Thank you, Butler School Board. You made the right move.

Your 8-1 vote secures a balanced $102 million budget for the 2018-19 school year that will not require a tax increase or a raid on the district’s dwindling reserve funds.

For a week you wavered over the idea of a $650,000 increase for future capital projects. But when you opted not to go that route, you gave relief to taxpayers, among them older homeowners on fixed incomes and independent small business proprietors struggling to keep the doors open and pay the bills.

Superintendent Brian White found a middle path when he disclosed Monday that proceeds from 2017 sale of the Oakland Township Elementary School building, combined with health care cost savings and an increase in Title 1 revenue, enabled the district to inject $100,000 into the capital project fund next year without a tax hike.

White challenged the board to add $650,000 to the fund every year beginning with the 2019-20 school year to build up the fund to pay for building projects. That’s a responsible strategy worth anticipating, so let’s not kick that can next year when we catch up to it.

We’re all in this together — sometimes it seems the board or the public loses sight of this fact. There’s an old expression: “When I owe the bank a thousand dollars, I’m in trouble; when I owe the bank a million bucks, the bank’s in trouble.” Well, collectively we owe $30 million to $40 million in interest on Butler School District’s current debt obligations. That’s plenty of trouble to spread around.

The remedy is not to borrow more, obviously. But raising taxes has become tantamount to borrowing from your favorite uncle until payday. It’s to the point where your favorite uncle doesn’t want to hear from you anymore.

A tax increase might as well be a loan with interest. It’s like a massive payday loan scheme perpetrated on the taxpayer — especially when it’s for a future expenditure. Money taken from the pockets of the community — for school improvements someday later — is money not invested elsewhere in the community.

Let no one doubt the schools — and the school board — strive to make the most of our investment in Butler, its young people and our future. The move to all-day kindergarten this year is a significant step forward. Study after study support “all-day-K” for enhancing K-12 outcomes.

All-day kindergarten won’t pay dividends for 18 years. For those too impatient to wait that long for results, here’s a shorter strategy — and a challenge.

The board member who voted against the budget made note that the proposed tax increase would have raised the typical resident’s tax by about $30, but over a decade could have generated as much as $16.5 million.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see that same $16.5 million in improvements to local residential and business properties, or to see that much or more improvement in the community? Could we generate $16.5 million or more in the local economy, new construction or local payrolls?

With that kind of growth, we might never have to worry about school property tax increases again.