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County questions state about Trinity school tax increase

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Faced with a number of complaints from property owners in Trinity Area School District, the Washington County commissioners have questions about the size of the school district’s tax increase, concerns they raised with the state Department of Education.

The county’s inquiry came to light Thursday when a resident of North Franklin Township, which is one of the four municipalities comprising the school district that stretches from the Washington city limits to the Greene County line, objected to his tax bill in the wake of the recent property reassessment.

In 2013, John Reynolds and his wife, Celia, purchased a new home on Red Tail Hollow for $664,879. John Reynolds said their tax bill from the municipality, school district and county totaled $4,737. It has since risen to $10,155, an increase of 114 percent. Tyler Technologies Inc., the firm that performed the court-ordered reassessment, set a value of $619,000 on the home.

Without hiring an attorney, he appealed his property assessment, and the county website shows the assessment was lowered to $612,100. Reynolds said he pursued yet another appeal and had the value reduced to $514,000.

Reynolds might have been the first Trinity resident to sign up for public comment on the subject at a commissioners meeting, but the three-member board heard from many Trinity Area residents, so they asked Chief Assessor Bradley Boni to make a series of calculations using the known assessed values in Washington County school districts and percentage increase limits imposed by a state law known as Act 1.

The county prepared an inquiry and emailed it to the state Department of Education on Sept. 15, asking if its calculations were correct under Act 1 and whether waivers had been granted.

“What jumps out at us is the $5.2 million in additional revenue raised by the Trinity School District,” said Scott Fergus, Washington County director of administration. Trinity’s is the only multimillion-dollar increase between what the county has labeled “actual and allowed revenues” among the 14 school districts in the county.

As of Thursday morning, the county had not received a response from the state. A question to the Department of Education press office from the Observer-Reporter about the issue went unanswered as of 4 p.m. Thursday.

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 that Trinity should have been limited to an increase in revenue of $797,686, while its actual increase in revenue is $6,044,512, or $5,246,091 more than would be permitted under Act 1 without a waiver, according to the county’s calculations.

Fergus said, by way of disclaimer, that county officials “are not experts on taxation by municipalities or school districts … and that is why we asked for clarification from the Department of Education. At this time, we express no opinion as to whether the tax increase was proper under Act 1.”

A call to Matthew Howard, Trinity’s director of fiscal services since February, was not immediately returned.

A news story that appeared in June in the Observer-Reporter about the adoption of Trinity’s 2017-18 budget noted that Trinity received a waiver to set a tax levy no higher than 14.63 mills. The board approved a millage increase of 0.26 mills, and total millage is now 13.60. The cost of pensions and special education are two reasons districts often give when requesting waivers. The state also gave school districts the option of placing proposed tax increases on a referendum ballot, but no school district in Washington County has gone that route.

Under previous property assessments in place for decades, property tax was based on 25 percent of 1981 property values. The latest assessment is based on 100 percent of 2015 property values.

Other municipalities in the Trinity Area district are Canton, South Strabane and Amwell townships.

The Washington and McGuffey school districts filed suit in 2008 against the county commissioners, demanding a reassessment. A court battle ensued, and, faced with the possibility they could be jailed for contempt, the commissioners in 2013 hired Tyler Technologies of Moraine, Ohio, to reassess property, at a cost of more than $7 million.

The commissioners certified property values based on Tyler’s 2015 numbers, and county and municipal tax bills based on the first reassessment in 35 years went out in the beginning of 2017. School districts follow a different calendar, so their fiscal officers and business managers calculated property tax millage based on the new figures before their June 30, 2017, budget deadlines.

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