SAC CITY, IOWA – OCTOBER 18, 2010
The East Sac County School Board had a brief Q+A/informational discussion about how the new district will levy, and was asked by the Superintendent, Dr. Fiene to practice diligent communication with the business office of ESC schools so that they can make an informed decision, possibly as early as next month.
Following is the conversation they had in outline form.
1. Fiene asks board to figure out what is necessary for running a quality district, but cautions them to be sensitive to the property tax rates.
- It may look like there is X number of dollars projected, but that can be a bit misleading if you look at total numbers.
2. Another big player in this is enrollment.
- As the two districts are thrown together they will be down students.
-- This will cost the district $120K.
--- Sharing money from reorganization will cover the loss short term, but the business manager, John Kreft doesn’t seem to think that the school should rely on that money as it is a temporary income.
---- When you reorganize, you get sharing money for three additional years.
3. Superintendent wants the board ready to decide how much to levy in November and asks for what information they want in order to make the decision.
- This needs to be decided by that point so they can get it onto the February election.
- Wilhelm wants the instructional support levy addressed.
-- The Sac district has never had one and it hasn’t been discussed in the last decade, if ever.
-- Wilhelm wants a way to get the information out to the public so that it understands exactly how this type of levy will work.
-- Wilhelm wants to know how much this levy would cost the average person.
-How does the WLVA instructional support levy work?
--It works on both income surtax and property tax.
---They have a 4% income surtax and the balance is from property tax.
----This translates into roughly 1/3 comes from the surtax, and 2/3 comes from the property tax
----- This generates about $225K per year.
----- Kreft thinks this will bring in about $400K per year in the combined district.
- Sac has gotten away with not charging for PPEL for the last couple of years.
-- SILO tax seems to have taken over what used to be generated through PPEL.
-- PPEL fund is pretty healthy right now due to the money in it that is earmarked for the Sac Elem roof project.
-- Sac has been able to keep the property tax levy down by not charging for PPEL.
--- WLVA is not being charged for PPEL and if it is instituted, will need to be carefully explained to those voters.
-- Wilhelm claims to be leaning towards not having a PPEL levy because it seems to be covered with SILO.
- Since the boards intend to ask the public to vote on these levies, Kreft recommends not throwing both of the levys onto a ballot at once.
-- Seems to be afraid this could lead to a failure of both levies.
-- If voters are confused, they are more likely to vote “no”.
--- Board seems to be in agreement that they would rather se this come up as a vote, so as to give the people a chance to decide, rather than just arbitrarily deciding by a vote of the board that it would be so.
---- Wilhelm hopes that if the vote fails, it’s because the public doesn’t want it, not because they don’t have all the information.
- Rodman asks for examples of what the instructional support levy will be used on.
-- Superintendent points out that what it is used for has to be specified in a statement of purpose.
Following is the video of the conversation.
Copyright (c)2007-2010 Curtis Bloes All Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment