School Board Candidates Plan to Cut Taxes

The Ankeny school district tax rate will be lowered, said the seven school board candidates attending Sunday's forum.

The topic was one of several discussed at a candidate forum hosted by the Ankeny Parents Association and the Elementary Parent Teacher Organizations.

Each day this week, Ankeny Patch will publish a question asked of candidates, as well as excerpts from their responses.

Incumbents Aaron Johnson, Andrew Martin, Trent Murphy and Leslie Petersen faced off against challengers Dustin Graber, Brad Huss and Mike Rooney. A fourth challenger, Stephanie Jorgenson, was unable to attend the forum.

Ankeny school leaders have been criticized by some district residents and board challengers over the costs tied to building two new high schools, the first of which opened for use this month. District leaders have pledged to lower its property tax rate, one of the highest in the metro area.,

The district's tax levy was $22.35 per $1,000 of assessed value for the fiscal year that ended June 30. The rate for the currect fiscal year decreased to $21.07.

Q: The school tax rate has been a hot topic in the last few years. If elected to the school board, would you be committed to keeping the tax rate at the 2011 level (which was increased by $2.51 per $1,000 of assessed valuation), reducing it or increasing it. How would you keep that promise?

Martin: I want to decrease it, and we’ve already started doing that. Recently, we dropped the tax rate about $1.27 and we need to drop it another $1.24 and that will erase the temporary tax increase that had to be brought forth. There’s nothing that’s going to stop me from delivering on this promise. If you take the 20 largest districts in the state and data from the Department of Education and rank our expenditures compared to other schools, we are the second most efficient school district. We have to be careful when people tell us to spend wisely — spend wisely means spend differently. What are we not going to have? I think the challengers need to answer that.

Graber: I want to revisit where taxes have been. The incumbents are saying they want to lower taxes, but I also think talk is cheap. Let’s look at what they voted to do. The last four or five years, they have voted to increase your taxes. The increase in the general levy rate was 35 percent. At the same time, property valuations went up about 28 percent. That equates to 76 percent more taxes. I would ask them to not just say something, but to actually do it. I would love to see it go down and I can guarantee that I will look everywhere to find money to reduce that tax rate and spend wisely with the money we do have now.

Murphy: I do have a voting record and I have been on the board for 10 years. For five or six of those years, I voted to lower the tax rate. However, when you’re in a position where you need to maintain your solvency and get cash balances back due to things out of your control, those things need to be addressed. I think that when you look at the tax rate, we’ve done what we said and we’ve said what we will do. We have a track record — the tax rate will go down. But if all we’re concerned with is the tax rate, and we forget about why we’re here, we’re in trouble.

Petersen: I will lower the tax rates. How are we going to do that? When (Superintendent Matthew) Wendt came to us, finance was a huge concern. He brought us the finest person to head up our finances. Craig Hansel, our chief financial officer, is the most fiscally responsible, conservative person I know. He does a great job planning for the future. That’s something past boards did not do so well. Advocacy at the state and national level is also key to lowering taxes.

Huss: The first thing we need to do to make taxes go down is make better decisions. When plans went out to bid for Ankeny Centennial, they came in millions of dollars lower. The board had a choice for what to do with (the leftover money). They could have used that to fill the school with furniture and other items. If they had done that, money in the general fund could have been used to pay salaries of additional teachers needed to reduce class size.

Johnson: I am committed to it going down. There has been very careful planning. The bonds for finishing Southview Middle School have been a part of the equation since before I was on the board. We spend under our budget and continue to do so year after year. This is very achievable because we have carefully planned for our future. We can reduce the tax rate because this has been part of the plan and that is how school financing works.

Rooney: If we have a district with lower expenditures, I think that means we have too many kids in one class. It’s easy to get the number lower if you have more kids in a class. I think we really need to take a look at future expenditures. I think going forward with the status quo (and what was approved in the past) without revisiting it is not going to allow us to lower taxes.

Here are the topics Ankeny Patch will highlight this week:

• Monday —  
• Tuesday — School district taxes
• Wednesday — The district facilities plan
• Thursday — The district's current curriculum
• Friday — Student achievement
• Saturday — District communication skills
  
• Sunday — What makes the candidates unique and why you should vote for them