The Hall County School Board has been looking towards the 2017 fiscal year to give its employees a long-awaited pay boost, and it took its first look at that budget at it's work session Monday evening.
The board has strived to give employees a 3 percent raise with help from $4.9 from the state of Georgia as part of a statewide effort to raise teacher salaries. Some unexpected setbacks, however, may keep them from reaching that number.
Superintendent Will Schofield said the district will lose $1.5 million due to a Local Fair Share increase and another $2.8 million from an equalization decrease. Schofield said those losses, along with increases in health insurace rates and some employee step raises, would put the budget out of balance by over $4 million.
"I would want to be completely up-front with our employees," Schofield said. "We may be looking at a recommendation from me of more in the neighborhood of a 2.5 percent raise just because we've had some of those surprises."
An unbalanced budget would have to be evened out by money from the district's reserve funds. Schofield pointed out that even if the overall raise doesn't quite reach 3 percent, employees recieving step raises could still expect a sizeable raise of over 7 percent.
"Which is something our people haven't seen in a long time," Schofield said.
Some board members had also expressed wanting to lower the millage rate for the local property tax digest, which sits at 18.80, to give some relief to local taxpayers. Schofield said the district would attempt to lower the rate if possible, but the current budget leaves the rate where it is.
The 2017 budget, which would take effect on July 1, totals over $228 million, an increase of almost $9 million from fiscal year 2016. The board will hold two more hearings on the budget at work sessions on April 25 and May 16 before voting to adopt a tentative version. The final budget is scheduled to be adopted on June 27.
A complete list of the board's upcoming meetings can be found here.
