By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
Last August, the Barton Community College Board of Trustees approved a budget that anticipated collecting $506,365 in additional tax dollars in the 2024 fiscal year compared to the year prior. To collect the same amount of tax dollars as last year, the college was presented a Revenue Neutral Rate (RNR) of 27.959. The Trustees approved a budget exceeding the RNR by setting their mill levy at 29.38.
RELATED STORY: Barton Community College approves $506,000 more in taxes
During the 2023 General Election, Dale Maneth received the most votes to take one of three open seats on the Board of Trustees.
At last week’s board meeting, the board approved tuition and fee increases for the upcoming school year. Maneth noted his overall concern is the bottom line on the budget, making sure there are not additional taxes to the citizens.
"We assessed an extra half million dollars on the county during a period where valuations in the county went up 10%," said Maneth. "That's a trend I don't want to see continue. We have issues in place with concerns from taxpayers already. I don't want to abuse that moving forward. I want to make sure we cover this."
Estimated to collect more than $10 million in local tax dollars this year, Barton approved a budget for the 2023-2024 school year anticipating a $1.1 million deficit.
As tuition numbers are coming in better than expected, Barton Vice President of Administration Mark Dean said he hopes that deficit will be much smaller.
“I don’t want to see taxes go up either…I don’t,” said Dean. “I also don’t want to see tuition go up, but the cost of everything does increase.”
The college bumped up many tuition and fee rates by $2 for next school year, expecting to generate at least an additional $411,000. Along with the valuation increase with the approved tax rate, Dean said the college will have close to $1 million of extra revenue to help with any deficits next year.
Any shortfall comes from the college’s cash reserves, which are expected to be around $18 million by this summer.
Barton trustee chairman, Mike Johnson, said there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to formulating a budget but echoes Maneth’s comment of not increasing tax dollars again.
"Personally, I don't think the board is going to be supporting exceeding the RNR again this year," said Johnson. "I think it's pretty safe to say, as we're building that budget we need to keep that in mind that we don't want to exceed the RNR."
Barton Community College operates with a budget of nearly $35 million.