District officials maintain financial health improving

Tax increase being considered for second straight year

The director of fiscal and school services for Moon Area School District said he believes the district’s financial health is improving.

“As of right now, our numbers are looking pretty good,” Keith Bielby told school board members late last month.

At this time last year, the district was facing a budget deficit and enacted a freeze on all expenses budgeted and non-budgeted for the remainder of the 2016-17 school year.

The district’s general fund balance had declined from $8.6 million at the end of the 2012-13 school year to $395,000 at the end of the 2015-16 school year.

In addition, the district’s unassigned fund balance, the district’s future savings account, had dipped from $5.2 million to a negative $585,000.

Mr. Bielby projected that the district will begin the 2018-19 school year with a fund balance of $6,739,223.

“We will have to keep continually looking at everything,” he said.

“Moon is growing. People are building, people are working.”

Officials are considering another tax increase as part of the district’s 2018-19 budget.

The current property tax rate is 20.3028 mills.

The district’s millage rate was raised by 3.28 percent in 2017.

District administrators blamed the financial problems in 2015-16 on the careless fiscal management of former superintendent Curt Baker and the former board majority.

Mr. Baker is mentioned unfavorably in a state audit performed by Auditor General Eugene DePasquale last year.

Mr. DePasquale called the actions of Mr. Baker and former members of the school board “alarming.”

The audit, which spanned July 2012 through June 2015, shows the district spent an additional $450,000 in leave benefits for staff.

That occurred during an extended winter break in 2015-16 that was not authorized by the board.

Mr. Baker was placed on administrative leave in December 2015 — a month after a new majority was elected to the school board.

Mr. Baker subsequently filed a federal lawsuit against the district and the seven board members who ousted him: Mark Scappe, Jerry Testa, Michael Hauser, James A. Bogatay, Robert E. Harper, Lisa A. Wolowicz and Daniel Zieger.

After leaving Moon Area, Mr. Baker became superintendent of the Wilson School District in Berks County.

He resigned from that job about a week after the audit was made public.

Mr. Testa, the school board president, said the district will keep a close eye on future expenses.

“We’re going to build the fund balance back up,” he said. “We are starting to keep our head above water.”