February 2, 2012 in Washington Voices

CV superintendent tackles funding questions

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Almost every school district in Spokane County will ask voters to consider renewing levies on election day, Feb. 14.

Central Valley Superintendent Ben Small is hosting a series of information sessions to answer voter questions about the district’s levy.

Central Valley School District is asking voters to approve a three-year, $27.1 million levy. If approved, taxpayers will pay $4.19 per $1,000 of assessed property value. The amount takes into consideration the district’s levy equalization funds – money provided by the state in property-poor regions. Central Valley currently receives $4.3 million in levy equalization, but if the state cuts those funds, the district wants to make sure they don’t have to make any additional cuts. Small said if the state doesn’t cut levy equalization, the district will continue to collect $3.54 per $1,000 of assessed property value, which is what it is collecting now.

“We would automatically have to cut $4.3 million from our budget (if levy equalization was cut),” Small said. He said that is about 60 teachers.

At an information session Tuesday at Opportunity Elementary School, Small presented the small audience with information about why the district is asking voters to approve the tax.

One audience member pointed out the levy was only for three years, to replace an expiring tax. She said it seemed like the district was in a habit of asking the taxpayers for these funds and wanted to know if the tax would be permanent.

“We’ve always had a replacement levy,” Small told her. He said the school districts have been asking taxpayers to approve levies since the 1970s and it now accounts for 24.6 percent of the district’s annual budget.

He added that the last time the district asked for a levy back in 2009, the district was also worried about the loss of levy equalization funds. Back then, the district asked voters to approve a $27.3 million levy which was approved, but levy equalization wasn’t cut so the district didn’t collect those taxes.

“The board has kept their promise to the community,” Small said.

The audience member pointed out the district spends $8,985 to educate one student in the district while many private schools can do it for cheaper.

She asked why it would be more expensive to do this on a larger scale.

“Is there waste somewhere?” she asked.

Small said the district is always looking for ways to cut spending. He said the district has made several upgrades in its infrastructure to become more energy efficient. He said the district is projected to save $100,000 this year with those efficiencies.

He then said the district moved its servers off-campus to TierPoint in Liberty Lake to keep the district’s system reliable and up-to-date and is projected to save $284,000 over a five-year period.

“As a school district, I think we have been very frugal with money,” Small said.

Ballots are due Feb. 14. In every district, each levy needs a simple majority of 50 percent to pass.

Six comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  flyerd1 on February 02 at 3:38 a.m.

  1. Irt it not being a new tax:
  Anything with an end date (like a “3yr” levy tax or a mortgage) has to have a “new” one started in order to “remain” in place so it’s perfectly accurate to say it’s a new tax. What if, after paying off your mortgage, the bank said “we don’t want you to pay a new mortgage, we’d just like you to pay on this replacement mortgage” for another mortgage term…? How would that go over?

  2. Actual levy rates and Levy Equalization Funds (LEF):
  The levy rate most often used by school districts is the smaller, LEF assisted one. However, with our current economy, this is a time when LEF funds could go away and people should plan accordingly (plan worst case scenario). That would cause the amount taken by this levy to be approximately 22% more than the school dist claims.

  3. Irt A) It being 28% (mead) of their budget & B) What the levy $ is or is not used for:
  A levy is meant to be a one time fill-gap revenue stream that may be necessary once every 10-20 yrs. It’s “NOT” meant to be a “constant” revenue stream… It shows incredibly bad district leadership when they’ve gotten to the point of expecting levies as a never ending part of their budget.

  It’s extremely disingenuous to say the money “is not” used for new buildings, repairs, pensions, etc. That’s a simple “shell game”. It’s like having a monthly budget (including $100 each for phone, power, alcohol, and gas) and saying “gee mom, I don’t have enough money to cover all my monthly bills; If you give me $100 I can pay my pwr bill”. There’s no way to realistically seperate that $100 out and stipulate it’s actually being used to pay “the pwr bill” as opposed to the gas, phone, alcohol, etc. budget items. Similarly, there is “no way to realistically separate” levy money such that it can be considered a “completely separate” (from all other budget items) funding amount. The exact part of the budget that the school dist “chooses to say” the levy money pays for is simply a matter of which shell they choose to say it goes towards… Again, its a simple shell game of distortions to say “a specific revenue stream” of any budget is only going to used “for select items” of that overall budget.

