001okay I think we'll go ahead and get started this evening I do want to be respectful of your time and I appreciate you coming out this evening to get some additional information about our school referendum that will appear on the ballot next Tuesday November the 7th we are doing some things a little bit different tonight that I want to talk about before we get into the substance of our meeting and that is are recording this meeting and we will be putting the recording of this meeting out on our social media platforms as of tomorrow so that's why I'm using the microphone uh and we do have a microphone available later on in our session this afternoon this evening for others that would like to speak I'd appreciate it if you would use the microphone I'm
002going to ask uh one of our administrators to take the microphone off the stand and approach you to give view the microphone rather than you standing up and walking over to the microphone stand so that's why we're using the microphones this evening again thank you for coming uh i' would like to delve right into the information that we have for you and as I already indicated to you you need to look at the packet of information that has been placed at your uh table where you are sitting very quickly what I want to do is go through it to make sure that you have all the pages that you need as we present the information this evening the very first page is the 207 referendum what have we been able to do and if you
003turn and go to the back of that page you have an open letter from the members of our school board of school trustees that you can read at your leisure the next page is the ballot question and this is going to be the question that appears on the ballot next Tuesday so we want to spend a little bit of time talking about the ballot question that you will see and then dive into what does that question mean and why is that question written the way it is then if you turn the page on the back of the question you will find two boxes one that will be in green and one that's in red basically if the referendum is successful on Tuesday the items that are listed in green we will be able to continue
004to do and expand and build on that due to that renewed referendum if the referendum is not successful then we look down at the items in red and those are things we really don't want to talk about or dwell on on but we'll have to mention some of them during our presentation this evening and then finally the very last page is the revenue spending plan what that basically means is if the referendum is renewed this coming Tuesday how is that referendum money going to be spent by Lake Station schools and we will go over that Revenue plan in our presentation as well so if you would go to the very first page where it says the 2017 referendum what have we been able to do this is quite a list of things that we have
005been able to accomplish in just a short six years I don't want to read this entire list to you but there are some things that I do want to point out and draw your attention number one on the list two full-time elementary school counselors therapists one at each of our elementary schools starting in the school year 2017 2018 prior to that we had a traveling counselor that went to our elementary schools well these now are permanent counselors at each of those elementaries item number four expand summer school offerings to include gifted and talented enrichment classes because of the referendum in 2017 we saw an enrollment in summer school of 200 students and we have been able to maintain that number of students that have participated in summer school since then item number five a prek
006program offered at both of the elementary schools starting in 2017 2018 school year and that program continues and that is a wonderful program it's a preschool program that those students that participate in that program are our feeder youngsters that go into our kindergarten program so we house it in our elementary school schools and it has been very beneficial to our community number six is probably the most important and that is that we have been able to continue our bus service where we are able to pick up students in the morning drop them off after school that way that parents that are working in the morning have transportation issues or concerns they rely on our school buses and that is extremely important for not only our community but most communities because of the referendum in 2017
007we were able to continue funding transportation number eight restored the sixth grade athletic programs offering football volleyball and cross country number 10 added Chromebooks or laptop computers for all of our students in kindergarten through 12th grade making our school a onetoone technology School so each of our school or each of our students rather had a Chromebook for them to use in their studies here in school as well as taking in home for homework project preparation and doing the things that they needed to do to support their classwork item number 12 addressing safety issues in our school facilities and this was also a part of the question in the ballot in 2017 and it's a part of the question that will appear on the ballot next Tuesday some of the things I want to highlight we
008were able to build a secure vestule at biley elementary school D providing video surveillance capabilities at the elementary schools to improve school security this is on our agenda to do for the 23 24 school year item e expand video surveillance here at Edison for the same purpose to improve School Safety and Security up here at Edison in the building as well as in our campuses that is scheduled for this current school year going down to G air conditioning in the elementary schools prior to the referendum being approved in 2017 by our community our elementary schools did not have air conditioning many times we had to call a half day of school because of the Heat and the high temperatures and humidity that come to us in the months of August September and later in the
009spring we no longer have to lose instructional time at the elementary school because we have air conditioning in our buildings this is also a safety issue as you get overheated in the summer in the hot temperatures and the humidity well so do our students our children so by putting air conditioning in those elementary schools it was not only a good learning academic decision so we don't lose instructional time but it was also a safety concern and I know our teachers and our students at the elementary schools have greatly enjoyed and appreciated that air conditioning in their buildings item 13 academic opportunities item a Project Lead the Way instruction in both biomed computers and engine engineering have occurred in kindergarten through fifth grade project lead the way is also referred to as STEM Science technology engineering
010and math and we are able to provide that to our students in kindergarten through fifth grade many of our neighboring school districts only provide stem instruction to their highly uh gifted and talented or high ability students we do do not separate our students out all of our students in kindergarten through fifth grade participate in the stem program Item B Project Lead the Way instruction and computer science are also held here at the junior high school again stem is offered to students here at Edison sixth grade through 12th grade item C and this is also one that I'm most proud of that we were able to offer due to the referendum in 2017 we were able to restore the Elementary art program prior to 2017 Elementary art had been done away with when that art teacher
