Fulton Board of Education approves tax rate recommendations

The Fulton Board of Education held a special session Wednesday evening for a public hearing on the proposed tax rates for the Fulton Public School District for fiscal year 2016 and tax year 2015.

Fulton Public Schools (FPS) Superintendent Jacque Cowherd lead the hearing by providing board members with an overview of the data used to calculate the operating levy, the debt service levy and the ad valorem levy.

At the start of the presentation on operating levy data, Cowherd

said the maximum tax rate the school district has had is $3.75, and as long as rate remains below that number, the district can adjust the rate based on state auditor's calculations. He added that the calculations are based off the 2014 tax ceiling rate of $3.49, but the actual rate last year was $3.48. Cowherd pointed out that rate was calculated to reflect adjustments from the state auditor's office.

"I think it's important to note that in the 2015 access valuation, there's about $17.3 million worth of tax increment financing in there," Cowherd told board members. "That number is dropping

just a little bit, but it has no relationship to this calculation other than the fact that it's in that whole process."

He added that the allowable Consumer Price Index increase was 0.80 percent this year, and the district assessed valuation increase this year was 0.89 percent.

"The scary part about our assessed valuation increase (is that) most of it is in personal property," he said. "Our state and state assessed utilities - basically it's the Socket Internet coming in - and that's scary because those fluctuate so wildly where you

know cars are going to decrease in value but typically you know your property's going to be pretty stable, and in theory you can recoup that."

He added that the district is required to include new revenue due to construction - about $593,000 - and the calculated revenue for that figure was $18,675. After reassessment, the new revenue was determined to be $24,358. Cowherd said based on calculations, the 2015 recommended operating levy is $3.47 per $100 assessed valuation, which reflects a 1.69-cent operating decrease from the previous year.

Cowherd then began informing the board about the data used to calculate the debt service levy. He reminded the board that the district has tried to keep the debt service levy close to 74 cents.

"If you recall a couple years ago when they gave us a real low access valuation, we raised our levy and then the access valuation came in much higher," he told the board. "We collected more money that year, so that's kinda had to carry us through but that's the money we use to prepay bonds."

He added the district is "pretty even" on its bond payments.

"People can look at it two ways,"

Cowherd said. "Taxpayers could say you taxed too much, and we did, based on the numbers that we had. But the other side is we prepaid a bunch of bonds and saved some interest."

After reviewing the data, Cowherd said the 2015 recommended debt service levy is 72.97 cents per $100 assessed valuation, which reflects a 1.15-cent debt service decrease from the previous year.

Cowherd said the total recommended ad valorem levy for the 2015-2016 year is suggested to be $4.20 per $100 assessed valuation - a 2.84-cent decrease from the previous year.