Another good reason to vote against all school board incumbents in the Baldwin-Whitehall School District:

----------------------------------------------------------------
"Many school districts can skip tax votes
State exempts 210 from balloting on property levy
Friday, April 06, 2007

By Eleanor Chute, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pennsylvania Department of Education has given nearly half of the state's school districts permission to raise property taxes above a state-set inflation index without a referendum.

Out of the state's 501 school districts, 210, or 42 percent, have been granted exceptions under a new law -- known as Special Session Act 1 of 2006 -- designed to control property taxes.

The list, released yesterday, includes 10 districts in Allegheny County: Baldwin-Whitehall, Cornell, Fox Chapel Area, Highlands, Mt. Lebanon, Quaker Valley, South Fayette, Steel Valley, Sto-Rox and Woodland Hills.

It also includes nine others in Armstrong, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

The amount of tax increase permitted varies by district.

This doesn't mean the districts necessarily will be raising taxes above the index rate, or as much as they are permitted. The increases won't be determined until final budgets are passed in each district.

"Each month, at every board meeting, we discuss more ways to cut," said Linda Hippert, superintendent of South Fayette.

Dr. Hippert said the state's inflation index permits South Fayette to raise its property tax by 0.72 mills without a referendum. But the exception allows the district to raise it another 1.23 mills, bringing the possible total additional tax to 1.95 mills. The property tax is now 21.19 mills.

South Fayette's school board is expected to vote by the end of June. Its preliminary $29.7 million budget included the 1.95-mill increase.

Dr. Hippert said the district's main reasons for raising taxes further were the increases in health care and special education costs and in enrollment.

Statewide, the most common reasons given among the 210 school districts were:

Pension obligations, 90 percent of the districts.

Special education costs, 69 percent.

School construction costs incurred before the law, 52 percent.

Act 1 has various approaches for reducing or controlling property taxes.

One is the so-called "back-end" referendum in which school districts need voters to approve a referendum to raise taxes more than an inflation index set by the state.

The Department of Education can grant referendum exceptions -- as it did for the 210 districts -- for certain costs viewed as beyond the district's control, relieving them of the requirement to have a back-end referendum.

Another portion of the law calls for the so-called "front-end" referendum in the May primary.

Next month, residents in all school districts -- except in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Scranton -- will vote on referenda asking whether they want to lower property taxes and raise other taxes.

In most school districts, voters will be asked whether they want to shift part of the property tax burden by increasing their earned income tax.

In some districts, voters will decide whether they want to lower property taxes by replacing the earned income tax with a personal income tax, which would tax earned and unearned income.

Each referendum spells out what the amount of tax would be and how much the estimated property tax savings would be.

Ultimately, school districts will be able to receive a portion of state gambling revenue to help reduce property taxes.

The state has estimated $1 billion a year in gambling income will go toward property tax relief, but a state Department of Education news release yesterday said the state now expects to exceed that figure.

A statewide list of exceptions can be found at www.pde.state.pa.us."

Go To: www.post-gazette.com for original article