Maplewood Richmond Heights School’s director of communications, Brian Adkisson, responded over the weekend to questions that have come up about Proposition K, the bond issue announced last week that the school will put on the April ballot to build a new preschool.
Here’s what Adkisson said by email:
Location: The Board is actively looking at multiple sites and negotiating as we speak. If a contract is signed prior to the election, I am certain we would share the location with our community. Ultimately we want to secure the best location for our students and at the best (lowest) possible price for our community. To divulge specific sites we are looking at would likely result in their price increasing.
See also: MRH Prop K: cost to home owners, MRH asks voters to approve bond for new preschool
Length: The tax is ongoing—not one-time. (Adkisson said he didn’t know the the exact length because he was at home for the weekend when asked.) Essentially, a bond is like a loan. The district sells bonds—in essence to get a loan—for the construction. The bond is then paid off over a specific length of time. You can learn more about construction bonds here, if you want some more information on what they actually are.
Other comments: Some of the responses (on 40 South News) are making incorrect calculations based on their property’s appraised value, rather than assessed valuation.
The bond issue reads “If this proposition is approved, the adjusted debt service levy of the school district is estimated to increase $0.15 per one hundred dollars of assessed valuation from $1.20 to $1.35 per one hundred dollars assessed valuation of real and personal property.” The assessed valuation is the value given to a property owner by St. Louis County – this is NOT the appraised value.
(Adkisson said he has requested a sample of home values and their corresponding tax change and should have it early this week; he’ll post it on the MRH website.)
The ECC is not just preschool, it includes Kindergarten and First grade. The class sizes are getting too big because it is an awesome district and families are moving here to get their kids in our schools. This is a good thing people! It will only increase our property values across the board. The school district is not being frivolous when they ask for money. I will vote yes for this and I am pretty sure most parents with kids in the district will vote yes. This is about our future (the kids) and to deny them a good education (which includes more than just getting a bigger building) is terrible. Prop K is OK!
I’m not sure why tax dollars need to be used when Pre-K is voluntary and the parents pay for the schooling with tuition.
I think there’s a misunderstanding about how to calculate the increase in tax. To help clear this up here are steps to determine how much the tax would impact you:
Go to http://revenue.stlouisco.com/ias/
Under the search input change it to Property Address and enter your address
Click the address
Scroll down and look for your 2014 Total Assessed Value (this is only 19% of your appraised value)
Multiple that number by .0015
I did this for my house, which is a 2.5 story 4 bedroom/2 bath house and I will only see an increase of $39 a year.
I don’t doubt the need for the preschool, but this is really bad timing to ask Maplewood residents to pony up more tax dollars. We were just asked to pay for a new fire house. This should have been on our radar before we voted on the fire house. Almost $2000 of my property taxes goes to the MRH school district. I will probably have to vote “no” on any new taxes until the new firehouse is paid for.
I completely agree with you on this. I will also vote no on this and will try to convince others to oppose this increased tax burden on homeowners in MRH.
This is what I found on the St Louis County Real Estate Information page. It looks like the Maplewood Richmond Height School District owns 23 different properties. Of those 23 properties 11 have been purchased since the last SCHOOL TAX INCREASE. This come to a TOTAL COST to Maplewood Richmond Heights Tax Payers of $1,052,500.00. I know that there was also MAJOR construction to the Building of the Early Childhood Center that was just completed in the past year and a half.
I don’t recall what the tax increase was based on in 2010, I DO KNOW my Accessed Value didn’t go up but MY Real Estate Tax went UP $239.64 in 2010.
Date Purchased Priced Paid Real Estate # Address
1- 2-06-2010 $110,000.00 21J510080 2605 S Big Bend Blvd.
2 ?? ?? 20J311660 2007 Alameda Ave
3- 10-30-2012 $ 5,000.00 21J140353 2813 Burgess Ave
4- 7-28-2010 $ 52,500.00 21J510431 2549 Florent Ave
5- ?? ?? 21J512543 2551 Florent Ave
6- 8-03-2006 ?? 21J512554 2553 Florent Ave
7- ?? ?? 21J510299 2555 Florent Ave
8- 8-13-2010 $107,500.00 21J510321 2556 Florent Ave
9- 10-12-2010 $175,000.00 21J510277 2562 Florent Ave
10- 10-12-2010 $175,000.00 21J510178 2564 Florent Ave
11- 12-3-2001 ?? 21J510233 2565 Florent Ave
12- 4-06-2011 $ 80,000.00 21J510442 2544 Gerhard Ave
13- 3-23-2011 $125,000.00 21J510387 2548 Gerhard Ave
14- 6-11-2010 $ 72,500.00 21J510332 2552 Gerhard Ave
15-12-03-2010 $150,000.00 21J510266 2554 Gerhard Ave
16- ?? ?? 20J311642 7327 Glades Ave
17- ?? ?? 21J421056 2511 Oakland Ave
18- ?? ?? 21J420396 2555 Oakland Ave
19- ?? ?? 21J420341 2556 Oakland Ave
20-Early Childhood ?? 21J140409 2556 Oakland Ave
21- ?? ?? 20J311651 1800 Princeton Pl
22- 7-02-2010 $100,000.00 20J311682 2014 Princeton Pl
23-High School ?? 21J231415 7539 Manchester Rd
TOTAL-2010-2015 $1,052,500.00