Assembly approves $7M flat funding for schools

Although the state education budget remains uncertain, Sitka’s contribution to local schools is confirmed. At a special meeting of the Sitka Assembly on Thursday (5/2/19), the assembly narrowly voted to fund schools at the same level as last year.

After 120 parents turned out to advocate for flat funding for the Sitka School District at a special budget meeting in April, the question remained: how would the Sitka Assembly respond? At Thursday night’s meeting, assembly member Kevin Knox brought the motion to the floor to meet the Sitka School District’s requests – over 7 million dollars with an additional $150,000 set aside for building repair and maintenance and $57,000 to cover utilities for the Performing Arts Center.

With both the city and the school district benefitting from deeply-discounted health insurance premiums next year, city staff said funding schools at the level requested could be covered this year and Sitka would still maintain a budget surplus.

But Knox said that with state budget cuts on the horizon and lower district enrollment,  the city would have to grapple with how to generate revenue to fund schools in the future.

“It’s going to take some time. The community is going to have to have the dialogue, it’s going to have to make the decision. Mill rates will have to go in front of the voters. Sales tax increases would have to go in front of the voters,” Knox said. “My notion here in bringing this forward and funding the district to the level that they were requesting is to bridge that gap until the community can have that full conversation.”

But some assembly members weren’t on board with the idea of rate or tax increases down the line. Member Valorie Nelson said despite the pressure she felt from ed advocates, she didn’t think there was full community support.

“I’ve got 44 emails up until this morning when I got 9 more because it’s been you know insisted on by the superintendent that everybody reach out and contact us and let us know how important education is. Yes it’s very important,” she said. “About 5 of the emails said they can’t afford sales tax. They can’t afford increased property taxes.”

Member Steven Eisenbeisz said he was hesitant to talk about funding the schools through a mill increase, because two years ago the assembly brought a property tax increase to the people and it was voted down.

“I’m not one to continually throw votes back at people for property tax every two years,” he said. “If a citizen’s initiative would like to bring that forward for consideration, I think that would be a wonderful way to do it, it shows an initial amount of support behind it.”

Mayor Gary Paxton said he thought it was important for the assembly to avoid rate or tax increases this year if at all possible.

“This has been a really traumatic year for this community,” he said. “I was hoping to have a budget this year with minimum or no fee and tax increases, just so the public can get a break.”

And assembly member Kevin Mosher, who said he was in favor of bridging the gap this year, had previously discussed keeping the sales tax at 6 percent year-round. Currently it’s 5 percent in winter, and 6 percent during the summer visitor season. But Mosher was swayed by Paxton’s argument.

“After talking to the mayor and talking with some people I’m going to drop that for now. And I would like to fund this this year without any tax increases,” he said.

And assembly member Aaron Bean said that the city was experiencing budget hardships. The assembly at its last meeting implemented a hiring freeze and directed the city administrator to cut more from the budget. He’d hoped to see similar decisions made by school district leadership.

“I think the message I personally was sending was that, you know, bring back a budget that works with what we’re faced here in the other part of the world that is our municipal government,” Bean said. “I didn’t see that happen, and that’s kind of concerning to me.”

Assembly member Richard Wein agreed. He said the city was ‘seasonalizing’ and as more permanent residents left Sitka, money would also drift away from the schools.

“I think there needs to be some long term reality checking about our future,” Wein said.

Ultimately the assembly voted 4-3 in favor of flat funding with assembly members Bean, Wein and Nelson opposed.

“Alright Mr. Administrator, sir? How do we pay for what we just did?” Eisenbeisz asked City Administrator Keith Brady.

“So we do have some savings because of what we were able to negotiate with our health insurance,” Brady said. “Our new surplus is now at $36,765 dollars.”

“After what we just did?” Paxton asked.

“Yes,” Brady responded.

Even with flat funding, the school district will still likely cut 8 full-time staff positions. And the question of how the city would continue to fund the district to that level in the future, through property or sales tax increases, was left unresolved.