Property owners in the Blue Mountain School District will be paying more in taxes.
School board members voted 8-1 to approve a $53.058 million budget for the 2025-26 school term that calls for a 2-mill tax increase.
Board members were presented with a choice of raising taxes by either 2 mills or 2.216 mills and chose the lesser of the two.
The new millage will be 46.325. That means for every $1,000 in assessed value on a property, its owner must pay $46.325. The 2-mill increase means taxes go up $2 per $1,000 in assessed value. Therefore, a property with an assessed value of $100,000 means the owner will pay $200 more than they did the year prior.
The lone dissenting vote, Timothy Grube, favored the higher tax increase. When given a chance to explain his reasoning for wanting the higher tax increase, Grube did not hold back publicly.
Grube said that by voting for just the 2-mill tax increase, his fellow board members are eating away at the district’s unassigned fund balance.
The option approved on Thursday has the district taking $651,548 from its unassigned fund balance to pass a balanced budget. Had they approved a budget with the higher tax increase, Blue Mountain would have only used $506,998 from that reserve.
Grube warned that the unassigned fund balance is getting lower and lower and that it soon could be wiped out.
Blue Mountain used about $700,000 from it to pass the budget in 2024-25. So, what was once a $2.5 million reserve is now down to about $1.1 million.
“Sometimes you have to make tough decisions,” Grube said. “You can only make up so much money at one time. Money isn’t falling out of the sky. I don’t think this is right but obviously 8 do, so we’ll go with that.”
He warned that if the unassigned fund balance gets much lower, the state could step in to run the district. Grube said another $700,000 budget deficit at this time next year means the unassigned fund balance will be under a half-million dollars.
“That’s unsustainable. At some point, programs are going to have to be cut and we’re providers of those programs and I don’t want that to happen. And I don’t think the community wants that to happen,” Grube said.
Blue Mountain Business Manager Amy Tomalavage told The Canary last month that a $1 million increase in staff salaries along with another $850,000 for increased health insurance costs make up the balance of the added expenses for the 2025-26 school term.
Grube said he supports spending that kind of money on the staff at Blue Mountain. He said about 73% of the budget is spent on district staff.
“I don’t have any problem spending that portion of the money on the people that teach our kids, that help parents make those kids young men and women, who do that on the athletic fields, in the band room, in the plays … it’s all necessary,” he said. “They’re great people. they spend money in our community. they live in our community. We see these people in our community. They support our community.”
However, in May, board members voted to approve a preliminary budget that called for no tax increase. When asked what changed between the end of May and the end of June, Tomalavage said Thursday, “We were always discussing it but it wasn’t ever anything that was put on the table because people don’t like to talk about the ugly truth. It was never an intention to not raise taxes.”
During his monologue following Thursday’s vote, Grube hit out against any board member who may have considered not raising taxes for the next school term.
“If somebody didn’t want to raise taxes at all, that’s a horrible decision. And there’s only one of two reasons that you would do that: you’re pandering to the community for your spot on the board, which is an embarrassment, or you have no idea what the hell’s going on here and that an equally large embarrassment,” he said.
Other members of the board were not immediately available following Thursday’s meeting due to an executive session called at its adjournment.
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Guy
June 27, 2025 at 9:29 pm
Apparently Mr. Grube can afford higher taxes. Blue Mountain voters elected Mr. Grube who outlandishly attacks other board members who represent their constituents wallet. I hope the voters remember Mr. Grube and his snide remarks next ballot. Putting teachers salaries ahead of people’s ability to pay higher taxes is a disgrace, unethical and a recipe for disaster.
S.T. Oner
June 29, 2025 at 12:33 pm
Without a transparent line-by-line review, this tax hike looks less like necessity and more like political pandering—they are trying to shield their seats in a physically conservative area by appearing tough on funding cuts, while actually expanding the athletic budget. That’s the definition of a RINO Republican—Republican In Name Only—who claims fiscal conservatism while enabling waste behind closed doors.
In Summary: What must change immediately
1. Fully audit and justify the athletic budget.
2. Hold firm to the no-tax-increase position adopted in the preliminary budget.
3. Stop riding on taxpayer backs to prop up athletics—health insurance, salaries and all.
4. Show genuine fiscal discipline befitting your claims, not political spin.