With the possibility of a strike looming yet the possibility of an agreement as well, a member of the Peters Township School District had this to say of the Taxpayer Relief Act passed in the special session of 2006, known as Act 1: “Before Act 1, your ability to increase taxes were based on what you wanted to do and what the community would support“.
Under Act 1 districts are given an Act 1 index, or cap, that determines how high taxes can increase in a given year. For the Peters District since the 2006-07 school year its indices have been the following: 3.9%, 3.4%, 4.4%, 4.1%, 2.9%, 1.4%, 1.7%, 1.7%, and 2.1%. Starting in 2006-07 when the District’s millage rate was 89.5 mills, increases came in 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13, 2013-14, and 2014-15, and the millage at then end of that year was 107.14.
On a percentage basis, year over year hikes met the maximum index amount in all years except 2012-13 (3.9% increase, 1.7% index) and 2014-15 (5% increase, 2.1% index). Those hikes were permitted by seeking out an exception to Act 1 from the Department of Education, and last year’s increase was for pension obligations and special education expenditures according to the Department’s report on exceptions to Act 1.
But there is another method under Act 1 for going above the index, and it would be right in line with what the board member notes about “community support” and that is to put above-index increases on the ballot for an up or down vote by the residents of the district. That would be true whether or not the upcoming situation is settled before or after a labor stoppage that may or may not happen, and may or may not continue a string of tax increases in the District. As we noted in our 2013 report on Act 1 in Allegheny County, statewide there have been very few of these referenda.
