Saturday, September 15, 2012

Property Taxes

There has been some confusion about property taxes over the last 5 years.  The only changes to property taxes that the school board has had an impact on occurred when voters passed the bond to fund new schools and seismic improvements to existing schools.  We had 3000 additional students last year in the district.  That is enough for 100 additional classrooms.  How could the district handle this increase without the additional schools provided by the bond?

Rob Smith made the following statement in a personal email.

Page 70 of the budget document shows what has happened since 1983.  Tax rate in 1983 was .008550.  Tax rate in 2012 is .008842.  In the last 5 years, the tax rate has gone from .007057 to .008842, which is a 25% increase in tax rate.  

Why did this occur?  Three reasons: 
1) Assessed value dropped from $18,021,423,319 to $15,360,073,341 or 17% decrease in assessed value - this pushes up the rate through the certified tax setting process to yield the same dollars as prior year; 
2) Tax rate for debt service (Voter approved) increased from .002638 to .003350 or 26% (9% net when adjusted for the decrease in assessed value listed in #1 above); and 
3) The legislature increased the basic tax rate charged by all school districts from .001250 to .001665, or a 33% increase in rate.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please provide feedback for me on ways to improve public schools