FWCS proposing to increase budget for 2021

Fort Wayne Community Schools plans to increase their budget for 2021 by about 1%, which could increase property taxes in the city by up tp 2%.

However, the district CFO says spending may come in under due to COVID-19 impacting the state budget.

Hunter petroviak.thanks for joining us.

Fort wayne community schools held public discussions tonight about a proposed budget of over 300 million dollars for 20-21.

So what does that mean for city residents?

Fox 55's caleb saylor was at the board meeting tonight and is live with the details.

Caleb?

That's right hunter, the proposed budget for the state's largest school district is an estimated 309.5 million dollars, which is a roughly 3 million dollar increase in the budget and if approved, it could increase property taxes here in city limits in a public hearing tonight, fwcs school board addressed the upcoming 2021 budget.

District chief financial officer kathy friend says part of that money will be used to make upgrades at schools like northrop and wayne, who need partial roof replacements, but these projects aren't included in the 2016 or 2020 referendums "capital projects plan is funded out of the operations fund of the budget, and that does not include anything that is part of the referendum.

So, these are normal, annual capital projects that are taking care of our buildings."

The district also plans to make upgrades to school buses as part of their plan to replace the 12 year old buses every year.one of their bigger increases is technology.

Friend says they currently borrow money from the state to replace technology, but with having used federal and state covid-relief money to purchase thousands of laptops and wifi hotspots, there technology debt could increase "the technology is expanding and so we may have to borrow more in the future in order to have those replacements taken care of."overall, the current proposed budget could increase property tax rates in the county by one to two percent from where it already is, but friend believes that the real dollar amount increasing will be minimaland friend believes spending may be down as well thanks to covid-19 impacting the state budget "they're going to have a big challenge in front of them next year because the state does have revenue short falls and they'll be developing a new school funding formula, and we anticipate that that'll be an impact to schools, school funding next year."

Now the final property tax increase will depend on the net assessed value for each property, which friend says won't be determined until a later date.

The plan to vote on the proposed budget will take place at the board meeting in two weeks, on october 12.

Reporting live in fort wayne, caleb saylor fox 55 news 3