Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
Pennsbury School District taxpayers are getting a tax break thanks to a mistake.
The district confirmed Thursday evening that the mistake – likely a typo – led to the 2019-2020 tax increase being 1.51 percent instead of the 2.11 percent approved by the school board at their June 20 meeting. The millage rate was expected to go from 167.54 mills to 171 mills. However, the typo meant the final millage rate was 170, causing an expected tax revenue loss of $895,000.
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“I believe this was simply an error in typing ‘0’ where ‘1’ should have been. Because the spoken tax motion did not include the actual millage rate, there would have been no reasonable opportunity for any party that could have caught the error to catch the error,” Christopher Berdnik, the district’s new business manager, wrote in a July memo that has been made public.
Berdnik noted that the district is only permitted to levy a tax increase once a year and that they could attempt to fix it but there would be “epic logistical issues.”
Tax bills mailed out this summer reflect the smaller-than-expected tax increase.
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At Thursday evening’s school board meeting, Berdnik said the district is expected to close about $700,000 of the unexpected budget gap due to better-than-expected collection tax rates and increased property value assessments. Higher-than-anticipated tax revenue is also expected to provide more money.
The district will look at additional ways to make sure the costly mistake does not happen again.
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