Osnaburg Local Schools Financial Issues for Rebuilding

Currently the Osnaburg Local School District located in East Canton, Ohio is having a financial difficulty. The following post was originally placed on a facebook group that is trying to help address the issue. I am creating a copy of the information here for easier lookup from mobile devices.

To help understand the scope of the financial problem, I have put some information together from the latest publicly available sources I could find since the administration won't publish them. I may try and through together some charts/graphs if I have time to help contextualize the problem. However here are the facts.

Some information on the current fiscal status of the school per their Five Year Forecast reported to the Department of Education http://fyf.oecn.k12.oh.us/genForecast.asp?IRN=49916&Format=HTML

- Since 2009 they have been running an annual deficit of between 517k(2012) to 756k (2011)

- They are anticipating this to clime to 1.7m by 2016

- This appears to be due to 2 main factors.

• Loss of ~500k yearly because of state changes to reduce their share of personal property taxes (FYI this is not real estate property tax)
• Annual increase of ~180k in Personnel,Retirement/

Benefits, Purchased Services - Adding this to the existing deficit gives annual deficit spending of 1.5m - 1.7mi

- All of this has been eating away at the 4.3mi cash balance that existed in 2009 and that balance will be exhausted during the 2014 school year.

- Regarding the Income Tax that was rejected. The latest numbers I could find where 2010.

• Average income in Osnaburg = $40,559 per household for 2645 Households
• At 1.25% this would have generated $1,340,967
• Even if passed without changes this would still result in a deficit of ~400k per year

I also spoke with the John at the Stark County Auditor’s Office who pointed out the following.

- Property tax values will be adjusted this year.

- The school currently has an inside 5.1mil levy where the percentage the property values change will result in that same change on property values collected as a percent.

• IE, if district wide values go down 10% the school would lose 10% of this amount.

- There are several older levies that total up to 19.56mil these were all prior to 2000

• This will be adjusted upward and the school will receive more money if property values are worth more than they were in 2000.

• If the district wide property value is less than 2000 values the school would lose money -**He estimated this would not be the case.

Sources
Tax Income Numbers: http://tax.ohio.gov/divisions/tax_analysis/tax_data_series/individual_income/y2/Y2TY10.stm

Osnaburg Fiscal Forecast: http://fyf.oecn.k12.oh.us/genForecast.asp?IRN=49916&Format=HTML

Teacher Salary List: http://www.tos.ohio.gov/teacher_salary