Trego's Mountain Ear

Someone recently suggested on facebook that we should close our local elementary school, with the premise that doing so would lower our taxes.

The first question then, is what happens when a school closes? Would we no longer pay school taxes? No. When a school closes, it joins an adjacent district of similar type, and the area is taxed accordingly. In the case of Trego, that would mean the tax bill would be at Fortine’s mill levy rate.

Who’s keeping our school open? Strictly speaking, open is the default state of a public school. If it has no students, it may eventually experience an involuntary merger. Otherwise, merging districts is subject to vote- and not by the school board.

In the case of Trego Elementary, the relevant law is thus: 20-6-423. District consolidation. (1) Any two or more contiguous elementary school districts may consolidate to organize an elementary district

What this means is that Trego could merge with either Fortine Elementary District, or with Olney-Bissell.

Who decides? Voters in both districts. “The proposition is approved in the district if a majority of those voting approve the proposition”

How is this process started? Either (i) the trustees may pass a resolution requesting the county superintendent of the county where the district is located to order an election to consider a consolidation proposition involving their district; or (ii) not less than 20% of the electors of an individual district who are qualified to vote under the provisions of 20-20-301 may petition the county superintendent of the county where the district is located requesting an election to consider a consolidation proposition involving their district.

How would it impact local taxes? Based on the 24/25 school year budgets, (all publicly available from OPI), we can make some inferences. The total mill levies were as follows:

• Fortine: 73.5
• Olney-Bissell: 81.41
• Trego: 48.64

One of the difficulties of school taxes is that it isn’t obvious what a “mill” is, or how it impacts your bill. While the numbers make it pretty obvious that Fortine and Olney-Bissell are taxed more, it isn’t clear how that impacts our bills. “One mill is one dollar per $1,000 dollars of assessed value.”

But wait- it is not so simple: We take the market value of the property, multiply it by the assessment rate (1.35%), to get the taxable valuation of the property. For a $100,000 property, that taxable value is $1,350. We then take that value, multiply it by the mills, and then by .001 to account for the fact that mills are not the same as millage rate.

So, in real numbers: 73.50 mills in Fortine is $99.23, 81.41 mills in Olney-Bissell is $109.90, and 48.64 in Trego is $65.66

It’s probably reasonable to assume that if we merge districts, the mills assessed probably aren’t going to drop down to our level. This does beg the question: Why does Trego tax so much lower? More on that next week, when we compare taxable valuations of the districts and take a closer look at school budgets.