To the editor,
On November 7, 2023, Bowling Green City School district residents will vote on a proposed levy with a term of thirty years.
To date, we have heard the appeal for this levy including repair, updates and one’s civic duty, but the affect on your pocket book and budget has been scant. Herewith are facts to fill in that gap before voting on that levy.
Within the auditor’s website is a “levy estimator” for each owned parcel located within the school district, and it shows an annual dollar amount increase for any parcels to be affected by this levy. For BG school district property owners, the sum of those anticipated increases can be divided by the total amount the taxpayer paid for school taxes in the last calendar year (two tax duplicates for each parcel) to show the percent of increase the taxpayer would be paying with the new levy.
In my case, that calculation shows there would be a 23.94% increase over what I paid previously to the “schools”. Located in the lower left hand corner of a property tax duplicate is the “Distribution” of how your taxes have been disbursed. Remember that each of the cash amounts shown there per category is for one-half year, so total yearly taxes per category should be doubled to find the annual amounts.
By examining that section and using another simple calculation, a taxpayer can determine what percent of property taxes are allocated for the Bowling Green City Schools presently, and from there another calculation can be made showing the amount of that percent if the levy passes.
My calculations show that currently 49.4% of my property taxes are allocated for “school”, and if the levy passes my “school” allotment would be increased to 54.7%.
It pays to be fully informed before voting, and both dollar amounts and percent calculations bring clarity to an otherwise clouded picture. The levy will have a huge impact on the personal budgets of any property owners as well as non-property owners, particularly if increased prices for services and related goods offered by over-taxed property owners will become necessary.
Do the math and think it through. Your cost and your budget are important to how you vote on this levy.
Elsie Newman
Bowling Green
