HPISD Trustees OK 2020-2021 Budgets, Tax Rates
Highland Park ISD trustees this week approved adopting the proposed 2020-2021 budgets.
The general fund budget approved includes $169.57 million in expenditures and $168.6 million in revenue, and the debt service fund budget includes $28.8 million in revenue and expenditures for a total budget of $198.372 million. A transfer of $400,000 from two other funds– Seay Tennis Center and Academy for Lifelong Learning–brings the deficit to $534,685.
“The finance committee…we spent a lot of time on the budget in particular in the face of what is some unknown on the…revenue side,” trustee Edward Herring said. “A tremendous amount of deliberation, it took a lot of work on behalf of the finance team. This is our best foot forward relative to what we expect to happen this year.”
The board also approved adopting the maintenance and operations tax rate and debt service tax rate for the 2020-2021 school year.
The proposed maintenance and operations tax rate is $0.9564 per $100 valuation, the debt service tax rate is $0.1955 per $100 valuation, and the total tax rate is $1.1519 per $100 valuation.
“It’s a very unusual year with the number of protests and with COVID,” HPISD assistant superintendent for business services Mike White noted. “Notice here that to err on the side of caution, to be conservative, we used what we had at the time, which had a lot of value held out under protest. We feel like what’s proposed tonight is more accurate, and that brings us to a total of $1.1519, which…is actually a reduction in our tax rate.”
In other news:
- The trustees approved allowing Superintendent Dr. Tom Trigg to submit a waiver to the Texas Education Agency requesting approval for a hybrid instruction model at Highland Park High School.
- The trustees approved a revision to the 2020-2021 school calendar to move the fall exchange day, which is a day set aside for teachers to be off from work in exchange for professional training they received outside of their contracted days and a holiday for students to Nov. 3.
- Trustees approved an interlocal agreement with the city of University Park and the town of Highland Park for CARES Act funding.
Has the H.P.I.S.D. changed the tax policy with respect to property owners who are
age 65 and above ?