Test scores are lower than ever, school violence is landing kids in the hospital, and our board congratulates themselves for increasing the budget to $302 million.
What are you, as a taxpayer, getting for all that money?
Hello West Chester's Weekly Roundup: The 2023-2024 Fiscal Year Budget was approved unanimously and includes no tax increase for Chester County residents and a slight 0.1 percent increase for Delaware County residents. "We must continue to be good stewards of the resources we have. We can not turn a blind eye to the staggering rise in the cost to live in our district even with some of the lowest tax rates,” Board member Stacey Whomsley read in a statement.
Whomsely was the only board member to vote against the budget.
The reason the tax increase is small is because this is an election year and board members want to run on a platform of keeping taxes in check. Three incumbent board members who are running for reelection this year, Bevilacqua, Durnell, and Herrmann, were in office during the time period that the Auditor General of Pennsylvania declared that the board members were not good stewards of taxpayer dollars. The board raised taxes unnecessarily according to the audit. Currently, there district has $81 million in reserve funds so why isn't the board considering reducing millage if there is an excess?
The budget has grown by over $100 million in just 10 years. Are you getting your money's worth?
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