Tax break under new school scheme

MOSES LAKE — Olympia’s new funding formula for the state’s schools should lower property taxes for most home and landowners in Grant County over the next few years, according to Rep. Matt Manweller, R-Ellensburg.

“Over the next three to four years, property taxes in Moses Lake should go down $240-$260 for a median home,” Manweller told the Columbia Basin Herald Monday morning.

The legislature approved the new funding mechanism, which sets the state levy at $2.70 per $1,000 in assessed value but caps the local levy at $1.50 per assessed value by 2019. The funding scheme is designed to satisfy the State Supreme Court in the McCleary ruling, which found that the state had failed in its constitutional duty to provide equal funding for the state’s school children.

Currently, in Grant County, the state school levy (set in 2016 for the current year) is $2.31 per $1,000 of assessed value. Each district, however, has a different maintenance and operation levy. In Moses Lake, that levy is $4.54 per $1,000; in Quincy, that rate is $2.40.

The lowest local levy in Grant County is for the Royal School District, which pays $1.99 per $1,000, while Ephrata has the highest school levy at $4.78 per $1,000.

Manweller said the additional funding will come from increased taxes on urban property in counties in and around Seattle, where local levies were significantly less than $1.50. Those counties could reap a significant amount of money on very low levies because of their very high property values, Manweller said, but the sense of the legislature was that the wealthier parts of the state should pay more.

“Seattle asked for a more progressive tax system, and they got it,” he said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com