Voters set to weigh in on school taxes

MOSES LAKE — With its growing student population — over 8,000 and rising — the Moses Lake School District needs a new elementary school every five years, according to Michelle Price, superintendent of the Moses Lake School District.

This in addition to the high school the district hopes to build if voters approve a 20-year, $135 million construction bond next week.

“We’re one behind, since the 2012 bond failed,” Price explained. “We are a community of very young families, our per-household number is higher than the rest of the state, and good for us.”

The proposed bond levy will add roughly $1.46 per $1,000 of assessed value to the annual tax bill of every property owner in the Moses Lake School District, and at current rates, should bring in a little more than $5 million a year to service the bond issue over 20 years.

For a house and plot valued at $125,000 in the city of Moses Lake, the bond levy will add around $183 to the owner’s tax bill.

“We recognize those costs are more than in 2015. Construction costs have gone up, but interest rates are low,” Price said.

The formula for calculating property taxes in Washington is complex, given that the state doesn’t have an income tax, according to a guide to state property taxes published by the Washington Department of Revenue. Counties, cities, special taxing districts (such as roads, ports, fire, libraries, and so forth), and the state itself are limited by law to a total combined tax take of 1 percent — or $10 of every $1,000 of assessed value.

While this limit includes the state’s school levy, currently set at $2.31 per $1,000 in Grant County, it does not include local school districts because voters approve those additional taxes directly in elections. There is currently no limit in the state of Washington on property taxes levied in voter-approved referenda.

According to levy rates for 2017 from the Grant County Assessor’s office, property owners in the Moses Lake School District are currently set to pay $4.54 per $1,000 of assessed value to cover the district’s current maintenance and operations levy (enacted in 2016) and 56 cents per $1,000.

Actual levies can vary slightly from year to year, and are adjusted by the assessor’s office based on budget needs and the total value of assessed property in a given tax district. The assessor’s office valued taxed property in the Moses Lake School District at roughly $3.9 billion in 2016.

The school’s maintenance and operation levy is expected to yield the district about $17.6 million in 2017, around 18 percent of its total funding. According to Price, the state provides the bulk of the district’s budget needs, around 75 percent.

Regardless of what happens when the ballots are counted on Feb. 14, voters in the Moses Lake School District will have to vote again next year to approve a new, three-year maintenance and operations levy to supplement state funds. And a future bond initiative at some point to build yet another elementary school.

Price said residents are going to have to accept the costs of those new schools. Because the kids aren’t going anywhere.

“The kids are here, and we have no other options but to find or build facilities,” she said.