Garden Valley School Division's (GVSD) preliminary budget presented during a public consultation meeting Thursday night, includes a reduction in education taxes for ratepayers. However, it also includes the need to cut nearly $700,000.

GVSD expects $519,000 in additional revenue for the year, but additional expenses of just over $1.2 million will create a significant shortfall.

About $493,000 will be needed for the operating costs of the new Pine Ridge Elementary School. $605,000 is proposed to cover additional wages and benefits for the year and $105,000 for other operating costs.

To address the shortfall, the board is proposing a $60,000 reduction to school budgets, a cut of $180,000 to the IT Budget Tech Integration Plan, eliminating the bus replacement plan for a total of $274,000, and another $170,000 by the eliminating discretionary staff budget.

GVSD Board Chair Laurie Dyck says laptops, which are in all their schools, are an integral part of how education happens and a tool that is used a lot. "What we're proposing, is we're simply going to cut money out of that," said Dyck. "And it's just putting off a problem because the reality is, computers don't last forever, they have a life span, if you're lucky 5 to 8 years, and GVSD has some in that time zone."

Dyck noted this cut is essentially eating away at their replacement program. She added GVSD has an amazing IT team, so hopefully, they can keep the aging equipment running.

Another piece on the list of potential cuts will affect the division's bus fleet. "We have a replacement plan that we like to follow, unfortunately, we are going to cut that back. That means drawing out of our spare fleet to help make routes happen. If we're pulling out of our reserve fleet, that means there are fewer buses for extracurricular activities," said Dyck. She noted the opening of Pine Ridge will create the need for 3 extra bus routes.

Also in the proposed budget document, the board is planning to maintain some important strategic plan initiatives related to numeracy and literacy. "The reality is, we have a lot of good data showing the impact the initiatives have had. The machine is moving in the right direction. . . So no. We didn't want to cut that," said Dyck.

Meanwhile, Dyck says the board is proposing to increase the special requirement by the allowed 2%, which equates to an additional $399,000 for the division through education property taxes.

The proposed mill rate is 15.02, which is a 0.42% reduction from the current year. That means education property taxes, based on assessments, would go down.

As for the next steps, one more consultation will be held to go over the plan with the division's parent advisory councils. That will take place on March 4th.

The board will vote on the proposed budget at its next scheduled meeting, March 12th.