PHOTO PROVIDED The Keystone Central School District Board of Directors are pictured during its discussion regarding the 2025-2026 budget and a potential tax increase at its voting session on Thursday night.

MILL HALL — Following lengthy discussion and two different motions, one of which failed, the Keystone Central School District voted 5-4 to increase its property tax rate by 1.78 percent for the 2025-2026 budget.

This will be the third year in a row the board elected to increase property taxes.

During its voting session Thursday, Superintendent Dr. Francis Redmon said the business office needed a direction in which to go in to complete the 2025-2026 budget — which will be presented at the board’s work session on May 1.

According to the board’s agenda, the administration recommended a 3.55 percent increase. It was previously explained by Business Manager Joni MacIntyre in past meetings the move was due to a potential deficit the district could face in 2025-2026 and beyond.

Board Member Chris Scaff motioned to not implement a tax increase, which was seconded by Board Member Elisabeth Lynch. The motion ultimately failed in a 4-5 vote, with Lynch, Scaff and board member Dr. Bill Baldino and Tom Cannon voting yes and board members Polly Donahay, Roger Elling, Jeff Johnston, Butch Knauff and Tracy Smith voting no.

Scaff told the board he felt more could be done to trim the budget to avoid any increases.

“While I appreciate everyone working to trim our budget, I think we’re trimming in the wrong areas and I think there’s a lot more savings that we could do,” he said.

He suggested the board build into its monthly meetings time to work on the budget throughout the year.

“There’s areas we do need to spend some money on but there’s a lot of things we’ve done that we didn’t have to,” he said.

Redmon noted he and MacIntyre work consistently throughout the year to try and trim the budget in a variety of ways including staff attrition and other areas.

“We’re always looking for ways to reduce our expenditures but we need your direction tonight so Joni can build the budget and it’s ready for you on May 1 in the work session,” he said.

After the first motion failed, Elling motioned to increase property taxes by 1.78 percent which was seconded by Johnston.

Prior to a vote, both Elling and Johnston gave comments on the move.

Elling noted, in the past, he’d voted for a zero percent increase on four or five occasions during his time on the board.

“At this point, I now realize my mistake in voting for that zero percent increase,” he said. “The fact that I voted for a zero percent increase has put us in a position financially of where we are right now.”

Elling warned his fellow board members who looked to retain their seats in the future to keep this in mind.

“Those of you that are planning on being here, keep in mind that a zero percent increase equals in the future more headaches and a lot more difficulty in dealing with the budget,” he said.

He said he felt the 1.78 percent increase would be a good middle ground and potentially help prevent future boards from maxing out the district’s taxing index in the future.

Johnston said, though he didn’t want to raise taxes, the district was facing uncertain times due to questions on both the federal and state level regarding its funding.

“The thing that upsets me most of all is that we’re constantly at the local level being made out to be the bad guys, because everybody above us doesn’t want to make any decision especially at both the federal and state level,” he said.

“We have no control over either one of those. So even if we do a tax increase it’ll help a little bit. But if we don’t do anything I think it’s not a responsible act. I know that a lot of you disagree and that’s fine. That’s your prerogative, but I just don’t think we’re doing what we could do or should do at this point,” he concluded.

Redmon noted the state budget for education is based on the assumption that school districts are implementing regular, small tax increases.

“The board’s going to make whatever decision you’ll make. But understand that the expectation from the state legislature, the Pennsylvania Department of Education is there is a continual responsibility for the local education agencies to raise taxes — by a small amount — but every year,” Redmon said.

Following discussions, the board voted 5-4 to increase the tax index with Elling, Johnston, Donahay, Smith and Knauff voting yes and Lynch, Baldino, Cannon and Scaff voting no.

If the proposed budget, featuring the tax increase, is approved at the board’s May meeting it will be put toward final approval at its June voting session.

This will be the third fiscal year in a row the board is looking to approve.

The board previously approved an increase for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 fiscal years with last year’s increase being at 3.55 percent.