BURKEonBOARD

(Sept. 21, 2008) – You should probably consider going to the Farmington School Board meeting tomorrow (Monday, Sept. 22) night. There’s a good chance the board will vote to increase your property taxes then.

Here’s why.

Monday night is the board’s deadline to vote on next year’s property tax levy that must then be reported to the county auditor. The board is scheduled to take up a possible bond sale to finance future district retiree health insurance benefits. (It’s all explained here.)

The important thing to know is that the bond sale and resulting tax increase is completely unneeded to meet the district’s obligations.

Up until now, the district has funded it obligation to pay the premiums for retiree health insurance on a pay-as-you-go basis from its general fund. It could continue to do that, if they wanted to.

What’s changed is that now, the state requires all school districts to estimate future retiree health insurance costs and report that number. For the Farmington school district, that number is almost $12 million. That’s not a bill they owe now, just an educated guess about the cost of those premiums over the next couple of decades.

What a bond sale would do is raise up to $12 million now to put in a trust fund to pay future retiree health insurance premiums instead of paying those premiums as we do now on a pay-as-you-go basis from the district’s general fund.

Why would they do that? The district’s bond counsel advisor (the people who make money when we sell bonds) says having that money socked away ahead of time, might keep our bond rating higher for future bonds sales, or it might not. So, their logic is to sell bonds now to maybe save money on bonds later.

What we end up with is a new tax to pay for the bonds payments and the district gets an extra $300,000 or more each year to spend on whatever they want instead of the insurance premiums that that money has been going to.

Higher taxes for us.

More money for the school district bureaucrats to play with.

I think that’s the wrong way to go and I’ll be at the school board meeting tomorrow night to say no.

I hope you will be, too. More and louder voices make a difference.

If you can’t make it to the meeting, at least send an email message to all the board members telling them what you think.

Here are their email addresses:

Julie McKnight, chair – jmcknight@farmington.k12.mn.us
Tim Weyandt – tweyandt@farmington.k12.mn.us
John Kampf – jkampf@farmington.k12.mn.us
Terry Donnelly – tdonnelly@farmington.k12.mn.us
Bob Heman – bheman@farmington.k12.mn.us
Ann Manthey – amanthey@farmington.k12.mn.us