Local & State Headlines

Lee millage rate increased

• A tax increase adopted Monday will cost Lee County homeowners about $4 a month, a school board member says.

Susan McCord

LEESBURG — The Lee County Board of Education voted to raise approximately $500,000 in new revenue for the coming fiscal year by increasing property taxes to 15.4 mills during a called meeting Monday.

The increase, made in a motion by board member Frank Griffin, is an increase in the system’s maintenance and operations mill rate from 13.75 to 15 mills, combined with a decrease in the mill rate for bond indebtedness from 1 mill to .4 mills, for a total school tax rate of 15.4 mills.

The mill rate is the amount of taxes paid per $1,000 of a property’s taxable value, typically 40 percent of the value.

The increase will cost the average homeowner about $4 extra each month, while it will allow the system avoid a penalty imposed on school systems that tax at less than 15 mills, and complete needed capital projects, Griffin said.

“Taking our maintenance and operations (rate) to 15 mills gives us the ability to maximize our equalization dollars, and it will allow us to complete the projects we have going now — specifically, our ninth grade academy,” he said.

Board Vice Chairman Robert Clay, a former Lee superintendent of schools, praised the system’s fiscal year budget, but was critical of the tax increase, casting the lone vote against the tax hike.

Increases in the county tax digest, which is its total taxable value, and careful tailoring by school officials had put Lee within $186,000 of balancing its $45 million budget for the coming fiscal year without cutting personnel or school days, Clay said.

“It may be the wrong message to give our school system to say that ... we can’t do a little bit here and avoid a tax increase,” Clay said. “Our taxpayers are going to have to do some belt-tightening. It isn’t too much to ask our school system to do some belt-tightening.”

Clay compared the system to a smart grocery shopper who, 41 cents short of her $100 budget, buys store-brand cereal and leaves the store within budget.

“There are probably some other Cheerios you’ll find if you look hard,” Clay said of areas the system might save during the new fiscal year, which starts today.

Board member Louis Hatcher said it was “a very rare thing indeed” to disagree with Clay, but that he’d determined the increase was necessary, largely to fund new technology.

“I would not feel so good about it if our system had been buying a box of Cheerios every time that we went to the store,” Hatcher said. “We are consistently outspent by other systems that we outperform.”

Lee Superintendent of Schools Larry Walters said the increase was needed to fund improvements in five areas at the Ninth Grade Campus opening in the former Twin Oaks school — food preparation, gym facilities, a central office area, windows and awnings.

The system needs to raise property taxes to pay for capital improvements because its available special-purpose, local-option sales tax funds, which typically are used for capital projects, are already committed to construction of the new Twin Oaks Elementary School, Walters said after the meeting.

Lee County Commissioner Dennis Roland, one of only two visitors at the called meeting Monday, said some of the county’s property owners will be critical of the increase, even though it goes to fund the school system.

“People that complain about a tax increase will complain if it’s a school increase or any other increase,” Roland said.

The Lee Board of Commissioners recently voted to keep the county government’s tax millage rate at 12.76 mills.

“The Board of Commissioners worked so hard not to raise taxes, and the School Board goes and raises taxes,” Roland said.

The School Board has scheduled required public hearings at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. July 10 and 4 p.m. July 21 on the tax increase.

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