Greenfield to hold Truth in Taxation hearing
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By Carmen Ensinger
The Greenfield School District Board of Education reviewed their Tax Levy proposal at the Nov. school board meeting.
This single page document lists the amounts requested to be levied for the next year and is due to be turned into the County Clerk’s office on or before the last Tuesday in December.
Any district proposing to increase its aggregate levy more than 105 percent of its prior year’s extension, exclusive of election costs, must publish a notice, as prescribed by law, in the local newspaper.
This notice is often called the “Black Box” because of its bold print, border and requirements for completion and publication in the newspaper. The title of this “black box” states the following:
“Notice of proposed property tax increase for Greenfield Community Unit School District #10”.
Greenfield Assistant Superintendent Andy Stumpf said the title contained inside the “Black Box” is misleading.
“This title makes it look as if we are increasing property taxes for next year’s tax levy, but that is not necessarily the case,” Stumpf said. “Because we fall under PTELL (Property Tax Extension Limitation Law), our future levy is dependent upon last year’s tax extension multiplied by the current annual Consumer Price Index (CPI) number derived from the federal government or 5 percent, whichever is less. This year the CPI is 6.5 percent, so we will be using 5 percent for our calculations.”
Because PTELL requires that tax-capped districts cannot capture all of their current Equalized Assessed Valuations (EAV) on property, they have to calculate a “limiting rate.”
“This limiting rate, when calculated, will indicate how much property tax money is available to our district,” Stumpf said. “In addition to being limited on existing property, we have the ability to capture the entire extension amount on new property.”
But to do that, they have to increase the levy, even though, due to PTELL, they can collect no more than five percent on anything other than new property.
“In order for us to capture any new property, we must “balloon levy” in excess of 5 percent,” Stumpf said. “Therefore, we are going to levy 7.1 percent to ensure we capture all tax monies we are legally entitled to.”
Districts are only able to capture tax monies on new property in the year it enters the tax rolls.
“If we do not capture new property at the time it first becomes available, we will never be able to capture it again,” Stumpf said. “The ‘black box’ will state ‘the proposed corporate and special purpose property taxes to be levied for 2023 are $3,428,366. This represents a 7.1 percent increase over the previous year.’”
Stumpf pointed out that even though the district’s levy will increase, it is estimated that their tax rate will actually go down slightly over last year’s rate.
