By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph school board members voted unanimously Monday to increase the school tax levy by nine cents.
School Superintendent Doug Van Zyl says state law allows the school board to make minor adjustments to the school property tax levy without taking it to the voters.
“With what took place with minimal growth for us last year, it allowed the board if they chose to, to do a 9-cent increase on their local levy,” Van Zyl tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline.
Van Zyl says the school district has taken several financial hits over the past year.
“Withholdings from the state of over $2 million with the unexpected costs of Central High School taking place, we just feel like it’s in the best interest of the school district and the community for us to be able to recommend to the board, which they took the recommendation and voted on last night, to increase that levy by nine cents,” Van Zyl says.
Flooding heavily damaged the Freshman Annex of Central High School, knocking out 30 of the building’s 80 classrooms, forcing the district to switch additional students to online learning for the beginning of the school year which begins next week. Van Zyl says the district has 82 workers working around the clock to repair the damage at Central.
The levy increase is projected to bring in around one million dollars in extra revenue for the district.
Van Zyl says the nine-cent increase isn’t the only adjustment being made to the school district levy.
“And to make matters even more complex, we have the Proposition C rollbacks,” Van Zyl says. “So, even though you see a total levy, we still roll back about 52 cents from what our max levy is, because we’re one of I think three districts in the state that still has that.”
Last year, on the heels of voter approval of the 61-cent increase in the levy, the school board passed on taking advantage of a possible three-cent increase to the levy.