Port Neches-Groves ISD's M&O Fund

Port Neches-Groves Independent School District is a chapter 41 property rich school district.  The majority of our funding for the maintenance and operations fund comes from property tax revenue.  This amount is about $29 million dollars or roughly 85 % of our maintenance and operations fund.  The rest is from the state which is about $5 million or roughly 15%.  The average home is our district would be considered average by most accounts; however, what makes PNGISD property rich is the large industrial tax base.  We have multiple refineries in our district that lead to many jobs and opportunities for our students.  We had a recent decline in home values, as did the rest of America, yet it didn’t affect our maintenance and operations fund as drastically as it did some districts due to the industry.  According to our business manager, there is not much of a relationship between the source of our funds and the allocation of our funds for the school district.  We do not allocate funds based on where they came from.  We build our budget based on the previous year’s budget and make cutbacks when necessary to certain budgets that can be trimmed.  In other words, we build our budget on needs.  We have a balanced budget now and hope to remain that way.  We did have to absorb some positions about 3 years ago and were able to do so through attrition without laying off any of our staff.  The only way that we get new money is to get more students and we did see an influx of new students these past two years for the first time in awhile.  One thing that has really helped us is the House Bill 1200 money that we get from a few local industries.  This is an agreement to make a payment directly to us in lieu of paying the full tax amount to the state.  If they paid the state, the money would get recaptured so they pay less, but it goes directly to us instead.  The unfortunate thing is that this agreement will end in about 7 years and we will once again have to find a way to tighten our budget.  I have confident that the people of our district will come together and do just that.