Burrell School District ends up with surplus; not as hard hit as expected by pandemic economics

Burrell School District’s finance manager was bracing for declining tax revenues and higher expenses in the 2020-21 school year from the economic distress of the pandemic.

But, it turns out, Burrell did better than anticipated, according to the district’s financial statements for 2020-21.

Burrell ended the school year with about $512,000 more than planned, the result of tax revenues that came through and lower expenses than expected.

While the amount is a relatively small portion of its $32.7 million budget — a little more than 1.5% — it’s still money the district wasn’t anticipating, said Jennifer Callahan, Burrell’s business administrator.

“Local tax revenues were greater than expected, including real estate tax, earned income tax and real estate transfer tax,” she said.

When Callahan and other business managers planned their 2021 budgets, many of them built in the prospect of declining revenue from lost jobs, lost wages and a lukewarm real estate market.

The real estate market was anything but, with brisk residential home sales in the district.

“The local taxes actually received were higher than predicted when the budget was prepared due to the uncertainty of the covid-19 impact on our residents and local area,” Callahan said.

In addition, online education costs for Burrell’s eAcademy increased, but not as much as the district budgeted for, she said. The district also saved $400,000 in transportation expenses from remote-only days in December 2020 and January 2021, Callahan said.

“The fiscal year finances had an overall positive end result,” she said. “Our community was not impacted as negatively as some communities were.”

The taxing bodies of the school district’s two communities — Lower Burrell and Upper Burrell — had similar results for 2021 tax revenues, specifically real estate tax, earned income tax and real estate transfer tax.

“Thankfully, the city revenue was not impacted from covid as badly as we had anticipated,” said Lower Burrell Councilman Chris Fabry, who heads up finances. “We were able to hold the line on taxes without having to go further into reserves. The real estate boom certainly helped us as well.”

Upper Burrell Supervisor Ross Walker said the township experienced similar increases in some types of tax revenues. “We were also pleasantly surprised that covid didn’t create such a mess for our small community,” he said.

Upper Burrell, however, is proposing a 20% increase in its real estate tax in next year’s budget. The rise is mostly driven by a real estate appeal settlement with Arconic, its largest landowner, that will account for about one mill of its two-mill tax increase, Walker said. Also, an across-the-board increase in expenses drove supervisors to raise the tax rate for the first time in 16 years.