In the past week there has been a lot of discussion around Butler over the possibility of a large school property tax increase next year.

The community needs to know that the board and administration of the Butler School District are working very hard to prevent that. To understand how we are doing that, I need to briefly explain the budget process.

Over the next few months we will be piecing together two very different budgets for comparison. The first will look at making minimal cuts to the education programs and raising taxes to cover the deficit. This is the potential budget that everyone has heard about.

However, the other potential budget will make cuts to get expenditures within 1.5 percent of revenue. This budget will have no tax increase, will have substantial cuts, and will use reserves to pay the deficit.

In the end, neither of those budgets will be practical and the real budget will end up somewhere in the middle. That final budget will include some cuts, some use of reserve funds, and consideration of a small tax increase.

I am aware that just having a discussion about large tax increases, even if such a thing is very unlikely, has a negative impact on the business environment around Butler. There are many officials and businesses that are working very hard to create an economic renaissance in Butler. The last thing that the District wants to do is hamstring those efforts by fears of large tax increases.

By now everyone has read many articles about the pressures being put on school budgets. The biggest increasing costs are mandatory retirement contributions, health care and mandatory payments to cyber charter schools.

Rest assured that the district is working very hard to contain those costs. The final budget will be fair to taxpayers and businesses as well as to the students. We will be able to weather this storm together.