Seeking to take advantage of a new state law, the Northshore School District Board of Directors voted May 11 to place a supplemental levy before voters during the upcoming August primary.
The issue could raise as much as $12 million over four years starting in 2011. Voters will decide the measure six months after passing three funding questions in February.
In discussing the upcoming levy, school officials have said they are reacting to a projected $2.9 budget gap for the 2010-2011 school year, a gap they blamed squarely on reductions in state funding.
“We listened closely to our community,” said board President Dawn McCravey. “We believe this levy is critical to provide for our students now. We can’t afford to wait for the state to find a solution. Our kids deserve better.”
Acting on the recommendations of Superintendent Larry Francois, the board closed the upcoming projected gap with approximately $3 million in budget adjustments. The biggest move consisted essentially of dipping into the district’s savings, withdrawing $2.2 million. On numerous occasions, Francois has characterized the step as a stop-gap, one-time-only measure.
Regarding the decision to move the levy forward, the feedback McCravey referred to came from public input gained at three budget workshops held last month, as well as an online survey.
According to the district, 82 percent of nearly 1,000 persons who expressed an opinion were in favor of at least floating the levy issue.
According to district Communications Director Leanna Albrecht, about 200 people participated in the workshops while 759 took the online survey.
Francois unveiled the levy idea to the school board in mid-April. In talking to the Reporter, he said when the state cuts funding, local school districts get hit with a “double whammy.”
By law, districts are limited to collecting locally roughly 24 percent of their overall budgets. When Olympia cuts funding, the dollars districts can take in from local collections drop, as well.
Presumably in response to that issue, state legislators adopted new rules allowing certain local collections to remain at a certain level even as total school budgets shrink. Secondly, they allowed systems to go to voters and ask them to increase the percentage of revenue dollars collected locally.
For Northshore, supplemental levy passage would increase the amount of local dollars to 28.9 percent of Northshore’s total budget. The total amount collected would depend on the system’s total budget, but estimates have ranged from $5.3 million to the already mentioned $12 million.
If the highest collection levels were reached, initial district figures set the cost of the levy to property owners at 20 cents per $1,000 in valuation. Officials now have stated collections would drop to 10 cents or 11 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation for the last three years of the levy.
Again according to information released by the district, the overall school tax rate with the supplemental levy in place would be $4.24 per $1,000 in property value in 2011, with the same figure dipping to about $4.15 in the following years. For a home valued at $400,000, the schools predict an average annual increase of $56 per year in property taxes over the life of the levy.
The funding issues passed in February included two replacement levies that will provide Northshore with $193 million in operating dollars over the four-year life of those levies that go into effect next year.
At the time of their passage, officials emphasized those levies were not bringing in new dollars, but would take the place of expiring levies.
In February, voters also OK’d a $149 million bond sale supporting capital improvements and building maintenance.
