While officials with the School District continue coping with state budget cuts, two items found their way to the June governing board meeting that put a bit of a silver lining to the gray funding cloud.

On Wednesday, June 10, two new parcels of land, part of the Goldfield Preserve purchased by the Ellman Companies, were annexed into the district while the board also authorized a special November override election.

This year’s override election is a renewal of the 2005 budget overrides passed for K-3 and maintenance and operations.

Next year is the last year of full funding from the overrides, which must be renewed this year to allow the district to continue to offer the same programs in grades K-3 and in the M&O budget as before.

As stated by the proposal, the district is calling for a special election to be held Nov. 3 to ask voters to allow the district to continue to exceed the revenue control limit applicable to its maintenance and operations budget by 10 percent and exceed the preschool and K-3 portions of its revenue control limit by 5 percent to fund special improvement programs for kindergarten through third grade.

The proposal calls for an extension of these overrides, which have already been in place for the past four years, for an additional seven.

According to Superintendent Dr. Bill Myhr, this is one of the few methods by which districts may supplement their funding to provide higher quality educators and programs.

“These overrides help us significantly in providing salary and programs in our school system and is essential in the current economic climate,” Myhr said.

Board President Melanie Anderelli agreed, saying without such overrides, the district would have no other way to fund staff and services that have made FHUSD such an excelling district.

Member Dr. C.T. Wright stressed the importance of understanding exactly what these overrides were.

“This is very important to the continued success of the district,” Wright said.

“I hope we can get that message out to the community as well as the message that these are not new dollars being asked for, but a continuation of funding that has been provided for the past several years, allowing Fountain Hills to be on the cutting edge of education.”

Annexation

In addition to the upcoming elections, which will be finalized after figures derived from the pending district budget can be obtained, the FHUSD student body may be set to grow a little larger in the coming years thanks to another action item that brought good news to the district in otherwise grim times.

At the June 10 meeting, the board approved the annexation of additional parcels owned by Goldfield Preserve Development, LLC.

Two large parcels were already annexed earlier this year from the Goldfield Preserve thanks to recent legislation spearheaded by the Ellman Cos. and FHUSD that would allow land separated from the district but contingent to a reservation to be included within a district.

Ellman recently purchased two parcels of land, one measuring 5.28 acres and the other 42.66 acres, planned for residential development in the coming years.

Families moving into the area, according to this annexation, would now fall within the Fountain Hills district, potentially providing additional assessed value for the properties as well as the possibility of future students and the funding that goes along with student counts.

Meeting with approval by the board, the annexation will now be considered by the county before the annexation can be official.

Unable to attend the meeting, Don Kile of the Ellman Companies provided the board with a brief statement concerning the annexation.

“We are proud of our policy to ‘do the right thing’ as it relates to paying our fair share towards the costs that are incurred to educate the children that will be living in our community and attending schools within the district,” Kile said.

“During a time of economic downturn and tightening school budgets, we are glad to be part of a little good news.”