No Tax Increase Request this Fall, North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale School Board Decides

It’s not that School District 622 couldn’t use the money, School Board members said, but the economic and political climates aren't right to push for a tax increase.

The board voted to ask district taxpayers this fall to continue funding a $10 million operating levy for 10 more years, but not to increase the requested amount of money, even to compensate for inflation, at its meeting Tuesday night.

“As zealous as I want to be for giving education its all,” said board member Theresa Auge’, “I don’t have the confidence that our voter turnout is going to be there to support an increase, and that really saddens me.”

The board considered putting two questions on the ballots, allowing voters to choose whether to just renew the levy, or to renew and increase it, however board members said just asking taxpayers for more money might sour them on even voting to renew.

Constituents told board member Pam Cunningham that, “even if we gave people a choice, they actually felt that that might offend people—that this is such a rough time, to even ask the second question was a little presumptuous.” 

Board member Mark Wheeler agreed saying it would be a “tremendous risk” to jeopardize the current levy amount—which constitutes about 10 percent of the district’s general fund budget—in the hopes of getting more money.

A district telephone survey showed that when a tax increase was proposed.

After cutting $21 million from its budget over the past six years, there’s no question that the district could use extra money, Superintendent Patty Phillips told the board.

“You understand that we have not had enough money to run this place,” Phillips said. “You’ve felt it with every board meeting.”

Earlier this year, the board had to decide how to cut $4 million from its 2011-2012 budget due to a $6.9 million projected shortfall, she said.

Still, she said, the district’s top administrators recommended only asking voters to renew the current levy with no tax increase.

“We find ourselves in a very tax-increase-adverse environment,” she said.

If the renewal vote were to fail, it could be put on the ballot one more time—in 2012—before the district could no longer collect the levy amount.