By Andy Dahn

BLOOMINGTON – District 87 received an update on its 2015 budget Wednesday night and expects their current deficit to shrink from $2.1 million to $1.2 million. But potential changes to state funding, proration and pension shifts could make the deficit even larger.

Another reason of concern is a steep drop in property tax revenue. The district has lost over $5 million since 2012, something superintendent Barry Reilly said hurts the district despite its history of conservative budgeting.

“We’ve still had deficit spending simply because revenues have dropped so sharply that we can’t keep up,” said Reilly. “Even with dropping our expenditures, we just can’t do it to as steep of a degree to match that.”

Reilly said the possible changes to state funding would add to the district’s deficit.

“There wasn’t one option, whether it was Senate Bill 1, Senate Bill 16 from the prior year,” Reilly said. “Nothing out there is really good for District 87 as they’re looking at it now. And even the proration, if they change that to a per pupil amount instead of a percentage, that’s about $900,000 that we would get less.”

After a recent 2.25 percent cut in funding, Reilly said nothing is guaranteed when it comes to the state.

“Even though we had estimates this year, they went in and cut us in late March,” said Reilly. “And that was not predicted. The problem with that is that we were nearly through the year and they basically told us that they knew it was bad for us, but we had to make do.”

Reilly is hoping downtown revitalization and new businesses such as Green Top Grocery will help increase property tax revenues in the future. The district will present a tentative 2016 budget at its first meeting in August.

Andy Dahn can be reached at [email protected].