Archive: News

The Lansing School District set the tax rate at $20.72 per $1,000 of assessed value.  School District Business Administrator Kathryn Heath told the Board of Education Monday that the tax rate has turned out to be lower than anticipated at the time of the budget vote last May.  Heath said the tax levy went up by 5.75%, but the tax rate went up by only 0.975%, or 20 cents per $1,000.

"Our projected tax levy was $18, 343,000 with assessed values of $857 million, which made or tax rate about $21.03 per $1,000 (of assessed value) when we were talking about this in May," said School District Business Administrator Kathryn Heath.  "Our assessed values came in at $18.78 million more than what we anticipated, and our tax levy actually went down.  A couple of things played into that.  We allocated $115,000 more to help bring that down. Also, the PILOTs went up a little bit.  That brought our tax levy down.  At the end of the day our tax rate is $20.72 per $1,000."

Projections at the time of the budget vote were higher.  At that time school officials projected a levy of $18,343,440. The final figure turned out to be $18,149,126. Assessed values were thought to be $857,305,034 in May, but when it came time to mail tax bills it had risen to $876,094,004. The final tax rate is $20.72/$1,000, down from the $21.39/$1,000 projected in May.  heath estimated that school taxes for a $50,000 home would be $1,036, only ten dollars more than last year.  For a $200,000 home an additional $40 on this year's bill would mean a total of $4,144.

"I know they reevaluated all the lake properties in Lansing," Heath said.  "That played into it.  Jay said he thought the number he gave us back in April or May was a little low.  It ended up coming in almost $20 million higher than anticipated."

Superintendent Chris Pettograsso noted that districts are not bound to publicly project any more than the budget at vote time, because that is what the public actually votes on.  But she noted that Lansing does disclose its estimates at that time in the spirit of transparency.

"When we were going out for a budget vote we were looking at a 3% increase.  Now it's less than 1%.  Part of that is we're one of the few that even talk about projected tax rates in our community.  Most people just talk about the levy.  Our PILOTs are so much part of our projected tax rate that we can be a little more accurate than some of the bigger communities."

These figures do not include the library tax, which will add $0.195615 per $1,000 to your tax bill.

v13i34