EASTON, Pa. \u2013 The Easton School Board on Tuesday night heard a presentation of the proposed final budget for 2026-2027 two weeks before it will be asked to approve the proposed general fund budget.<\/p>\n
Once approved, the budget has to be available for public inspection for at least 20 days, and a vote to approve the final general fund budget has been set for May 26.<\/p>\n
Chief Financial Officer Jack Trent presented the board with a balanced budget of $223,270,226.<\/p>\n
But the proposed budget will require a 3.5% tax increase, which if approved, would raise the property tax rate to 74.70 mills from the current 72.17 mills.<\/p>\n
For property owners in Easton with an average assessment of $46,355, the annual tax bill would rise by $164.<\/p>\n
In Forks, the average increase would be $302, in Lower Mt. Bethel the increase would be $115 and in Palmer the average tax bill would rise by $249.<\/p>\n
Trent explained that the budget requires a tax increase of 2%, but an additional 1.5% tax levy is being proposed to support the $298 million construction of a new high school.<\/p>\n
The district is looking at building a 457,000 square-foot high school on the campus of the current high school and is projected to cost $298 million.<\/p>\n
It is being projected to become a multi-year project with groundbreaking expected in May 2027 and completion in July 2031.<\/p>\n
Board member William Whitman questioned if it would be wise to increase the taxes by 4% in order to begin rebuilding its reserve funds.<\/p>\n
District Superintendent\u00a0Tracy Piazza said the audit for the 2023-2024 fiscal year will be completed within a week, which will give the district a better picture of its fund balance as its ends the 2024-2025 year.<\/p>\n
Piazza said the board should wait for the audit results and then give Trent direction to change the budget to the extent to which members would feel comfortable.<\/p>\n
Easton can raise taxes by 5% according to the state’s Act 1 index for 2025-2026.<\/p>\n
In other business, the board learned the results of the bidding process of the first phase of the high school project.<\/p>\n
Josh Ziatyk, assistant superintendent for district operations and services, said he is pleased with where the bids came in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an exciting phase as it’s not just athletic fields, but it\u2019s the ductwork and the power and the infrastructure that we need to set up for phase two,\u201d Ziatyk said.<\/p>\n
Phase one is focused on the southern and western corner of the campus, which does not include the building sites.<\/p>\n
The phase one site includes many athletic components with new softball and baseball fields and new tennis courts.<\/p>\n
The district received seven bids with the apparent low bidder coming in at $320,000 below the budget of $17.4 million for phase one.<\/p>\n
The board will be asked to award a bid for phase construction at the April 28 board meeting to realize a start date of June 22 with a complete date for phase one in the spring of 2027.<\/p>\n
Also Tuesday, the board heard a presentation from Adrianne Jones, executive director of the Career Institute of Technology, which is looking at a $10 million addition to facilitate new programming and a growing enrollment.<\/p>\n
The school services the school district of Easton, Bangor, Nazareth, Pen Argyl and Wilson.<\/p>\n
Jones said the last renovation was done in 2005 at which time a $16.4 million bond was approved. The bond is set to mature in 2028.<\/p>\n
Adding new programs and additional space will allow the enrollment of an additional 200 students.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Easton School District project would lead to an 11.4% increase in costs in the 2027-2028 school year and a 9.10% increase in the following year.<\/p>\n
The board will be asked to approve the project at its next voting meeting on April 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. \u2013 The Easton School Board on Tuesday night heard a presentation of the proposed final budget…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[48345,153,155,154,48344,20843,20256,75112,20258,20252,75113],"class_list":["post-166589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-adrianne-jones","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-career-institute-of-technology","tag-easton-area-school-district","tag-easton-school-board","tag-jack-trent","tag-josh-ziatyk","tag-tracy-piazza","tag-william-whitman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}