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School Board Chair Nancy Nilsen vs. Harry
Welty
Harry Welty wrote the following post on his blog.
We found out last week just how much more we can expect our property taxes
to go up because of the Red Plan. So far St. Louis County is only levying 46%
of the $407 million cost of the Red Plan. The public will not be happy when,
not if, the other 54% is levied.
This is now being treated with kid gloves by the Superintendent who has his
allies saying that he’d like to make a “deal” with the citizens. This is
the deal. The District will only raise taxes by $125 million. (He’s not
counting interest) Of course, the whole plan will cost $407 million so we have
been scratching our heads trying to figure out what he means.
What Dr. Dixon is suggesting is preposterous. He is saying that this Board
will guarantee that the $11 million additional annual costs of the plan
(including interest) over the next twenty years will come not from further
increases in the local property tax but from the school operations budget. The
Red Plan supporters have been claiming that school operations will save $5.3
million annually but that’s less than half of the increased $11 million
annual cost.
So, beyond the reported $5.3 million savings (and I maintain that only
about a third of it is savings the rest being staff cuts) future school boards
will have to cut an additional $6.7 million from school operations to pay for
the Red Plan every year for the next twenty years. Dixon may be able to
guarantee that his supine school board will do this while he’s still around
to mesmerize them but there will be nine more elections over the next 19 years
of the Red Plan and he will have no authority to reach into the future to
force those school boards to do the same thing. Oh, they will have to pay for
the Red Plan but by doing it Dixon’s way they will cripple the school
system.
The 46% of the Red Plan costs that is already being levied against Duluth
district voters is $9.6 million a year. That includes interest payments and
over twenty years it will total $192 million dollars. The 54% which has yet to
be levied will be $11 million a year more and it too includes interest
payments. Over twenty years the $11 million increase will add up to $220
million dollars. Dixon is promising that this $220 million will not actually
be levied against the taxpayers because it will all be taken out of school
operations. Together the $9.6 million already being levied and the $11 million
add up to $412 million. I’ve rounded out these numbers so they are off by a
couple million at the end. The District’s finance people originally sent in
their cost estimates to the State Dept of Education which showed the costs of
the Red Plan to be $437 million. This calculation is on page
79 of their proposal for the State’s review and comment. Some months
later they announced that they had figured out how to structure the debt so
that they could save $30 million thereby reducing the total cost to $407
million. The figures I’ve just given you are off of this by five million
dollars.
The property tax information I’ve just outlined came from Donald
Dicklich the St. Louis County Auditor.
The “promise” that Dixon has made can’t be kept. The school staff is
already nervous about this year’s cuts. The promise guarantees future annual
cuts of an even more draconian nature. Such is the promise of the Red Plan.
The School Board got its first bids in for the first two summer projects
last week. They came in a few thousand dollars below initial estimates. There
is rejoicing in the Administration. Its a little like a couple of chipmunks
running out on the highway to grab an acorn and giving themselves high fives
for their accomplishment a few seconds before they are flattened by a truck.
When it was sent to the School Board by a member of Let Duluth Vote the Chair of
the School Boar, Nancy Nilsen, wrote back to explain away Welty's
"misinformation." This is the
document that outlines 2011 borrowing.
Hello *****,
There is definitely some misinformation in this article. We
have levied for all of it. There is
not another levy for 54%. We levied
for the whole amount last year and it is what is being seen in your current
property tax.
The cost of the project is $257 million. With inflation over the 5 years
that it will take to implement it, the cost is $293 million. Just like when
you purchase a home and pay interest over the life of the loan, we have to do
the same thing. If you take the interest into consideration, then you get to
the $407 million. The reason it is lower that originally stated is because we
got such a good bond rate when we sold the first set of bonds back in January.
Interest rates are excellent right now, which is allowing us to save millions
in interest expense.
With that said, what we need and have levied for is $125 million. The
reason we don’t have to levy for the whole $293 million is because we will
be selling all the property that we will no longer need and we will be taking
the savings from building closures and applying that to the project. For
example, we will not need as many overhead type staff such as principles,
vice-principles, secretaries, ect. The money saved from not paying these
people and from increased energy efficient systems will go to help pay off the
project.
If we don’t decrease the number of buildings we don’t get these
savings, so it is not like we have that money to use for programming now. Once
the debt is paid off, those savings can go back into programming.
We have said all along that we are going to need an operating levy passed
this November. The state does not give us enough money to operate our
district. We could close every building in this district and not have enough
money to operate. So there will be some difficult decisions coming up soon,
but hopefully the citizen’s will allow us to pass the operating levy in
November to help with the operating side.
I hope I have answered your questions. If not, please don’t hesitate to
let me know. Thank you for your interest.
Sincerely,
Nancy Nilsen
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