Jun 29, 2015 2 min read

West Greene School Board adopted its 2015-16 budget Thursday night without a tax increase.

The board voted 5-to-2 to approve the school district’s $16.69 million operating budget that is a $310,000 increase over last year’s spending plan.

The tax rate will remain at 19.5 mills and has not been increased for 13 years.

Board members Joe Coss and Regina MacDowell voted against the budget – as they did last year – while Kelly Loughman and Tom Coss were absent from Thursday’s meeting.

The district will spend nearly 63 of its budget on staffing, which includes $6.3 million for employee salaries and $4.17 million for benefits.

The budget also addresses the situation regarding the retaining wall at the new elementary center complex near Rogersville. The retaining wall partially collapsed in November and the board voted in April to rebuild it at a price not to exceed $6.48 million.

Shannon Rutan, the district’s business manager, said the school district had to dip into some of its cash reserves to pay for reconstructing the wall, which is undergoing work now with the expectation it will be ready when the new elementary center opens in the fall. The district recently closed the Springhill-Freeport and Graysville elementary schools as it prepares to move the students into the new building.

“We’re preparing for that to be reduced significantly through the retaining wall project,” she said of the district’s capital reserve fund.

She added that the district is also monitoring how the state will handle its “PlanCon” payments for new school construction and whether that will be reinserted in this year’s state budget.

“If they get that back on track, then we could get some of our money back for that,” Rutan said. “There’s been a moratorium on that in recent years.”

In other business, the school board hired high school mathematics teacher Eric Bedilion as the head varsity girls’ volleyball coach for next year.