$36 million in double counting UPDATED 3X

Last night, Bill Matthews hit one out of the ball park. He has identified $36 million in double counting in the budget. The following combines Bill's comments in the beginning of the meeting and at the end of the meeting. Bill identified specific Board of Viewers cases which are duplicates. PLEASE take the time to listen to his comments.




Update April 16, 2014 2:51 PM The following update is from Bill Matthews:

The “double counting” relates to the properties in our community that are currently under appeal with the County. Recently, Dr. Steinhauer reported to the board and our community that these properties totaled about $214 million. The district assumes this collective valuation may be reduced by 20% by the time each of these cases reaches final adjudication. Appropriately, the district makes an allowance for successful appeals in preparing its annual budget.

Upon request, the district provided reports detailing the $214 million – by property. In the first 2 minutes of my review, I concluded there were cases counted twice by the district, and additionally, there were several individual properties with two cases pending, effectively resulting in double counting (counting the property valuation twice, once for each pending appeal).

My deduction is that at the point in time of the district’s calculation, the collective value of properties under appeal was $178 million; $36 million less what Dr. Steinhauer reported.

Because an allowance is only made for the value of successful appeals (20%) not the entire $36 million, about $7.3 million in additional property valuation may be included in our community tax base for budget purposes. This $7.3 million represents about $164 thousand in ultimate tax revenue not currently included in the district’s proposed budget.

In other words, adding back the $164 thousand in anticipated revenue would reduce the millage increase required to balance the budget from the proposed .54 mills to .48 mills; a reduction of more than 10%.

Update April 17, 2014 9:34 AM Elaine Cappucci asks Jan Klein about the budget and double counting prior to the Proposed Budget vote on April 15, 2014.




Update April 17, 2014 10:57 AM The entire April 15, 2014 School Board Meeting podcast is available on my website, Lebo Citizens.