School District Tax Measures February 11th 2025
Last updated: November 19th, 2024
As analyses are completed, summary results will be provided on this page.
Contents
- Potential school district tax measures. Volunteers are likely needed for the pro/con committees for the Local Voters’ Pamphlets (LVPs).
Potential school district tax measures. Volunteers are likely needed for the pro/con committees for the Local Voters’ Pamphlets (LVPs).
Note that the actual list of measures may not be known until the deadline of December 13th 2024. Many school districts procrastinate and wait until the last day to submit their resolutions let alone their lists of pro/con committee volunteers.
School districts (and all other taxing districts) planning to run tax measures on the February 11th 2025 election must submit their tax resolutions (descriptions of their measures) and their lists of pro and con committee members to their respective county election’s office by December 13th 2024.
Pro and con statements (250 words max) are generally due 1 to 3 days after the resolution deadline - so approximately December 16th to the 18th, depending on the county. Pro and con statements will need to be submitted directly to the county elections office - not the school district. After the pro and con statements are submitted, each committee will then have a chance to submit a rebuttal to the other committee’s statement. Rebuttals (75 words max) are generally due 1 to 3 days after the pro/con statements deadline. The county elections office will provide detailed instructions and deadlines to the LVP committee volunteers.
School districts are supposed to advertise for and select both pro and con committee members (up to 3 volunteers on each committee) to give the pro and con statements for their own tax measures. School districts readily find pro committee members (usually paid staff). But school districts rarely find con committee members (from their short duration advertising efforts often with limited financial impact information). The result is that the Local Voters’ Pamphlets (LVPs) usually only present the pro arguments. Occasionally, a proponent for the tax measure signs up through the district to be the con committee and either doesn’t submit anything or unapologetically submits another pro statement. So in that case there are 2 pro statements in the LVP for voters to read. This is a mockery of the democratic process. Citizens/taxpayers deserve to be presented with both sides of the issues.
On the deadline, December 13th 2024, if a school district fails to submit con committee member names (or pro committee member names), the county election’s office reps will generally spend one or two business days to try to find LVP committee members.
If you are interested in presenting the con (or the pro) argument for the LVP for one of the tax measures, please contact the school district and the county elections office before the deadline, December 13th 2024. Pro and con committee members must reside in the school district running the tax measure.
Several reasons to oppose school district tax measures include:
- There should be no tax measures on the low-voter-turnout February elections. All tax measures should only be run on the high-voter-turnout November elections.
- The school district versions of taxpayer cost impacts are usually illogical, mathematically incorrect, and underestimate the true expected cost to property taxpayers - including renters. See the critique of each district’s self-generated property taxpayer cost analysis from the November 2024 election.
- Voters are not voting on districts’ guesses of future tax rates for their measures. We are voting on amounts in dollars that will be collected no matter what happens to assessed values of properties. That is what is meant by budget based. The Proportional Obligation Factor (POF) method of estimating future property taxes for property owners and, indirectly, renters for the proposed multi-year tax measures should be used. Almost all school districts unwittingly underestimate the tax impacts in what they present in their campaign materials.
- There are 39 counties in WA. Only 2 counties (their county assessor’s offices) provide a Tax Transparency Tool (TTT) that tries to inform citizens of the cost impacts of tax measures their citizens are voting on. Those 2 counties are King County and Spokane County. While well-intentioned, the problem is that both TTTs are inadequate and underestimate the cost impacts to taxpayers especially for 20+ year bonds. See the critique of the county TTTs from the November 2024 election.
- We had the McCleary Decision with its resulting higher State School property taxes. There should be no local “Enrichment” Levies that many school districts still call EP&O Levies.
Sortable list of potential school district tax measures for the February 11th 2025 election: