Pottstown Schools Budget Proposes Zero Tax Hike

Last year, the Pottstown school administration asked for a budget that raised property taxes by 2.9 percent with the caveat that the following year, they would produce a budget that didn't raise taxes at all.

Thursday night, they delivered.

During the meeting of the school board's finance committee, Business Manager Linda Adams unveiled the proposed $57,136,928 proposed budget for the 2015-2016 school year.

Despite a 2.16 percent increase in expenditures, the proposal does not raise taxes.

It relies to a large extent on Democratic Governor Tom Wolf's proposed budget, which would increase state revenues to the district by $1,343,212.

However, recognizing that Wolf's budget is unlikely to get through a Republican-controlled General Assembly unscathed, Adams said the district has a contingency plan to make up the roughly $800,000 in unrealized revenue it anticipates might be lost under a worse-case scenario state budget adoption.

Between the higher potential for property tax reform, the anticipated reported of a revised school funding formula, and Wolf's election largely on public school funding issues, Adams told the finance committee "I think we're pretty well set."

Here are the Tweets from the committee meeting: