Nice 2.9 percent increase on top of my $6000 asessment increase. you guys almost have me ready to give up, keep up the good work. Your well on your way to creating another Allentown. Totally frustrated !!!!! Live within your means like everyone else has to.

That is enough for me, they will turn East Penn into a ghost town.....after a large reassesment increase and now this on top of that !!!!....when do we ever hear about cuts or spending to match revenue....never ...thats when....OUT OF CONTROL !!!!!!

Cuts WILL have to be made if you don't want to see happen what is happening here in the city of Allentown. Do you want to see all these overpriced homes in east penn sit emtpy? I think not, the people in this district cannot afford these increases year after year. I'm sitting on a big reassessment increase myself, I certainly don't need another tax increase on top of that. Cut have to be made, sure, for some they will be upset, but for the majority is has to be done...why can't this school board work within it's budget like all of us have to?

Any useful discussion about extent of upcoming bussing cuts?

Lets talk pension reform, what percent of the budget is the pension obligation ??? And just for the record this isn't 100% the school boards fault, we HAVE to do something about the careless planning in Lower Macungie and the explosion of housing. We need to hold our Planner's and elected officials responsible. Stop letting the developers run our township's and municipalities.

Lower Macungie has a lot to do with this and shares some blame. It must get it's act together with growth issues. This directly affects the school district. Should built out boroughs like Emmaus, Alburtis and Macungie have to pay for LMT's reckless growth policy? Take the Jaindl development. It could potentially add 700-900 new high density homes to the rolls of the school district. Similar to developments like annandale, cold water crossing or penns west. These developments with starter homes are kid factories. According to a fmr school director a new high school price tag? upwards of 150+ million. www.facebook.com/friendslmt

I make a motion to have Lower Macungie have there own school district, let them fund there rediculous growth. to I have a second ??

I'm told to live within my means and adjust to what I have--I think these people
are greedy and don't care if you live on fixed income--no wounder people
are selling their homes and moving out of east penn school dis. They just
keep picking our pockets AND WE DO WITH LESS--THANK YOU EAST PENN
SCHOOL DIST. !! CHOKE ON IT !!!

I think Stolz and Donches should propose the cuts so they can be evaluated. Let's see from there and have a real debate. Anything else looks like politics. Curious, all you folks who are living within your means - do you have any credit card debt?

Personal, no I do not, whats your point ??? That its ok to keep raising taxes, I think everyone has had enough. Time to go old school, hold our legislators, elected township officials, school boards, and last but not least President accountable.
I think people are finally waking up and seeing the hand writing on the wall, the unsustainable spending by everyone. lets face it there are going to have to be cuts,Administration, sports, band, drama, teachers, staff, afterschool programs, and yes someone is going to have to look at these CRAZY pensions. Someone needs to think outside the box also, Bussing 6.5 million dollars that whole issue needs a good long look at. Now that we have some state representation I would hope that he Mackenzie's first job is to start looking at smoe of these issues DAY 1
Would someone please treat our school district like a business, because we sure are not doing that now. I know I know its all about the kids !!!!!

Personally, I have one 500.00 limit Credit Card that is separate from my debit card that I use for items where you have to have a credit card. I.e. hotels. Even for online purchases I use Paypal debit. This is the way it should be IMO. You do NEED a credit card, but carrying high credit card balance incredibly costly and inefficient.

The school district has little control over most of their budget. The state and federal government unfunded and underfunded mandates such as No Child Left Behind leave school directors in a fight with both hands tied behind their back. Real reform needs to begin with elimination of these mandates in Washington and Harrisburg.

This school board majority is beholden to the union. Ballard has proclaimed that he won't hold the line in negotiations because it is too demanding. Francee Fuller wears a PSEA pin on her shirt for God's sake. Earnshaw proudly accepts PSEA plaques after signing contracts.We need to clean out the spenders and replace them with directors that represent the people and not the unions! Also we need to press our new rep, Ryan Mackenzie about tearing up the defined benfit pension plans which are bankrupting every school district and the state. The good news here is that the people rejected Slattery, the union funded candidate, so we have another potentiall really good voice in Harrisburg.

agreed Rob, these Union backed school board members need to go, I will personally be much more invovlved next election to clean it out. I am so infuriated over the lack of respect to the tax payers !!!!!
Upper Milford has recently adopted a new pension plan for its new hires, A non defined benefit pension plan. NO reason that we can't do the same with the new hires in East Penn school district, the problem is they don't want to. The time bomb is ticking........

I am not sure who votes for these people to represent tax payers in east penn but they deserve to pay the price, get them out of there. When all of us need to live within our means we do. Why is it allright for them to spend money they do not have and tell us to pay more tax. Please start by making athletes pay to play. Why should I fund their free ride to college.

Excellent comments, only hope the responsible people not only reading them but respect over burdened tax payers and do something. There is only one solution and only one, vote them out, they will not act.

All folks blaming local school boards for local tax raises start with 2 things:
1) Identify what you would cut
2) Explain why you are blind to what is happening at the state level

So you want to turn the show over to Director Stolz and his allies because they campaign on never raising taxes? What are they prepared to cut? Go to the next school baord meeting and ask them what they will cut between now and June. It is gutless to criticize without a plan.

Also maybe keep in mind that a ballance between a concern for education and tax payers should be present. Of course if you don't care about education I guess that won't matter to you. I could remind folks that this district spent less on this budget than in the previous year but some will never look a this.

I have had the privilege of speaking with directors Bacher, Ballard, Donches, and Stoltz recently. I learned that the board of directors is very limited in what they can and can't do in regards to cutting spending due to state mandates and legal requirements. The argument made on this blog about whether or not the directors in question should offer their own spending cuts needs clarification. The school administration answers to the publicly elected school board. Not the other way around. It is the responsibility of the administration to respond to the requests of the board. The administrators earn six figure salaries to perform their job functions. The school board members are volunteer citizens who receive no compensation for their public service to our community. Therefore, it is not unreasonable for the board to ask the administration for a sample offering that shows what the budget would look like with a zero tax increase. The request may have been made for investigative purposes and not intended as a mandate.
As for the need to fix this problem at the state level, I could not agree with the posters more. That IS the primary problem. Actual state funding has not decreased (per Mr. Bacher's comments), although the slight increases in funding do not keep up with the increased costs incurred due to the PSEA teacher's union contractual obligations and pension requirements. This is the real reason our real estate taxes continue to rise.

pension reform please !!!!!!!!!

I thought there was a limit to the tax increases in the year of reassessment! Was I wrong?

Mr Earnshaw states that students do have to pay to participate in sports. I wonder if the fee charged covers busing to games, coach's salaries, uniforms etc. I also wonder why the tennis courts at the high school are lit at all hours for people to play tennis. I guess everyone should pay for this also. If the directors really wanted to cut spending they could but when you have an open checkbook why bother.

Once you eliminate the non-negotiable parts of the budget(like salary/benefits/transportation all under contract) approximately $20million +/- is left. A simplistic approach is to order every department to spend 10% less. It happens in private business all the time. As for the pension bomb, pension contributions went up substantially next year. The year after next they will go up even more than next years increase. The state legislature, both R's and D's, created the mess to buy union votes in election years and it has to fix this mess. First freeze all pensions where they are now. Private businesses do this when run by incompetent management(Kidspeace anyone?). Secondly, move to defined contribution retirement(401k) for all public pensions. Is it fair? Maybe not. Then again asking grandma to choose between Friskies and Old Sam for dinner isn't fair either. Or the state should just declare the fund bankrupt and liquidate. They can take whatever payout they get and put it into a IRA like everyone else.

I still can't believe 5 board members voted against having the administration prepare a zero tax increase budget. It wouldn't be the final budget; it would only be another preliminary budget. How can they make an informed decision without the information?

Also, how do they expect board members to make budget suggestions when every attempt to get information is met with resistance? In fact, it happened during this meeting as well. I would suggest people watch the video of the meeting as soon as it's posted to see exactly what was said.

ok so if you were the administration and you were preparing a budget and then suddenly you were being asked to prepare a simoultaneous budget demanding significant cuts - wouldn't you at least need some direction as to where to start? I would look to those advocating for the cuts and look for some direction. Also, I think the public should get involved in that discussion. It's all about transparency correct? It's not politics. "Hi I'm school director X and I think we can cut Y to save money so we do not have to raise any taxes". See then the public could have a discussion. You disagree?

Truth seeker - you seem to be full of excuses as to why everyone should have suggestions about the budget except for the administrators who are responsible for it. Why can't we ask the administrators for their ideas on reducing the budget? That's what Donches and Stolz did, and Heid and Policano agreed. They asked for the paid experts (the administrators) to tell them where they would cut if they had to.