  4. Despite how this may sound, I’m completely for education funding via a fair and equitable method. A much more equitable method of requesting additional funding would be to request it via a sales tax increase (whatever fraction of a penny required). That way, “everyone” casting a vote would actually be voting to increase “their own taxes” as well as other people’s taxes. If it’s going to be a property tax then either A) only property owners should have the levy on their ballots or B) it should be a supermajority vote. Right now many people vote who don’t even pay property taxes… Otherwise this type of a levy tax should require a super majority in order to be considered more of a fair vote (#5 below).

  A cost cutting, as opposed to revenue generating, method of addressing the education budgets would be to address the underfunded TERS1 pensions and work to modify those pensions via negotiations and constitutional changes. The state already acknowledged that TERS1 (stopped in 1977) was unsustainable and a responsible re-negotiation could be done without undue harm to current pension beneficiaries. All other post TERS1 plans should be transitioned to 401K plans. Additionally, cost structures should be reviewed and compared to the charter schools that currently operate for less money while achieving better scholastic success rates.

  See 5. below…

• 

  flyerd1 on February 02 at 3:38 a.m.

  5. If it was a super majority vote this would at least be a fair vote. A super majority vote is necessary anytime you allow a subset group of people to vote on a matter that could be beneficial to them and that they are “not” directly impacted by (in a financially impacting way, i.e. they pay for it). For example (using property ownership rates of 60%), if 65% of “non-property owners” vote “YES”, a levy like this could pass with only 40% of property owners voting for it (even though the property owners pay it).

  If Washington was having a vote to increase the sales tax by 2% you wouldn’t want people from Idaho to be allowed to vote because, as stated above, they would be a subset of voters that don’t have to pay for the tax but could actually benefit as their sales went up due to people going into Idaho to avoid the 2% increase.

  The counter point of “renters pay these fees via rent” is ridiculous because only in a perfect system would this be the case. In actuality, landlords can only charge what the market will bear. Meaning, if a landlord can’t get a renter at a price that covers the levy costs he/she has to lower the rent in order to simply rent the unit out…

• 

  reservedparking on February 02 at 5:00 p.m.

  ^^ Flagged. About the 4th time I’ve seen this exact post cut & pasted on multiple stories. Enough already, you made your point. Somewhere.

• 

  flyerd1 on February 05 at 12:57 a.m.

  reservedparking—
  Flagged?… Because it’s on multiple stories?… LOL.

  1. All the stories were applicable.

  2. Not everyone reads “all” the stories so if I don’t post on some of them there’s a huge chance that people won’t see my points. Apparently you can’t grasp that concept.

  3. There’s about 20 pro-levy propaganda stories and how many anti-levy stories have they done to tell the other side??? We have to work 20x harder to even begin to make an effort to keep up with all the pro sided spin…

  4. You have yet to make a point… Hopefully you’ve been able to learn something by reading mine. If not, try reading them again.

• 

  gotcha on February 06 at 8:39 a.m.

  If the Public Sector wants my vote on anything they can end Collective Bargaining.

  They have taken away all my power as a tax payer using my money to buy political favor for what they want.

  My only power is my vote and I vote NO on any and all new taxes, increased taxes, bonds and levys.

  End Collective Bargaining.

• 

  tnygenie on February 13 at 2:42 p.m.

  I was a member in the “small audience” at Opportunity Elementary School. It was my husband and myself and about 15 other people who all had either “Central Valley School District” name tags on, or were wearing “Yes on the Levy” pins. It was very clear that their intent was to overpower anyone who came questioning them and their repeated use of the Levy’s. I also would like to point out to the public that there were a few key issues that the reporter on this story surprisingly left out. The first thing is that I challenged the reported $8985 per student, per year to educate our children because I had done research that indicated that this number DOES NOT include capitol expenses. Mr. Small then verified that is indeed the case. The real number with capitol expenses included is over $12,000 per student, per year. When I told him that it is not accurate to leave out ones mortgage payment when figuring out how much it costs to operate your home, his reply was “that’s the way it has always been done.” The other thing that was important and left out, was that Mr. Small began to gloat about the 1.9% pay cut his classified staff took and his 3% pay cut last year. My response to that was that in an economy where many of our friends and relatives are taking 25 and 30% pay cuts, I am not impressed. It is also important to point out that his $169,900 annual salary (taxfacs.com) is far above the median household income in Spokane of $55,000.
  The Oaks Academy has a 100%graduation rate. 100% of the students take SAT’s and the scores are about 300 points higher on average than the Central Valley School District students. The cost, $6250.00 per year.
  Enough said. Stop robbing the public. You work for us and we are tired of giving you more and more money for less and less education. In the private sector you would have gone out of business!