During the Northampton School Board meeting on Monday, May 12, the board heard presentations from Northampton Area Public Library Director Veronica LaRoche and NASD Business Administrator Craig Neiman, which helped directors make their decisions on public library funding and the district’s 2025-26 final budget.
During her presentation, LaRoche explained that the library’s request of $270,000 from the district is a flat fund, which has been the same requested amount for the last five years. This amount is 52% of the NAPL budget. The rest of the budget comes from state aid ($138,427 or 27%), municipalities ($33,734 or 7%), donations and fundraising ($38,000 or 7%) and other ($36,225 or 7%).
Currently, LaRoche stated the library serves a population of 43,731 people and around 12,000 individuals hold library cards.
LaRoche also expressed that the library does its best to spend as little as possible and tries to save some of its funding to transfer into their emergency fund at the end of the fiscal year for capital projects and improvements.
LaRoche stated that the library would only be able to sustain itself for two years if the board were to cut its aid.
Directors Doug Vaughn, John Becker and Parker Flamisch expressed their support for the district’s full contribution of $270,000 aloud, whereas Joshua Harris voiced disagreement, opining that the majority of funding should come from municipalities instead.
Although directors were torn over the necessity of the funds and whether or not the board should be responsible for such a hefty portion of the library’s budget, the majority of directors voted against eliminating or reducing the library’s request of $270,000 for the 2025-26 school year.
In a 5-3 vote, directors Brian McCulloch, Joshua Harris and Kristin Soldridge voted against the motion.
Establishing a library committee was also discussed as McCulloch, Flamisch and Harris volunteered to serve as liaison to improve communication between NAPL and the school board. The committee and appointments will be discussed more during the June meeting when the item can be added to the agenda.
In other news, directors voted 5-3 to adopt and advertise the 2025-26 proposed budget with a 4% tax increase. Directors McCulloch, Harris and Soldridge opposed the motion.
At the Jan. 13 meeting, the board was presented with the initial proposed 2025-26 budget, which included a deficit of $6,259,264. Since then, there have been several reductions and increases to the budget and the majority of directors pushed for a 4% tax hike to cover the resulting deficit in a straw poll at the April 14 meeting.
Additionally, the board unanimously approved a motion to accept the Taxpayer Relief Act from gaming funds, which is a property tax reduction allocation of $2,554,848.68 to reduce property taxes and set the homestead/farmstead exclusion at the same fixed amount.
The 2025 state gaming property tax reduction represents an increase of $331,934 since 2024 and will lower eligible property tax bills by $198.40 for the average homestead/farmstead, which is an increase of $26.55 from 2024 and an increase of $84.79 since 2021. Currently, there are 12,827 homesteads within the district and 70 farmsteads.
The board will vote on adopting the final budget during next month’s meeting.
The next Northampton School Board meeting will be held on Monday, June 9 at 6:30 p.m. in the high school auditorium, located at 1619 Laubach Ave.
