(Spirit Lake)– When it comes to the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, it’s going to be a good news/bad news scenario for the Spirit Lake Community School District.
Superintendent Tim Grieves told the school board Monday one key factor in the budget process is showing a substantial improvement from the past fiscal year. That’s the district’s solvency ratio…which went from a negative 1.26 percent to a positive 3.85 percent. Grieves says while he’s pleased with the turnaround, ideally the ratio should be between five and 15 percent. He says it’s important the district continue to improve it’s solvency rate over atleast the next couple of years. Grieves attributes the turnaround in the solvency rate to two factors: budget cuts that were made the last couple of years and improvement in the district’s cash reserves.
On the negative side of things is the amount of taxable valuation the district will have to work with this time around. Grieves reported that valuations in the Spirit Lake School District increased 2.9 percent from the previous year, but he says the value used for computing the tax rates dropped 3.1 percent due to more tax increment finance districts being established in the county and cities.
A similar scenario faces the county, cities and other school districts in Dickinson county.
