Last night, the Mountain View School Division held their budget meeting.
Bart Michaleski, secretary-treasurer, shares his thoughts on the budget.
“I think the draft budget, as we’ve proposed it, strikes a balance between meeting the needs of education in the division and trying to keep costs at a responsible level. I think overall, the decisions that we’ve had to make, while they’re tough, they have met our first goal and that is maintaining front line services.”
Overall MVSD’s revenues have increased by 708,726 dollars compared to this school year’s budget.
Michaleski says ratepayers will notice a change in how much they pay MVSD because property assessment values have gone up.
“We’ve seen an increase of 9 per cent on property assessments across the division and that’s not balanced increases. We know, again, similar to two years ago, that farm land property assessment has increased the most out of all of our assessment categories. So unfortunately, that sector will bear more of the cost of the levy increase.”
The MVSD mill rate has gone from 15.63 to 14.73, but due to property assessment increases, the school division expects to receive 463,425 dollars more than the 2019-20 budget.
Michaleski says the biggest change to the budget is an increase in the number of teachers by 3.
“We have, for whatever reason, seen enrollment growth. In the last two years, it’s increased 132 students, we’re projecting to be up a small amount next year, so over the course of a three year period, we could be up 140 students. So, we have been managing with staffing levels, but it’s been difficult.”
