pennsylvania School Boards Association employees from participation in PSERS. Meanwhile, the Senate has focused their efforts on shifting to a side-by-side hybrid pension plan for new employees, according to the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials.
“While those make some modest improvements going forward, they don’t do squat to deal with the existing problem,” Peters board member Rebecca Bowman said.
The other $4 million in now-assigned funds goes toward satisfying future debt service obligations, which looks to mount as the district moves forward with plans to build a new high school on the former site of Rolling Hills Country Club, off East McMurray and Center Church roads.
The board voted in favor of several measures toward that objective:
• Authorizing the submittal of documents to the Department of Education for the first two parts of the Planning and Construction Workbook. PlanCon is the process by which districts are reimbursed for major school construction projects.
• Soliciting proposals for construction management services.
• Acceptance of a proposal from Garvin Boward Beitko Engineering Inc. of Robinson Township, Allegheny County, for a preliminary geotechnical investigation of the Rolling Hills property. The estimated cost is $12,217.
• Approval of a professional services agreement with Traffic Planning and Design Inc. of Upper St. Clair for traffic planning related to the site. The district’s share of the cost, to be shared equally with the municipality, is $8,450.