About your District 742 Property Taxes
During
this recession, I have consistently taken the position that our school
district needs to do its part to avoid raising property taxes.
For this reason, I have consistently voted to support decisions
which keep our total property tax levy from increasing during these difficult financial times.
Along with my colleague, Dr. Les Green, I voted against the property
tax increase contained in the 2011 preliminary levy. Many school
advocates encouraged me to support that increase, and I respect their
reasons. They believe that there is a potential for crippling
cuts in education next year, and for this reason they have felt that we
should keep the possibility of a modest tax increase in reserve.
I
voted against this increase because I committed last year to do
everything I could to avoid increasing property taxes in the teeth of
the toughest financial times for decades. My vote against the
preliminary levy tax increase was a fulfillment of that committment.
I believe that the solution to the fiscal crisis in Minnesota
lies at the legislature. If the
State of Minnesota would fully fund the State Special Education
Mandate, instead of forcing us to spend $8.5 million more than the
revenues they provide, we would not have needed even the operating
referendum to keep our budget balanced.
A
preliminary levy is not a levy of taxes: it allows the District
to consider how much it may levy. Some of my board colleagues
felt it was irresponsible to make a final decision on taxes, until we
had more information about whether the State was going to make major
cuts to education. I respect their decision and their votes.
My disagreement arises from my committment during last year's
levy to keep taxes flat, as well as my belief that the St. Cloud
economy is tapped out right now, and that we need to do everything we
can to avoid imposing further taxes. Also, I believe very
strongly that the State needs to fix the school finance mess by fully
funding mandates.
When
I meet with citizens they often tell me that they think that our school
district has really high property taxes. I suppose that everybody
thinks that their own school district has the highest taxes, but in
fact, St. Cloud has the lowest locally levied school property taxes, by
far, of the big four districts in our area, and lower taxes by far than
most of the school districts across the state that are comparable to
our school district . Now the state imposes some uniform property
taxes on non-residential properties, and those taxes are pulled into
the state coffers for distribution across the state to all schools.
The comparison that I'm displaying here is local property taxes
for the local school district. As the table below shows, a
$200,000 home in Sartell pays about $380 per year more than the same
priced home in our school district. The next closest school
district imposes school property taxes that are about $280 per year
higher.
| St. Cloud Schools |
|
|
|
| Comparisons
for School taxes paid |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pay |
Pay |
|
|
|
2010 |
2009 |
| $150,000
House Value |
|
Taxes |
Taxes |
| St. Cloud |
|
|
359.47 |
361.26 |
| Sartell-St.
Stephen |
|
645.96 |
636.33 |
| Sauk
Rapids-Rice |
|
602.98 |
605.92 |
| Rocori |
|
|
569.01 |
468.25 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pay |
Pay |
|
|
|
2010 |
2009 |
| $200,000
House Value |
|
Taxes |
Taxes |
| St. Cloud |
|
|
479.30 |
481.67 |
| Sartell-St.
Stephen |
|
861.28 |
848.45 |
| Sauk
Rapids-Rice |
|
803.97 |
807.89 |
| Rocori |
|
|
758.68 |
624.34 |
|
|
|
|
|
What
is the reason that our taxes are lower. One reason is that the
District has very low, just about the lowest in the State, levies for
capital construction. When we do build a school, the cost of
construction is spread across the entire district, so that the burden
is shared. We like to think as well, that over the years, the
district has been extremely careful about spending money on
construction only when it is absolutely necessary. Its not that
we haven't built schools when we need them. Since I moved to the
community in 1979, the District built Talahi Elementary, Oak Hill
Elementary, and Discovery Elementary, and more recently acquired a site
for, and then built the new Kennedy school in St. Joseph. As our
district experienced growth, we've added classrooms to Oak Hill,
Talahi, and Westwood Elementaries. But the district has tried to
be prudent about when it builds and how it builds.
Another
reason, of course, is the strong tax base of our school district.
When we compare ourselves to comparable districts elsewhere in
the State, we find also that our district has significantly lower
operating referendum support than those districts. Finally, the
board of education has attempted to use its bonding authority with
great care. In recent years, for example, many school
districts in the State issued long term bonds at rates as high as 7%,
but our board refused to impose that burden on the taxpayers, and
issued bonds for the same purpose over a shorter term, bringing the
interest rate down to just under 3%, saving the taxpayer hundreds of
thousands of dollars per year.