Lakeland’s school and city boards have agreed on one big compromise to meet voters’ demands for education and economy: They need a middle school. Nothing bigger, at least for now.
On June 11, the mayor and board of commissioners approved a long-discussed $0.55 property tax increase. It will be dedicated to the building of a middle school at an estimated design and construction cost of nearly $20 million.
They also discussed a capital outlay note that pays off the debt in 12 years (the equivalent of a $0.72 property tax). Commissioner Randi Nicholson was the lone dissenter. [Editor’s note: This paragraph was corrected July 22, 2015, to reflect the fact that the capital outlay note was discussed at the June 11 meeting but not yet put to a vote.]
The note will add more than $7 million in interest for a total debt service of $27,078,500.
The capital outlay note does not require a referendum, and it defeated other funding options (20- and 30-year bond issuance options that would cost less per year but add up to millions more in the long term).
A 20-year bond note was estimated to add more than $12 million in interest. A 30-year bond note was estimated to add more than $19 million in interest payments.
Funding for the middle school will come from:
- The new $0.55 proper tax increase
- The $0.10 property tax allocated for schools in 2012
- The $0.08 property tax equivalent of the half-cent sales tax allocated for schools in 2012
At 4.98 percent interest, the capital outlay note is projected to cost $7,078,500 in interest for a total debt of $27,078,500.
In preliminary discussions earlier this month, school board officials projected that the middle school would open by the fall of 2018.
The 55-cent hike lifts the property tax rate to $1.40 per $100 of assessed value in the city’s FY2015-16 $8.1 million general fund budget.
The actions come in the wake of a failed $50 million bond referendum two months ago for a larger structure that would have hosted both middle and high school students.
All but one of more than a dozen Lakeland residents who spoke publicly at the June 11 meeting supported the tax increase.
so very nice