School districts cutting levy rates
Property tax rates will drop in three Valley school districts, raising hopes that residents in one of them will be more prone to pass a school bond.
Levy tax rollbacks aren’t unusual and can occur for several reasons, school officials said. Sometimes districts overestimate the amount of tax they need to collect; they would rather overestimate and give money back to taxpayers than come up short.
Levy equalization is a state-funded adjustment that reduces the tax burden for residents in school districts that have lower assessed valuations than the statewide average.
A decrease in the levy tax rate can also be attributed to growth in a district, as is the case in the Central Valley School District.
The district announced Thursday that more than $1.15 million will be rolled back from the 2007 levy tax amounts.
The district’s levy tax rate will go from $3.44 to $2.93 per $1,000 based on current assessed property valuations.
Central Valley is asking voters to approve a $75.7 million construction bond on the Nov. 7 ballot. This would allow the district to build two new schools, modernize three elementary schools and make improvements to six additional schools.
The estimated cost of the bond is an additional 80 cents per $1,000; however, the 51 cents per $1,000 decrease in the levy tax rate means that the net impact to voters considering the bond would be an increase of 29 cents per $1,000 or $29 per year for a house assessed at $100,000.
“This is excellent news for our patrons, many of whom we know are struggling under an increasingly difficult tax burden,” said Mike Pearson, superintendent.
“It is also important news for our voters, who are currently considering the district’s construction bond proposal on their November ballots.”
The West Valley School Board on Wednesday approved a $1.13 million rollback.
“The levy rollback is mainly attributable to ‘Local Effort Assistance’ being funded by the state. The rollback is approximately 88 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value,” said Deputy Superintendent Doug Matson.
The East Valley School Board approved a rollback of $213,000 at their Tuesday board meeting. This means that the amount per $1,000 of assessed property valuation will drop from approximately $3.60 to $3.09 in 2007.