Dec 21, 2017 5 min read

When the Washington County commissioners advertised the adoption of the 2018 budget for their Thursday meeting, they might have expected residents to quiz them about their allocations, taxation, or both.

What they might not have anticipated is yet another round of questions about the Trinity Area School District budget.

George Dawes of North Franklin Township said outside the meeting room, “I’m not complaining that my taxes are too high or too low. If Trinity didn’t do what everyone else did, I have a problem with them. If they violated anti-windfall provisions, they should be reprimanded.”

The commissioners have no taxing power related to school districts, for which elected school directors are responsible.

“As you know, we have no control over what the school district does,” Commissioner Harlan Shober told Dawes.

But the commissioners have received both phone calls and emails from Trinity residents about increases in their school tax bills in the wake of the countywide reassessment that took effect this year.

McGuffey and Washington school districts went to court in 2008 demanding the first property reassessment in decades. The commissioners litigated the matter until they ran out of options, hiring Tyler Technologies Inc. in 2013 at what turned out to be a cost of more than $7 million.

The commissioners wrote to the state Department of Education in mid-September about the revenue Trinity has raised this year, saying it is out of line with 13 other school districts in the county. But the commissioners have yet to hear back from the department.

Dr. David Volkman, executive deputy secretary at the department, was in Washington County to highlight computer code-writing in the Canon-McMillan School District last week, and Shober, a former Chartiers-Houston School Board member, said the deputy promised him a response on the Trinity issue, but that he had not received a reply as of Thursday morning.

Comparing the revenue raised by Trinity under the previous assessment with a projection of this year’s revenue, and using the Act 1 increase factor of 2.9 percent, the county calculated Trinity should have been limited to an increase in revenue of $797,686, while its actual increase in revenue is more than $6 million, or $5.2 million more than would be permitted under Act 1 without a waiver.

Dr. Michael Lucas, Trinity superintendent, happened to be attending Thursday’s meeting to thank the commissioners and Local Share Account committee for recommending the district receive $85,000 for its solar- and wind-powered farming endeavor to aid food bank recipients.

Outside the meeting, Lucas said, “There’s not allowed to be a windfall, that’s the law. Pennsylvania Department of Education approves our budget every year. We worked with (attorney) Ira Weiss’ office in the City of Pittsburgh. They guided us through the entire process. There are many different calculations to figure out a budget, and we believe we’ve done ours accurately and correctly, and that’s been confirmed by the state.”

The district requested “exceptions” for the costs of special education and the Public School Employees Retirement System.

Assistant Superintendent Donald Snoke, who also attended the meeting, said his home was built in 1952, “so we took it on the chin.” He said his property taxes doubled.

“Basically we were getting taxed less than we should have been all along without the reassessment compared with somebody who built a house in 1990,” Snoke said.

Lucas referred additional comment to Matthew Howard, Trinity’s director of fiscal services.

Howard, in a phone interview, said of the figures the county forwarded to the Department of Education, “I do not want to speak to the county’s calculations because I did not make those calculations.”

He noted, however, that the value the county placed on Washington Crown Center mall in North Franklin was $102 million, a figure that was reduced to $19.8 million through appeal after the school district had finalized its budget process.

Also in the district is the Tanger Outlets shopping complex in South Strabane Township, which was built with tax-increment financing.

Howard said the TIF was assessed by the county at the full amount, but Tanger is exempt from paying on the full amount.

According to Howard’s figures, properties at Tanger are assessed at $61,532,000 for the shopping complex; $298,000 for an adjacent parcel; and $16,895,000 for the Courtyard Marriott hotel.

“I will not be able to explain the formula to you,” Howard said. Although the complex is taxed on the full amount, he just issued a refund check for $1,049,000 to the Washington County Redevelopment Authority for the three properties.

“Redevelopment is going to give me some money back. I just don’t know how much that is at this point in time,” Howard said.

Howard said Trinity qualified for the Department of Education’s “exception,” not waiver, for $150,000 worth of special education and retirement expenses.

He estimated he’s fielded fewer than 20 phone calls from taxpayers who are unhappy with their property reassessments.

“I am always happy to talk to my residents about what we did here in our district,” Howard said. “If they want to call me, they’re more than welcome to.”

Fewer than 10 residents have appeared at school board meetings since tax bills were mailed over the summer.

Trinity residents who want answers about taxation and assessment issues are not referred to the county commissioners, although Howard said he tells property owners they have a right to file an assessment appeal.

Trinity received permission from the state Department of Education to set a tax levy no higher than 14.63 mills. Before its June 30 deadline, the board approved a millage increase of .26, and total millage is now 13.60.

The county operates on a calendar year, and on Thursday, the commissioners, with Commission Vice Chairman Diana Irey Vaughan on speaker phone due to illness, kept the county’s 2018 tax levy at the current 2.43 mills.