3.52% Tax Hike Proposed In Final Hatboro-Horsham School Budget

HATBORO / HORSHAM TOWNSHIP, PA —The Hatboro-Horsham School District has proposed a 3.52 percent tax increase for its proposed final 2024-2025 school budget.

With the deadline for school districts to approve budgets looming, the school board received an update at Monday night's meeting from Bill Stone, the district's director of business operations, regarding where revenue stands for next year.

Stone said that revenue for next year will be $129,004,760 and expenditures will be $131,898,470, a deficit of $2,893,710.

The 3.52 percent tax increase will make up that deficit, he told the school board.

The school board is expected to vote on the 2024-2025 budget at its June 17 meeting.

That's when it will be determined how much the tax increase will cost residents of Hatboro and Horsham Township in terms of their wallets.

At a meeting on April 8, Stone projected the tax increase at 4.19 percent, but the district was able to reduce that to 3.52 percent. The Act 1 Index for this year is 5.3 percent.

That is the highest percentage since the law was enacted in 2007-2008. The Act 1 Index caps the percentage a school district can increase real estate taxes without getting approval from voters via a referendum.

Last year, the school board approved a tax hike of 3.68 percent tax increase, the highest since the 2008-2009 school year, according to figures provided by the school district.

For the 2007-2008 school year, the tax increase was 3.09 percent, followed by 3.21 percent for the 2008-2009 school budget.

Stone said at Monday's meeting that the difference between the district’s 3.52 percent tax increase percentage and this year’s Act 1 Index of 5.3 percent is the district's largest since the law was enacted.

For the most part, the school district has kept tax hikes lower between 2009-2010 and 2022-2023 when the Act 1 index relatively ranged around 2.4 percent with four years dropping to under 2 percent.

The 2023-2024 budget provided funding for the new Keith Valley Middle School with a debt service budget increase to $8.4 million and offset by strategic debt service reserves.