D93 Board of Trustees Lowers Property Taxes for Second Year in a Row

Posted Date: 09/17/2021

The agenda was packed for the September 8th meeting of the Board of Trustees and priority one included welcoming in their newest member. Carissa Coats took the oath of office and about 90 minutes later, she seconded a motion to reject the use of emergency levy funds. As anticipated, the motion received unanimous consent, meaning D93 will not be using funds from the emergency levy. The District is choosing to provide property tax relief instead. A little later in the meeting, the agenda moved to setting the District’s levy rate. This is an important responsibility of the Board. There’s a lot that goes into this. Chairman Dance and Greg Calder of the Board of Trustees made it clear that they wanted to lower the levy rate but keep some money available to protect the district in the event of an economic downturn 

“Financial planners, religious leaders always suggest you have money set aside for a rainy day and our District shouldn’t be any different,” said Chairman Dance. “I just philosophically think that financially conservative people ought to plan for bad times in the future and I consider myself a financially conservative person,” said Greg Calder of the Board of Trustees. “ 

A little later in the meeting, the agenda moved to certifying the amount of dollars collected from our property taxes. This is an important responsibility of the Board. There’s a lot that goes into this. Chairman Dance and Greg Calder of the Board of Trustees made it clear that they wanted to take a more conservative approach by keeping some money available to protect the district in the event of an economic downturn The Board ultimately decided to lower our property taxes while putting money into our bond savings. This compromise will result in a reduction of property taxes while conservatively planning for the future. This is the second year in a row that the District has lowered property taxes. Two years ago, D93 tax payers were contributing $580 per hundred thousand of taxable value, our property taxes are now projected to be in the neighborhood of $416 per hundred thousand of taxable value. 

“I’d just point out that our patrons, for at least the last 30 years that we’ve got data on our levy rate, this will be the lowest levy rate ever paid in the district,” said Superintendent Woolstenhulme. While this growth has been great for lowering our property taxes, Superintendent Woolstenhulme says it hasn’t helped generate more money for classrooms. “One clarifying comment I think is worth mentioning is that as Guy mentioned, our taxable market value in the District went up by just over 9-percent, '' said Superintendent Woolstenhulme. 

“A lot of that is due to new construction in the district. That did not translate into any extra dollars coming into the district. Our. $5.8 million (supplemental levy), stayed at $5.8 million. Our $2.8 million for the plant (facilities levy), stayed at $2.8 million. We have no extra dollars to operate on as a District. No matter how more homes are built, those are capped by the levies that our voters approve. Unfortunately, I think there’s a broad misunderstanding and people see new homes coming in and think that there must be more money coming into the district. It is not, unless our voters approve it. So, what it did do is it lessened all of our tax burden with the motion that our Board just made tonight. We’ll all be paying less because there’s more people living here, there are no extra dollars coming to the District.”

The District did seek voter approval to increase funding to the Supplemental and Plant Facilities Levies in March but that measure failed at the ballot. Voters approved renewals of these levies during an election in May.