BURKEonBOARD

(Nov. 14, 2008) – This a correction of sorts.

My message earlier today used the metaphor of a country club to describe how the school board was getting ready to behave in the filling of a the pending school board vacancy.

Rereading that message, I see that in more than one place I substituted “County” for “Country.”

Such is life without an editor.

However, the slip of the keyboard might have had a subconscious subtext to it.

If you’re like me, you got your preliminary tax levy statement from the County this week. An insert was included noting that Dakota County had the lowest county property tax rate in the state.

Then my eyes fell to the school district tax section of the statement and I saw how much my school district taxes were to go up despite the drop in my property value. I was dismayed. I don’t recall having been asked if I wanted my taxes to go up, yet there is was, in black and white and blue.

On my bill, the proposed 2009 school taxes would go up 3.4% even as my property value fell 3.6%. And, of course, we know we didn’t have the lowest school taxes in the state, or even in the county. In fact, this year, we had the highest school taxes around. You should know that my proposed county taxes actually went down 1.4% and my proposed city taxes went down 3.1%.

So maybe I had County on the brain as I was trying write Country.

Oh, by the way, that statement is just the proposed property tax bill for next year. There is a chance it could go down, but you would need to convince the school board to do that.

You’ll have an opportunity to do that at the Truth in Taxation Hearing (that the state requires by law) scheduled for December 2, at 6 p.m. in the Farmington High School Little Theater.  Then the board will meet on December 8, 2008 and most likely set the final school tax rate for 2009. If you want to have a say about your school taxes, you should plan to attend both meetings and bring some friends.