The Ellsworth Community School District held its annual meeting last Monday night in the high school cafetorium.

A few district residents were on hand for the meeting but the budget and property tax levy certainly doesn’t hold the same weight as the pool reopening plan last month or the approval to participate in fall sports from two months ago. Both of those actions filled significantly more of the cafetorium seats.

Granted, the annual meetings and budget hearings are mostly procedural nowadays. It used to be that residents could and would pick apart school district budgets. Now, amounts that can be levied are limited by the state and most of the revenue comes from state aid also.

Some things in the coming year are unknown, such as what the impact of COVID-19 is going to have on overall school funding. The pandemic had some obvious affects on the Ellsworth Schools budget also. A lot of projects were put on hold last year, and the district also had $230,000 in savings from expenses that weren’t incurred when school went virtual last March for the remainder of that schoolyear.

There’s less revenue in that there’s no attendance at athletic events.

The district is also working to keep up its facilities.

“’We’re putting aside money to try to meet our needs for our facilities,” said Superintendent Barry Cain.

And all told, the local tax rate is down.

Perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the meeting was that the school district reached a new milestone in overall property value.

“We now have over a billion dollars in property value in our district,” said Cain.

Total district revenue under the 2020-21 spending plan is set at $20,402,999, up slightly from last year’s number of $20,162,275.

The property tax levy – the amount district residents contribute from their property tax bill – is $6,807,895, down from last year’s levy of $6,945,652. Including debt service payments of $2,210.325, the non-referendum debt fund of $333,391 and the community service fund (contribution for the pool and Panther Kids Club before and after school programming), the total district levy was set at $9,501,611, down 1.35 percent from one year ago.

The property tax rate to support that levy is $8.86 per $1,000 of property valuation, down 6.64 percent from last year.

Total expenditures for this school year are budgeted at $20,830,901, compared to last year’s figure of $20,438,003.

“Our mill rate today is lower than when we built the elementary school. It’s a great story,” said Cain.

General state aid to the district is up nearly $600,000 under the budget. The district will receive $10,752,547, compared to $10,193,425 last year.

Whether that aid holds for next year is to be determined, because of the impact of the pandemic on summer school programs. “We do, as does every school district in the state, have a concern about state aid next year,” said Cain.

Some schools didn’t hold summer school at all, while Ellsworth did a considerable amount of programming, though it wasn’t at the level of a normal year.

“Our people did great work and provided many opportuni-