Port Neches-Groves Independent School District has found a way to deal with a loss in revenues and a deficit budget without raising the tax rate of $1.44 per $100 valuation.

School district tax rates consist of a maintenance and operations, or M&O portion that provides funds for maintenance and operations. A second part of the tax rate is the interest and sinking, or I&S portion. The I&S tax rate provides funds for payments on the debt that finances a district’s facilities. The calculation of state funding for school districts is tied to tax effort; this tax rates provide an essential component in the state’s school finance formula, according to information from the Texas Education Agency.

Sheri Drawhorn, PNGISD business manager, said a reclassification of 13 cents was made the I&S to the M&O which reduced the district’s deficit by $3 million.

“Normally, if you raise the M&O tax rate over the current rollback rate, which is $1.04, we would need to have an election and voter approval but in this instance we are reassigning it due to a disaster and do not have to have an election,” Drawhorn said.

This change is in response to the (Tropical Storm Harvey) disaster for a period of one year.

The rate of $1.44 per $100 valuation has been the same tax rate for the past three years.

The tax rate was adopted recently as was the district’s budget.

Total expenditures in the operation fund are $44.3 million with total revenues in the operation fund of $44.07 million for a deficit of about $700,000.

Officials with the district had been working on the recently adopted 2017-2018 fiscal year budget with the knowledge there was a loss of $100 million in property taxes, which equates to a $1 million loss in revenues.