By the way, if you want to know how the levy will effect YOUR taxes, it's all available on the Franklin County Auditor's website. Here's what I've found for our property: Our current school tax is $4,300.75 per year. The new levy will add $428.52/yr, or 10% -- right on target to continue the nearly 5% annual growth depicted by the blue line in the chart above.

Operating levies work like this: The Treasurer builds a multi-year forecast and makes an estimate of whether more or less property tax income is needed. If more income is needed, a levy will be placed on the ballot. If that levy passes, it will cause additional money to be collected during its life (usually about five years). In the first years, the new levy collects more money than is needed, and a reserve builds up. In the last years, it collects less than is needed, and the reserve is consumed. This happens over and over. The chart below is an illustration of how it might work. Surprisingly, the sum of the amount of money collected (the green line) is exactly equal to the sum of the amount of money spent (the red line).

So why do taxes go down some years?  Two reasons.

One reason is that operating levies and bond retirement levies work differently. Bond levies can be thought of as the mortgage payments on the buildings and other major assets. Operating levies pay for everything else: salaries, benefits, utilities, supplies, fuel, etc.  When a new house is built, it is assessed the effective amount of all operating levies in force, and it generates incremental income for the schools (just not enough). But as more houses are built, the total amount needed to "pay off the mortgage" stays the same, so the amount each house has to pay goes down. If growth continues, eventually new school buildings must be constructed, and another bond levy gets placed on the ballot.

The other case is that sometimes the Treasurer overestimates how much additional money will be needed in the future. When that happens, the reserve grows larger than expected. It has often been the practice of HCSD that when the reserve gets larger than needed, they delay placing a replacement levy on the ballot for a year or two, allowing the excess reserve to be used up before requesting a new levy. This is a good and reasonable approach for the District to take, as it allows all of us to pocket a little extra money in that year.

But there is no such thing as a free lunch, as folks say. Because an operating levy renewal is postponed for a year, it doesn't mean the cost of running the schools has gone down. So eventually, often the following year, a new levy will need to be passed, and the taxpayers will see a big increase in their taxes again. Most don't understand why, and they get mad at the school system again. This is a case of the District officials doing a good thing, and getting criticized anyway.

That makes it yet another community communications failure on their part.