Cache County School Board raises property taxes in 4-3 vote
Emotions flared Thursday at the Cache County Board of Education meeting when a proposal to raise property tax was passed by a 4-3 vote by the board. Board member Tamara Grange said the district has “squeezed the turnip” as much as possible, but that they cannot continue to achieve high test scores without funding. “We have cut wherever we can cut,” she said. “We have to prepare these kids for a different world than we grew up in.”
According the board, the district has lost around $10 million dollars in state funding in the past three years, while the student population has increased by more than 1200. There are currently 15,409 students enrolled in the district. That is expected to jump to 20,743 by 2020, a 34 percent increase.
A large piece of the tax increase will go to funding the district’s reading program, which produces some of the highest reading proficiency scores in the state. For the past seven years the program has been receiving funding from federal special education funding. Because of cuts, the special education program could not continue to function while supporting the reading program. This has pushed the district to look for new sources of revenue.
The tax increase will allow the district to buy four news buses. In the past, they have kept buses for 20 years. Unable to find funding in the past three years, that has now been pushed to 23 years. In addition, part of the tax increase will help fund building maintenance which has taken 72 percent cut in the past three years.
Bevan Higbee, a resident of Wellsville and a staunch objector of the proposal, said that instead of an increase in property tax, the district should look more carefully at it’s funding and make deeper cuts. Higbee, who is retired and lives on a fixed income, said that this proposal will hit the budgets of many people in his same situation hard.
“It’s gotten ridiculous,” he said. “By my calculations the tax rate has gone up 7 percent a year for 40 years. As a retired person, my income doesn’t go up and it hasn’t in two years.”
Even with the proposed tax increase, the Cache County School District will remain below or close to the state average in their tax effort. In a 2008-2009 report by the Utah Tax Payers association, the district ranked 19 in their tax effort out of 40 districts in Utah.