Laurel Highlands School District increases property tax, eliminates per-capita tax
The Laurel Highlands School Board voted to raise property taxes along with eliminating the district’s per-capita tax.
During Thursday night’s regular meeting, the board voted 5-3 in favor of the $55,789,821 final budget that comes with a tax increase.
Along with that, the millage rate was raised to the maximum allowed by law by 0.7328, bringing the total millage rate to 19.0534 from the current rate of 18.3206 mills.
The last tax increase came in 2019, when the board voted in a 5-4 split to raise the millage rate by 0.8526 mills.
“It wasn’t a very big jump,” said Superintendent Jesse Wallace of the upcoming tax increase.
For every $100,000 of assessed value of a property, the new increase will roughly amount to $73, bringing the new tax total to $1,905 for a property assessed at that amount.
Voting in favor of the budget were Melvyn Sepic, Randy Raymond, Kim A. Renze, Brandi Kalich and James Hercik. Voting against the budget were Joe D’Andrea, Nancy Glad and Tom Landman.
Board member Beverly Beal was absent from Thursday’s meeting.
D’Andrea had previously said that while he understands a tax increase is needed for the district’s increased costs, he wanted to see the elimination of a few vacant positions in the district to help save money and questioned that again during Thursday’s meeting while in executive session.
“We would have saved somewhere around $250,000 to $300,000 a year, and the millage increase could have been half of what it was,” D’Andrea said.
Thursday night’s budget vote also included the elimination of the $10 per-capita tax for residents between the age of 18 and 65.
D’Andrea was initially for the elimination of the per-capita tax because only 70% of taxpayers actually paid the tax, and it was more expensive to try to collect the unpaid taxes than the tax itself.
However, D’Andrea was against the elimination of the tax because, those adults over 65 that had been exempt from paying the per-capita tax were now seeing a more significant increase with their property taxes.
“In essence, it’s giving the senior citizens another tax raise,” D’Andrea said.