Jackson County Times

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Thursday, July 30, 2009

School Board Raises Millage Without Public Complaint

Board passes additional .25 mil discretionary critical needs tax
By Sid Riley
At a special, advertised meeting of the Jackson County School Board held Tuesday afternoon, the School Board approved a $92,258,421 budget for the 2009-2010 school year. Of these funds, $10,188,243 will be generated through local property taxes. There was not one taxpayer who came to the Board meeting to voice a complaint about the planned tax increase.

The total school millage for this budget year will be 6.327 mils., as compared to last year’s millage rate of 5.855. This will cost the property owners of Jackson County $47.20 more in school property taxes per $100,000 in taxable assessed value. This will create 382,442 more in local tax funding for the school system, thus qualifying the local school system to receive an additional $764,884 in state funding.

Even though the amount of local tax generated revenues will increase, the total budget for the Jackson County School System will be cut by several million dollars due to declines in local sales tax revenues, staff reductions, and reduced capital outlays.

The board is quick to explain that they were essentially forced by the state legislature to enact this increase, or the school system would have lost the funding associated with the increase provided by the state. It is in this manner our state legislature is steadily passing more and more of the school funding burden onto the local property tax systems. Thus, it would appear that it was our state legislators who actually enacted this property tax increase.

Property Tax assessments in Jackson County have experienced the following levels of assessment increases in the past five tax rolls:

Year Total County Tax Roll
2004 $1,178,725,268
2005 $1,352,255,823
2006 $1,485,147,618
2007 $1,553,399,283
2008 $1,610,280,201 (not yet certified)

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