The 2018-19 Hanover School Division budget includes a small decrease in the mill rate.

The HSD Board of Trustees approved the budget on Tuesday with an operating cost of approximately $90,200,000 which represents a 2.74% increase from the previous year.

Chair of Finance Rick Peters says even though the division will have to increase their education tax levy by just under 3% to match higher expenditures, the mill rate will actually be going down.

"There is growth in the assessment base and when there is growth in that, taxes are paid based on assessment and then that growth is what funds our school division. Because of that growth, we don’t need to increase our taxes we can actually reduce our mill rate."

Peters says the mill rate will drop from 15.29 to 15.14 which means a house assessed at $250,000 will pay $17 less in education tax. He notes the board of trustees worked hard to find costs savings.

"We are very fortunate that our schools are in good shape maintenance-wise but there is always that wish list of projects that schools might want to do, they might want to upgrade their cafeteria, they might want to upgrade certain areas of the school and so we have scaled back on a number of those projects that we were able to without compromising anything else in the school."

Peters says the increase in operating expenses is largely driven by the addition of teachers and instructional support to keep up with growth within the division.