There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
getting so much resistance from behind

Sunday, August 12, 2007

My Local Schools

Okay, so this week we got the Local School's Annual Report/Calendar. One of the interesting things is that last month we knew that our Superintendant was leaving (getting out while he still smelled like roses, IMHO), but he's all over this calendar. But, you know, print schedules, etc.

What was interesting are the numbers. Some specific numbers. Such as, on the August Header we have our District Profile with a bunch of numbers to show how wonderful our school is compared to the Statewide Average. I'd like to point to the last couple of lines where we talk about millage.

Full Rate Operating Millage (including our JVS): 44.47 Local -- 47.24 State Avg.
Effective Operating Millage Agricultural and Residential (including our JVS): 22.00 Local -- 27.17 State Avg.
Effective Operating Millage Commerical/Industrial (including our JVS): 22.36 Local -- 31.08 State Avg.
(all numbers listed as Fiscal Year 2006 Stats)

Looks nice. August, people are thinking about school, how much they're paying versus what they're getting. Good numbers.

Then on the July Header we have our District Financial Report for the year just ended. Were we have:
Full Rate Operating Millage: Total 50.1
Effective Operating Millage Agricultural and Residential: Total 28.36
Effective Operating Millage Commerical/Industrial: Total 29.11

Assessed Property Valuation
Residential/Agricultural 81.5%
Commercial/Industrial 7.1%

You know, July, when people are thinking about vacation and have probably tossed the calendar by then.

Why, there seems to be some discrepancy on those numbers. I wonder why that could be?

2 comments:

Todd Wheeler said...

What is the millage of, school buses?

Steve Buchheit said...

Millage is the rate of taxation on our property which is directly related to the property valuation. That's how we pay for our schools here in Ohio (well that and some State Tax Monies).

When we (council) gave a business tax abatement, that's what we're talking about. So then the Council makes up the taxes the School "loses." This is now a bone of contention between the school and the Village. Even though early results show we're slightly overpaying. Also, the State of Ohio passed a tax reform bill a couple of years ago that will wipe out all "Personal Property" (read, business equipment) taxes in another 2 years. And our tax abatement agreements have 5 and 8 years to run. Fun, fun, fun.

So basically the school is attempting to say, "we aren't taxing you all that much," when they really are.