The Harlan Community District’s Board of Education has approved their Fiscal Year 2015 budget. In a meeting held Monday, Director of Finances Brian Gubbels gave the presentation during the public hearing. Superintendent Justin Wagner pointed out several positive takeaways from the projected budget. “The levy is going to drop from $11.74 to projected 11.59. The unspent authority is at $8.2 million which is the highest in the Hawkeye 10 and one of the highest in the state will drop. This budget is built to where it will tick down at a slow controlled rate. The allowable growth percent is set for next year at 4 percent which is good news. And then what we call miscellaneous things always go into the budget. We have eight early retirements. Sometimes we can hire folks for less money and sometimes we can’t. If there are cost savings, we have operational sharing dollars that are committed to us. That’s kind of the last take away from the miscellaneous moving targets.”

The district’s general fund levy rate will see a decrease in taxable valuation from $9.84 per $1,000 to $9.62 for Fiscal Year 2015. The Management Fund levy will increase 7 cents to $0.97 per $1,000 and the PPEL fund levy stays the same at $1.00 per $1,000. Gubbels told the board the district is not levying a cash reserve levy for Fiscal Year 2015, however at some point in the future, the district will have to levy cash reserves. In other business, the school board approved a tentative agreement with the Harlan Education Association or HEA for a total package increase of 4.26 percent.

“This is a base salary increase of $1,150. The district will also pick up the health insurance increase of a little over 4 percent this year.” Wagner said getting the agreement done early shows the district takes care of their staff. “The real benefit to approving this is settling early which means we appreciate staff and settling slightly higher than the state average. It will be high 3’s or low 4’s. This will be a tick higher and shows we really appreciate people.”

(Joel McCall/KNOD)