SISD approves tax cut for 2022-23 fiscal year

Despite seeing across-the-board cost increases on everything the district needs to run a school, to the tune of about a 14% increase over what those same items cost this year, the board of directors voted Monday night to lower taxes for district taxpayers in the coming year.

After holding a brief public hearing to finalize their 2022-23 budget, the board then voted unanimously to adopt a tax rate of about 92½-cents per $100 valuation, which should raise equivalent of about $11,325 per student in local revenues, up from roughly $10,507 per student in 2021-22.

That breaks down to about 85½-cents per $100 valuation for the school’s Maintenance & Operations (M&O) account and slightly more than 7-cents per $100 valuation for its Interest & Sinking (I&S) account. 

The M&O account covers all costs associated with running a school. It includes items like salaries and benefits for faculty and staff, buying schoolbooks and supplies, service and maintenance of the district’s bus fleet, and basic utilities like keeping the lights on, the water running, and the dumpsters from overflowing.

The I&S account, by contrast, works to service any long-term debt obligations a school district may have. In this case covers the loans secured to construct the school buildings themselves, which the board refinanced in 2020 at far lower interest rates to save taxpayers money over the life of those loans. 

Those I&S figures are typically comparable, year-to-year, barring any new purchases. They involve a far smaller percentage overall, and they only need to raise enough to cover a flat payment amount annually. 

The side that sees the greatest fluctuation is on M&O side. Last year’s M&O rate was 96.34-cents per $100, with 7.13-cents per $100 going to I&S, making the overall SISD tax rate of $1.0347 per $100.

Property valuations within the district, however, saw enormous spikes during the current fiscal year, leaping more than $236 million, from about $782 million in appraised property values districtwide in 2021 to more than $1 billion in appraised values in 2022.

Yet according to figures produced by county tax assessor/collector Debra Sevcik, who annually calculates tax rate numbers for all the governmental entities in Lavaca County, the no new revenue tax rate—or the rate needed to generate the same revenues as the year before—would have amounted to 89½-cents per $100 on that always fluctuating M&O side of that equation.

Shiner school board members opted to tighten those numbers even more, pulling the rate back another 4-cents per $100 with Monday’s vote. 

That should lower the overall taxes due on the average residence from about $1,400 in taxes due to about $1,289 per residence, which should save the average taxpayer almost $111 at tax time.

As district superintendent Alex Remschel pointed out during the board’s Aug. 15 meeting, when that lowered M&O rate was first proposed, the Shiner school board has lowered the school’s tax rate by more than 18-cents over the last five years.