What is the state percentage of surplus dollars allowed per district?

Jim Grabusky: We certainly don’t want to overtax anybody. But if you look at the Lehigh Valley as a whole and all the school districts, you look at who plans ahead and who is in debt. You certainly don’t want to overtax anybody, but it’s definitely nice to not be in debt and to have that nice cushion under us. The only thing I want to add is that it would be really nice if there was a budget that can be easily seen. The average person has a hard time looking at it and understanding it, but it’d be really nice if we had a budget where everyone could look at it and knew what everything meant.

Jeffrey Dimmig: I think our surplus has been problematic to a degree. It’s helpful to have an adequate surplus; at the same time, though, frankly we’re swimming in cash. When you have a big surplus, then you don’t make hard choices. When someone asks for a 4 percent increase, we say OK. That surplus has caused us to overspend. I’ve voted against every tax increase for the same reasons.

William Lycett: My understanding is that the state says the minimum that you have to carry is your surplus, and that’s 5 percent. Are we over that? Yes, we are. Why? I haven’t been on the school board, so I don’t fully understand how we got there, but we do have more than 5 percent currently sitting in the bank collecting interest.

John Quigley: Certainly we have a good buffer. I have voted against every tax increase in the past 10 years. I am  embarrassed to say we overtaxed  the people of Southern Lehigh to the point where we have an $18 million surplus. We have plans to start tapping into that. I am embarrassed to say we have overtaxed the people of Southern Lehigh. We have not been responsible in return in revenue.

Corrine A. Gunkle: We talked about our budget surplus, again, I have to come right back to the pension. Because this year we predicted, or rather we were putting away percent. That’s what we actually think would be a reasonable thing for them to be asking us to spend. They only wanted 5 percent. That’s what the state mandates, that’s what we give them, 5 percent, so right there we end up getting our $800K surplus. On the other hand, we just got “swamped” with having to pay for Social Security. That’s one of the things that came from government which wasn’t even enough. We totally didn’t expect that.  So the fact that we had $800,000 that we didn’t need to spend ended up coming in handy for the $1 million that we did need to spend. So again, I think when the answer for pension is somewhere between 5 percent and 25 percent, what do you need to budget? This year we budgeted 8 percent. We were wrong by almost $1 million, so that ended up being offset by the other thing. I think that’s what the difficulty is, we have a better sight than that. I think we can do a better job of not having a huge surplus.

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