Brown County Schools Superintendent David Shaffer will retire at the end of the school year. Anyone who wants to get him a gift can do so by voting “yes” for the tax referendum on the primary election ballot to increase education funding for the rural county’s 2,100 public school students.
But the present carries a cost: 8 cents for every $100 of assessed property value. That’s about $55 a year, or $385 over the seven-year referendum span, for a homeowner with property assessed at $150,000.
Each penny would generate about $125,000. One cent’s worth would go to support Brown County’s Career Resource Center, which provides classes for adults, and the rest — about $850,000 — would go into the school district’s general fund.
Brown County taxpayers are in the final year of paying a 1-cent referendum tax that supports the career center, which will not be able to meet its budget if the tax support goes away.
“They could finish the year out, but by June 2017, they likely would be out of money,” predicted Dennis Goldberg, assistant superintendent for Brown County Schools.
He wears the school district’s financial hat and finds himself defending the $30 million annual budget that some residents say the educators should live within. He said that in order to offer competitive teacher salaries, maintain facilities and offer rich programming for students, Brown County’s school system needs an annual infusion of cash.
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