Board hears about tentative negotiated agreement, budget woes

By Richard Shaw

The Carbon School Board heard a report from Darin Lancaster, the Business Manager for the school district on the completion of negotiations with the teachers association on Tuesday evening.
Lancaster outlined what the district had agreed to, but the controversy that ensued during the discussion wasn’t so much about the negotiations, as about approving a budget that uses a lot of assumptions to justify what was negotiated.
In the tentative agreement the school district and the Carbon County Education Association came to the following agreement:
• Teachers will fulfill a 182 day contract.
• The district will fund all steps and lanes.
• There will be no change in the Utah State Retirement System contributions.
• The district will fund the employees health insurance premium increase (this year that amounts to a 14.05 percent increase).
• Employee salaries will increase by 1.25 percent.
After Lancaster presented the agreement to the board discussion took place about how the new increases will be tied to a budget that was being presented in the same meeting.
The big sticking point was that while the budget could be adopted, some of the numbers in it are just guesses about what revenues will be, because the district did not have the figures that evening.
To complicate the situation, this past legislative session HB 119 made it so that the state is taking more money from public schools and giving it to charter schools in the state. Lancaster said this will have a huge affect on Carbon School District.
“We got an increase from the legislature, but this will also take a lot of that away,” he said. “Each year we have been paying $145,000 to the charter school, and now they are taking away another $180,000.”
In addition the extra money taken away from Carbon this year does not go directly to Pinnacle Canyon Academy, but goes into a fund for charter schools state wide. Superintendent Steve Carlsen and Lancaster both agreed that the state, which had been paying that cost, appeared to be reneging on a promise many years ago by the state that when the charter school movement began school districts were to be held harmless.
Although some would argue that the increase the district had in funding per student, the actual head count numbers for the 2015-16 fiscal year is projected to be down. And the health insurance increase of over 14 percent also eats up any extra money.
Therefore, the officials said, even without the $180,000 the district is breaking even with last year.
However to meet the negotiated contract the district must have more money. Lancaster proposed a tax increase that the board could enact. That would mean a Truth in Taxation hearing at the next board meeting that now has been set for August 12.
“We have no control over what the state has done to us,” said Lancaster. “We have made a number of cuts to administration in the last couple of years to give employees increases. Without the tax increase we would be short about $200,000.”
However Lancaster explained that in the mix of things the district would be paying off an $800,000 bond payment soon.
“With that taxpayers will see a decrease in their property taxes,” he said of the voted bond that is expiring. “The board could vote the increase for $180,000 and peoples taxes will still go down. They just won’t go down as much.”
Board Member Kristen Taylor then addressed the problem saying that Utah appropriates the least money of any state for education and that it has some of the lowest salaries for teachers.
“And we (Carbon District) don’t pay the best in the state either,” she said.
She then asked if the district had looked at some kind of negotiation on the health insurance.
Lancaster told the board that they were in a three year agreement with Educators Mutual and that the evaluation on the insurance costs had just been done last year.
Taylor then stated that she felt that the board should only negotiate with funds that the district knows it has rather than working on projections.
“I feel upended by this,” she said.
She also said that taxpayers need to realize that the money that was shifted to the general charter school fund was beyond the control of the school district.
“I think that taxpayers need to know this,” she said. “They need to get into the fight on this with us.”
The question of property tax growth also came up. Recently some things were published that showed the area was increasing in value by over $70 million, but Lancaster said the other side to that is that in some cases property taxes were dropping off especially in some centrally assessed properties like the closed Carbon Power Plant.
More discussion ensued with other board members expressing dismay about what has been happening, but still wanting to support teachers and do what is best for kids.
Carlsen also pointed out that of all the districts in the state Carbon was hit hardest percentage wise by the legislatures move.
“Other, larger districts lost more money, but in our district we have 400-500 students in the charter school with only about a total of 4000 kids in the county,” he said. “We have the largest percentage in the state attending a charter school or schools.”
After much more discussion the board did approve a revision of the 2014-15 budget and the 2015-16 budget along with the negotiated package.
That means at the Aug. 12 board meeting there will be a Truth in Taxation hearing held concerning the one percent increase the district wants to enact.