MOUNT PENN, Pa. –\u00a0The Antietam School Board voted Monday night to adopt a $29.68 million spending plan for 2026-27, which will require a tax increase of 4.87%.<\/p>\n
That will raise the tax rate to 53.8 mills from the current 51.3 mills.<\/p>\n
That translates to property owners in the Borough of Mount Penn and Lower Alsace Township paying $53.80 for each $1,000 of assessed property value, with an annual tax bill of $5,380 for a property assessed at $100,000.<\/p>\n
Antietam School District continues to have the highest property tax rate in Berks County.<\/p>\n
All districts must adopt a final budget by June 30.<\/p>\n
Having the highest school tax rate may be a hard pill to swallow, but in addition to the school tax, property owners also pay 9.01 mills for the county tax rate and 14.2 mills for Mount Penn residents or 11.85 mills for Lower Alsace Township residents.<\/p>\n
The tax hike is within the state\u2019s Act 1 Index, which was 5.2% for Antietam. The Act 1 Index is the maximum percentage by which a district can raise real estate taxes without having to apply for state exceptions or obtain voter approval.<\/p>\n
Superintendent Tim Matlack said property taxes are so high because 51.02% of the budget is derived through local taxes, with 46.5% coming from the state and 2.47% coming from the federal government.<\/p>\n
Matlack said he has worked with some legislators to convince the state that the school district is underfunded by about $3 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe struggle that the district maintains is that despite that high (tax) rate, the actual dollar amount coming in for those mills remains relatively low,\u201d Matlack said. \u201cWe’re still trying to accomplish the same things (as other districts) but for one-third of the funding.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOUNT PENN, Pa. –\u00a0The Antietam School Board voted Monday night to adopt a $29.68 million spending plan for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[97914,15760,8512,8668,128,130,129,31133,15764],"class_list":["post-225532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-antietam-school-board","tag-antietam-school-district","tag-lower-alsace-township","tag-mount-penn","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-real-estate-taxes","tag-tim-matlack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225532","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=225532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}