Posted on

Voters to be asked to approve SAVE fund extension purpose

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

When Charles City voters go to the polls on Nov. 5, they will find an additional item on the ballot.

Alongside the election of city council members, school board representatives and a question about the hospital, Charles City Community School District voters will be asked to approve an enhanced revenue purpose statement (RPS).

The RPS specifies how the school board can use Secure and Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE) funds — also known as the statewide penny fund.

At a special eight-minute meeting on Friday at the Charles City High School cafeteria, the board approved the RPS election by unanimous vote of 5-0.

Superintendent Mike Fisher explained that when the Iowa Legislature extended SAVE funding this year, it included language requiring school districts to again ask voters to approve their proposed use of the funding, as they had in 2008 or 2009 when it first started.

Fisher said during a conversation last week with an analyst with Piper Jaffrey who advises the district on financial matters, the analyst advised the district to pass the new revenue purpose statement “the sooner the better.”

Fisher said in order for the question to be on the Nov. 5 general election ballot, it needed to be turned in to the Floyd County Auditor’s Office by Friday, Sept. 20, hence the need for the special meeting last Friday.

School board member Jason Walker said he agreed with setting the vote, but he didn’t like having to hold special meetings for this type of thing.

“I think it sends a negative message to the community on the way we’re operating and the way we’re doing these things,” Walker said.

Fisher said, “I own that. This one snuck up on us. … I agree with Jason that in an ideal situation we could have done a better job on that, but that being said, … I wanted to put on the table that we could consider it so we still have the option for the November election if you choose to do so.”

Statewide penny funding has been relied on by Iowa’s schools since 2008, when the local-option tax was repealed and the state’s sales tax went from 5% to 6%. Revenue from the SAVE fund is distributed to every school district in the state for the purposes of infrastructure repair and improvement and for the reduction of property taxes.

The initial law in 2008 included a sunset clause which would have ended the SAVE program in 2029, which in recent years began being a problem for school districts because they couldn’t count on the funding being a revenue source to finance long-term infrastructure projects.

During the 2019 legislative session, the Iowa Legislature extended the authorization of SAVE funding to 2051 and Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the extension, which took effect July 1.

The extra penny sales tax is collected in every community across the state, as well as from internet sales, and is allocated based on student population.

In Charles City, in the last 10 years SAVE revenue has been used by the school district for baseball and softball fields, the Washington elementary playground, the transportation center, the middle school, roof replacement, heating controls, the high school science addition, track resurfacing and technology improvements, according to information from the school district.

Fisher said he and others would be working on a fact sheet to be presented to the community “making clear this is not a tax increase.”

“It is not a tax raise. It’s not a tax decrease, either,” he said. “It’s just something that we need from the community to continue to use state sales tax dollars, which is a good thing, because that is property tax relief for us for facilities.”

The RPS measure has already gone to a vote and passed in six Iowa school districts this month — Colfax-Mingo, Greene County, West Branch, Okoboji, Spirit Lake and Spencer.

Social Share

LATEST NEWS