Connellsville Area School District local tax commission selected
CONNELLSVILLE – An attorney, police officer, former school administrator and several others from various walks of life were appointed Wednesday to serve on the Connellsville Area School District local tax commission. Those selected included Marlene A. Grenell, Gwen Clarke and Michael Parlak of Connellsville, Melissa Jeanine May of Mill Run, Karen Morrison of Dunbar and Richard Husband of Dawson.
Board president Francis Mongell will also serve on the tax panel.
“It was tough finding volunteers not related to any school district employee,” said Jim Duncan, district superintendent.
Employees and their relatives were restricted from serving on the panel.
Two other volunteers for the commission were disqualified when it was learned of their ties to a district employee.
The task of the commission will be to determine whether to increase the earned income tax or impose a personal income tax in order to lower the amount of property taxes now being paid by residents, according to Gene Cunningham, district business manager.
Known as Act 1, the law replaces the 2004 Act 72, which was rejected by 309 of the state’s 501 school districts last year.
Act 1 allows for public input, including the participation in the tax study commission, recommendation of a new tax and formation of a referendum question that will allow voters in the May primary to accept or reject the new tax. All districts will be eligible for the proposed gambling revenues under the new law.
However, the school board has the authority to reject the panel’s recommendation, as does the public when they enter the polling booth in May.
According to Cunningham, the district receives one-half of the one-percent earned income tax paid by residents. The tax is based on the annual earnings with the district splitting the total one percent collected with the resident’s municipality.
The revenue generated for the school district is approximately $1.2 million.
Under Act 1, the earned income tax can be raised a maximum of one-half percent.
A personal income tax would be based on all income, including wages, dividends and interest. There is no personal income tax realized by the district at the present time.
Should the residents reject the new taxing structure, the district will not be eligible for any of the future gambling revenues, according to Cunningham.
“We would just be status quo,” he said, adding that the board would continue to have the option of increasing real estate taxes to subsidize the district operation.
Board member Jeff Harvey chastised the “paid” legislators for dumping the responsibility to increase taxes to the “non-paid” school board.
“If this doesn’t work, they’ll probably come up with something else,” he said.
Board member Kevin Lape, too, lashed out at the state lawmakers for not “properly” subsidizing education.
“Pennsylvania leads the nation in teacher strikes,” he said. “It is not that our teachers are greedy, but that there is not enough subsidies to give them a higher wage.”
The commission, meanwhile, will be required to prepare a study that includes historic and projected tax rates, revenue, the age, income, employment and property use characteristics of the tax base and conduct a minimum of one public meeting in addition to forwarding a recommendation to the school board as to whether a personal income tax should be levied or the earned income tax be increased. The tax study group has 90 days to complete the task.