Schools bracing for budget impacts after State Tax Commission order
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — A day after the State Tax Commission ordered Jackson County to correct 2023 property assessments, the Jackson County Executive’s Office responded, saying the order was politically motivated and would cause “significant harm” to taxpayers, schools and essential services.
Homeowners who saw their assessments go up in 2023, in many cases significantly, are now waiting to see if they’ll be reduced. But places like schools that already have set their budgets are wondering if they’ll be forced to give as much as $117 million back.
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County Executive Frank White’s office calls the order by the State Tax Commission to correct 2023 property tax assessments to no more than a 15 percent increase for existing construction and maintain them at the same level this year devastating. For the Independence School District, the latest news in a year-long battle over those assessments and their dramatic increases means more uncertainty.
“So what does that mean looking forward?” Dr. Dale Herl, Superintendent of Independence Schools, said.
“We don’t know here in the Independence School District even what that could possibly equate to dollar wise? For sure it would be millions and millions of dollars that we would not see in that revenue and we have already set our budget.”
Jackson County Executive’s Office shared numbers Thursday saying cities and fire districts would lose close to $20 million as a result of the order, schools and libraries in Jackson County could immediately lose more than $86 million.
“The question has been asked would we have to pay that amount back, and I’ve heard numbers close to 9 million dollars for the Independence School District, I don’t exactly know. I think that’s the question a lot of people have at this point. What does all this mean?” Herl asked.
“How is it going to impact not only funds we’ve received last year, but then how do we set our levy for this upcoming school year?”
Further complicating the issue, Missouri’s Hancock Amendment, impacting all but Kansas City Public Schools. It meant when assessments last year went up, levies for the most part went down.
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“We’ve already assessed those levies so it’s going to be a huge fiscal impact for school districts,” Herl explained.
Representatives from other potentially impacted school districts declined to comment Thursday while they try to sort this all out themselves and see what happens at the county and state level.
However, there’s not a lot of time for that to happen. Jackson County has 30 days to resubmit those assessed valuations under the order.
Meanwhile, school districts and other taxing jurisdictions have to have their levies based on those valuations set by October 1st.
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