Property taxes for residents of the Lower Merion School District would see another increase under the latest proposed final budget for the 2026-27 school year.<\/p>\n
Under that budget, which was presented by Victor Orlando, chief financial officer for the Lower Merion School District, property owners would see a 3.5% tax increase.<\/p>\n
The millage increase is 1.2343 mills, or up from 35.2674 mills in the 2025-26 school year to 36.5017 mills in 2026-27. One mill represents $1 for every $1,000 of a property\u2019s assessed value.<\/p>\n
District officials say the tax increase is needed to fill a budget gap of just over $9.5 million.<\/p>\n
According to figures presented at the school board meeting, a property with a median assessment of $250,680 would see its tax bill increase from $8,841 to $9,150 in 2026-27, or $309.<\/p>\n
In January, the school board adopted a resolution agreeing not to increase taxes by more than 3.5%, which represents the limit under the state\u2019s Act One.<\/p>\n
Orlando cited several budget challenges, including property reassessments, declining investment returns due to lower Fed rates, higher inflation-related costs, increases in mandated programs, and higher personnel costs.<\/p>\n
One of the challenges Orlando cited was a decrease in the value of some properties due to assessment appeals and teardowns.<\/p>\n
Orlando also cited that the district\u2019s investment income is decreasing due to lower interest rates.<\/p>\n
According to Orlando, at the start of this fiscal year, the district was earning 4.2% on its investment income, but due to lower Fed rates, it is now earning about 3.5%.<\/p>\n
On the expenditure side, the district\u2019s largest expense is staff salaries and benefits.<\/p>\n
The district anticipates spending $160.7 million on salaries next year, up from $157.9 million this year.<\/p>\n
On the benefits side, Lower Merion anticipates spending $106.9 million in the upcoming school year, up from $100.5 million in the current year\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n
About 85% of the district\u2019s total revenue comes from local taxes, 15% comes from state funding, and about 1% comes from federal sources.<\/p>\n
After this week\u2019s approval of the proposed final budget, the next steps include a finance committee meeting on May 15, followed by a vote on the final budget by the school board on June 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Property taxes for residents of the Lower Merion School District would see another increase under the latest proposed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[182,183,185,184,186,200,139,28,210],"class_list":{"0":"post-177238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lower-merion","8":"tag-local-news","9":"tag-lower-merion","10":"tag-lower-merion-headlines","11":"tag-lower-merion-news","12":"tag-lower-merion-township","13":"tag-montgomery-county","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-pennsylvania","16":"tag-top-stories-dtd"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177238","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=177238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}