School board passes bond mill rate

The Board of Education (BOE) won’t raise taxes to cover its maintenance and operation budget — keeping that millage rate at 16.99 — but will levy a tax to service a bond debt for Danielsville Elementary School.

The raise is .826 of a mill, which will cost taxpayers around $570,000 collectively.

“I would like to thank everybody for coming out tonight,” board member Greg Wilkes said. “It’s not a vote that we take, obviously, without a lot of responsibility and a lot of thought. I think if we don’t do this now, we’ll be sitting here next year with a bigger increase.”

Citizens offered their input during the third and final Taxpayer Bill of Rights hearings, which are mandatory when a tax increase is proposed.

Those who attended the meeting talked of tough economic times and the timing of this tax.

“This could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for a lot of us,” said Bill Holloway, of Colbert, who was one of five people in the audience.

School leaders sympathized with those concerns but said they’re only following a referendum passed by the county taxpayers in 1992 to use tax money to cover annual bond payments on Danielsville Elementary School.

Payments are due every year and the school system has four years left before that debt is retired.

The BOE has been able to use special purpose local option sales tax (SPLOST) funds in some years to make that payment, including last year.

But those SPLOST funds ended July 1, so the school board has reinstated the bond millage.

Most of those who attended Monday’s meeting lobbied for the school board to cover the bond debt with reserves rather than using tax money.

The school system holds a fund balance of around $5.36 million this year — about $2.39 million more than anticipated.

Holloway — who noted that school taxes have risen every year since 1998 — said that’s more than enough to cover the $570,000 bond payment.

“I think that would be a tremendous help to the taxpayers, and you’d still have plenty of cushion,” he said.

Madison County Schools superintendent Dr. Mitch McGhee said those reserves are essential to maintain.

According to McGhee, the school system was cited by the state in 2000-2001 for not keeping sufficient reserves when the school system went broke that year.

“Even with the reserves today, we are behind what the state recommends,” McGhee said.

McGhee said that the state asks a school system to hold at least 20 days worth of reserves. McGhee says Madison County schools have reserves for 19 days of operating expenses.

That problem is compounded, he said, by the county digest being released late, which delays tax notices being mailed.

“We don’t collect taxes,” McGhee said. “So we either have to have a reserve to operate on or we have to borrow money and then we pay interest for that.”

McGhee added that schools will need all the reserve they can muster to weather state funding cuts this year and next year, which could reach 10 percent.

“There’s no way our reserves are going to keep up with that,” he said. “We need every dime of that we can to try to hold taxes where we can hold them.”

INCREASES OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS

Holloway, who spoke most often during the meeting, said that school taxes have increased about 250 percent since 1998, while he says student enrollment has risen by just seven percent during that period.

“It just seems like that over the years, the taxes, especially for the board of education, has just grown so tremendously,” Holloway said.

He said Madison County Schools’ expenses for salaries should be similar to that of same-size school systems, rather than the average of the RESA (a coalition of 13 area school systems). Holloway contended that Madison County doesn’t have the tax bases of larger counties like Clarke, Walton and Barrow, whose school systems are in the RESA.

“If you’re trying to do the average on this, to get the teachers and administration up to the average for the RESA, then you can’t go by that,” Holloway said. “You have to look at something that’s comparable to Madison County.”

But McGhee said that the school system does fall in the middle of the RESA, noting that school systems like Oglethorpe County, Jefferson, Commerce and Social Circle are much smaller.

“We’re right in the middle of all that as far as population and tax base and all that … and those (the school systems in the middle of the RESA) are the people that we compete against as far as teachers,” McGhee said.

Holloway also noted an increase of 86 employees in the last three years.

McGhee said the system has grown and also had to add personnel over the years to fulfill No Child Left Behind requirements.

He said Madison County is still behind the RESA average in many programs, like high school advanced placement (AP) classes to paraprofessionals.