How to keep taxes down, and still pay teachers more

The Manatee County School Board has suggested a new 1.0 mill tax to give our teachers a raise. That would help us retain our best teachers and recruit highly qualified new teachers, thus improving the overall quality of our educational process.

When I heard that, I thought, “no way”, we have just approved a new half-cent tax for the county, extended the half-cent school sales tax for 15 years, and the developers are still getting a discount on impact fees.

The school district is already collecting three taxes from property owners (and indirectly from renters). Those taxes are the state-controlled “Required Local Effort” (4.672 mills) and “Current Operating Discretionary” (0.748 mills) and the school board-controlled “Local Capital Improvement” (1.500 mills) for a total school tax of 6.920 mills. The school board suggests a fourth “Additional Millage” tax (1.000 mill), which would increase the total millage to 7.920, thus providing the funding for a teacher pay increase, and cost homeowners an average of about $200 each.

But there is a better option, which would reduce the “Local Capital Improvement” tax from 1.500 mills to 0.500 mills. That means the total of all four school taxes would remain at 6.920; therefore, no school tax rate increase.

The decrease on the capital improvement tax would be offset by increased revenue from the sales tax (higher sales), increased property assessments, and increase in impact fees to 100 percent (no more subsidizing). These changes could take effect next year if a “special referendum election” is held in March 2018 in conjunction with a Longboat Key special election and would cost about $250,000, or 77 cents per person in Manatee County, and would result in at least $33 million that could be used to improve teacher compensation — and probably a lot more.

This story was originally published July 7, 2017 at 4:04 PM with the headline "How to keep taxes down, and still pay teachers more."