Cuero ISD board of trustees approve new tax rate, school safety topic of discussion for new budget

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By Jacob Stock

The Cuero Record

 

The Cuero ISD Board of Trustees held a special called meeting on Wednesday, August 31, as it marked the last day of the fiscal year for the 21-22 budget. The meeting centered around voting on the freshly formulated 22-23 budget as well as voting on the proposed tax rate. 

The board voted unanimously to lower the tax rate by close to $0.32 cents. This year’s tax rate will go from $1.63680 last year to $1.31835. The maintenance and operation is now set at $0.85460, while the interest and sinking fund (I&S) was adopted at $0.46375.

“We are always going to be good stewards of the taxpayers dollar,” said Cuero ISD superintendent Dr. Micah Dyer. “We have always tried to make the I&S the minimum we could because of our payments to help out our people. We have changed the I&S a few times before and lowered when we lowered the tax rate a few times. At one time we were at like $1.80 and we are way down from that.”

The proposed rate will generate close to $97 dollars per child enrolled in Cuero ISD totaling close to $24,000 dollars of revenue for the district. It was noted that every $.80 on every $1 that is spent is spent on salary and salary-related purposes for the district. 

Since Cuero ISD is a Chapter 49 school they could have added three extra golden pennies but decided not to because every penny would be subject to recapture by the state of Texas. 

The board first approved the 22-23 budget which totals $21,259,926. Expenditures were closely evaluated with the rise of inflation making a case for extra padding in several areas.

“We are going to try and run as lean of a budget we can but still provide a product of creating productive future citizens,” said Dyer. “We are going to be really efficient. One of the things I told our people, this is the most concerned I have been about our budget since the first year I was here and we were looking at that huge deficit and we crawled out of it. This might be a year where we have another deficit in the case of where were are at.”

An example that was a topic of discussion was this year’s increase in ridership on buses. Cuero ISD, along with almost every school district in the nation, has been battling a decrease in drivers. That results in fewer routes initiating a lot more mileage to be traveled. Normally 1,100-1,200 students ride the bus. This year, with the price of gas increased much more than a year ago, there are now close to 1,400 kids riding the bus. Close to three-quarters of kids are riding the bus with 4-5 fewer drivers. 

Another discussion topic while evaluating the 22-23 budget was school safety. 

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