All school districts in Butler County need to provide to their residents a multi-year fiscal projection like that provided by the Seneca Valley School District superintendent at a meeting Monday.

Superintendent Tracy Vitale provided a snapshot of the district’s fiscal situation into the 2015-16 fiscal year and, although she didn’t paint a rosy, encouraging picture, district residents now have a reliable view of what can be anticipated for coming years.

With such information in hand, residents have adequate opportunity to contemplate their stance on issues such as possible tax increases, elimination of teaching and extracurricular positions, cutbacks to sports programs and other extracurricular activities, and even trimming of staff members such as custodians.

For Seneca Valley, the challenges are many — and serious — for coming years, judging from Vitale’s estimate that the district could face an $8.6 million shortfall for the 2016-17 fiscal year.

That figure and the projected deficits leading up to it are based on an assumption of no additonal cuts to programs or elimination of teaching positions, but the numbers also factor in an assumed 2 percent increase in the real estate tax each year as well as a 1 percent increase in the value of a mill.

Vitale assured residents that her report was not aimed at scaring residents about the future. However, she emphasized that her calculations are realistic, based on trends in state funding and unavoidable cost increases.

For the second year in a row, every school district in Butler County has been facing budget challenges unlike any they faced in the past. Meanwhile, county school districts have mostly limited their discussions to the year at hand, rather than giving their taxpayers and other residents a longer financial view.

Other districts owe their residents a portrait similar to what Seneca Valley has done, although, hopefully, one that’s more optimistic.

That should be a basis for taxpayer input and better attendance at school board meetings — although, judging from the past, it would seem meeting attendance won’t increase until boards are actually dealing with tax decisions.

Unless an unanticipated financial windfall is received, Seneca Valley’s situation portends tough bargaining in future contract negotiations. But for now, the district is locked into what can be viewed as an unsustainable situation.

It’s a situation that could have been averted with a tougher attitude by past boards about how the district’s money was spent.

Seneca Valley, like other Butler County districts, has been overly generous in terms of pay and benefits, and now its back is against the wall.

Vitale didn’t hammer that point home on Monday, but she had justification for doing so.