President Darlene Jewell introduced Superintendent Shuler to speak to our Association about the taxes. Supt. Shuler shared that we had two options: taking the 4.4 cents contingency tax rate; or incorporating the nickel tax but only utilizing 2.4% of it. The money will be used for Bonding and Buildings. Best of all The STATE matches 150%; this provides 20 Million in Bonding. The newly proposed Tax rate will be 50.9 cents on real property and 50.9 cents on personal property. Of this rate, 5.7 cents is subject to recall.
We want our students to have nice facilities that they can be proud of like other schools. We know taxes are high in Lee County, but not really school taxes. The funny thing about the Seek Formula is that The STATE says they want us to help ourselves before they help us a lot. Thats where the Recallable tax comes in. They say they will match 150% if we can get this. We could have asked for the full 5 percent or Nickel, like so many of the surrounding schools, but we didn't feel like we could justify it based on what people are paying in taxes right now.
However, we thought that taking the 2.4 percent on the 48.5 would get us up to 50.9, that was reasonable. For example, if your property is in Lee County and is assessed at $100,000, that's only $24.00 more dollars per year. A $250,000 piece of property, that is approximately $64.00 extra per year. If we had taken the contingency rate 4.4 %- the tax rate would have been 51cents and is not recallable.
This funding will allow us to upgrade our facilities. The LCMHS is 61 years old; ATC Center is 59 Years old; LCES is 34 Years old, and the Central Office Building is 23 years old.
Please share with others that this is a fair tax at this time and help to promote this for our county.
Several questions were generated during a discussion. President Jewell thanked Superintendent Shuler for his presentation and the 2.4% insightful overview of the taxes.
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