Flin Flon school trustees have unanimously approved a record-setting $14.62-million budget despite vocal concerns over the growing tax burden facing residents.
Trustees voted 7-0 Tuesday to ratify their 2016-17 budget, but not before Greg East, a landlord who owns multiple properties in Flin Flon, urged them to hold the line and work toward reducing spending.
“Maybe it’s time for a little bit of belt-tightening from the school board,” he told the board prior to the vote.
East said low-income residents face “many issues” and asked trustees to “grapple with finding savings and economies.”
He presented data showing that the Flin Flon School Division spends $14,870 annually per student – $2,183 more than the Manitoba average.
East said the FFSD would have spent $2.14 million less last year had it aligned with provincial per-student spending.
Since only a portion of the FFSD budget is derived locally, he said Flin Flon taxpayers would have saved about $713,000 under that same scenario.
“It would be my suggestion that you hold the line on the budget and in fact work towards rolling it back towards the provincial average,” said East.
School divisions in Thompson and Swan River spend a bit more per-student than does the FFSD, East said, while the division in The Pas spends $2,154 less.
“I think that illustrates the point that a northern community can run at about the provincial average,” he said.
Trustees did not respond directly to East’s comments. When later asked by The Reminder why FFSD spending exceeds the provincial average, Trustee Murray Skeavington, board chairman, cited higher costs in northern Manitoba in general.
“Our teacher costs have generally been – it started a long time ago to recruit [them] – have been higher,” he added. “Teacher costs in the North are higher. It’s just overall costs right now are just higher in the North than they are in Winnipeg and in the South.”
Asked about the education system in The Pas and its ability to operate near the provincial average, Skeavington said he hasn’t taken a “serious look” at that division’s budget but added it “may be something we want to look [at].”
Earlier in the meeting, Bruce Reid, a long-time Flin Flon resident, also shared his concerns.
He said he is worried by the number of residents who pay “next to nothing” in school taxes, and how taxes “get heaped onto higher-end homes” in an “unfair” fashion.
“If the tax system was designed a little differently, I think that there could be a lot of money gathered up out there that you’re not getting,” Reid said.
He urged trustees to “keep on the good work” but added, “I think I’ll probably be watching.”
During his presentation to the board, East presented additional figures derived from the FFSD and his own research.
He said that in 1967, the FFSD had about 2,800 students and an annual budget of $1.13 million.
In 2015, East said, enrolment was down to about 980 students while the budget surpassed $14 million.
He said he was “somewhat shocked” to read in The Reminder last year that the FFSD has a larger budget than the City of Flin Flon. The city’s 2015 budget was $12.61 million compared to the FFSD’s 2015-16 budget of $14.1 million.
Both East and Reid commended trustees for their work.
As reported last week, the 2016-17 FFSD budget boosts spending by $521,234, or 3.7 per cent, from the current school year.
Of that amount, $503,356 is allocated for “additional expenditure requests,” mostly capital items such as an air exchanger, wall and other upgrades at the Technical Vocational Institute (TVI) beside Hapnot Collegiate.
The budget calls for an additional $214,444 in revenue from Flin Flon property taxes, a 5.5 per cent increase over the current year. Due to an increase in the assessed value of many properties, however, the education mill rate would actually decline.
The division would receive a slightly smaller allocation (one percentage point) from Hudbay, which, instead of taxes, pays an annual grant to the FFSD and the City of Flin Flon. The division’s amount will be about $1.4 million.