011retired we did not have Elementary art for 12 years but in 2017 because of the referendum we were able to bring on board an art teacher to work with our kindergarten through fifth grade students at both of our elementary schools item F elementary schools continue to do spell Bowl math bowl and science Bowl academic competitions and continue to rate in the top 10 schools in their particular divisions I think that is accomplishment of our students and their hard work and we have been able to continue that experience and opportunity for our elementary students because of the 2017 referendum these are things that I've highlighted there are some other things that are equally as important but I don't want to take the time right now to highlight everything on that page this packet of information you
012will be able to take home with you so you will be able to look at that a little bit more at your leisure and if you do have questions please give me a call let's talk I'd be happy to explain answer question questions or talk with you at another time as well as later on this evening now what I'd like for you to do is turn to the page and I want you to focus on the 2023 operations referendum public question if you look on that page look on the right hand side where it says public question that is going to be the question that appears on the ballot when you go to vote Tuesday November 7th the part that becomes confusing really is toward the end or the bottom of that question so I
013want to start in the middle and read that to everyone the property tax increase requested in this referendum was originally approved by the voters in 2017 and if extended will increase the average property tax paid to the school corporation per year on a residence within the school corporation by 46.3 one% on and if extended will increase the average property tax paid to the school corporation per year on a business property within the school corporation by 46. 31% I read that portion of the question because that is the most confusing the most misunderstood part of the question the general assembly down in Indianapolis passed a law and in that law they said in public questions you have to include what the average prop property tax increase would be whether one really exists or not because our
014referendum is asking for the same thing that we asked for in 2017 no increase it's 54 cents for $100 of assessed valuation that's what we're asking for again just to renew it so there is no increase because of the school's reference question to further explain and clarify this I have invited Mr sha Mill from Baker Tilly who has worked with us as we prepared for our referendum and I'm going to invite him up in a few moments to explain a little bit about how did they get to an average of 46. 31% I also want to thank our school board member our Schoolboard secretary Mr Kevin music and his wife for allowing us to use his real property taxes so we can see his assessed valuation how his property taxes are broken down and what
015then determines what he pays per month as well as annually in a year due to the referendum so without further Ado I'm going to introduce Sean Mill from Baker Tilly and have him uh explain some things to you so thank you thank you Sean thank you Dr KP hi good evening thank you for the invitation uh and opportunity to present to you this evening uh regarding the proposed renewal or rather rather continuation uh of the existing 54 C operating referendum tax rate for the school corporation uh I'm with a a tax and audit accounting firm uh who also has a municipal advisory Wing uh which I operate out of uh we're Baker Tilly Municipal advisers uh we serve purely in an advisory capacity um and uh have a fiduciary responsibility to the school corporation um
016so we've worked very closely at the request of uh the school administration and board uh with the Lake County Auditor Office to really do all this kind of background C calculation work that's required to go in these new uh rather admittedly confusing questions um so I prepared uh the the background calculations behind the 63 or I'm sorry 46.3% um increase in property taxes paid to the school corporation so I've prepared um some slides this evening that I'll review uh rather quickly um to provide a little bit of context around that percentage um really what is actually occurring why why it's occurring um and what you as voters community members taxpayers can expect should the referendum uh be successful or fail uh so with that uh slide two please uh can we back up one yeah
017so just to oversimplify and reiterate um since in 2017 the school corporation ran a referendum uh that referendum was before the ballot language question the ballot question language changed um so when you went to the the polls back in 2017 there was actually within the question the 54 Cent tax rate that you were voting on um so when you go to The Ballot Box on Tuesday that will not be there so just to reiterate the existing operating referendum tax rate that was approved in 2017 was for 54 cents per $100 of net assessed valuation that same same tax rate is what's on the ballot on Tuesday 54 cents if successful that 54 Cent rate will replace the 54 Cent tax rate that's currently in existence so there will not be a doll eight total referendum
018rate it's simply a continuation and if successful uh it would actually supersede the rate that's good for next year uh and be good through 2031 for an eight-year term um so um barring any increases to your home's assessed value what you paid in 2023 would be what you would pay in 2024 for the school corporation's operating referendum if your assessed valuation increased 5% then that tax liability going towards the school corporations referendum would also increase 5% a higher assessed valuation at the same tax rate uh means a higher tax liability uh next slide please um so the school corporation's operating referendum tax rate is one of three tax rates currently on its budget order um these blue bars represent um the tax rates that just about every school corporation in Indiana has there's the operations
019fund and Debt Service fund uh and then on top we have the 54 operating referendum uh so as you can see in 222 three and what we're projecting for 2024 are very consistent total school corporation tax rates at right around $2.50 uh I will say uh the 2024 that is an absolute worst case scenario based upon recent AV growth and um uh the recent budgeting that the school corporation's done I would actually anticipate a decrease next year in the school corporations rate uh however unfortunately um the vast majority of you are at your circuit breaker tax cap on your property um so let's talk a little bit about that because that definitely plays in a little bit to that 46.3% and actually the entire reason why I'm standing here today talking to you about an
020operating referendum next slide please um so I think uh Dr KP Li did an excellent job of reading through the question uh the one thing that I will point out because it really does kind of after I mean it took me long than I'd care to admit for it to click uh but when it did it's this phrase that they've snuck in paid to the school corporation um so really it looks at the school corporation's tax rate in isolation um and uh there's an easy way to think about it and then there's the complicated way that the state makes me calculate things so let's talk about both of those next slide okay this would be the complicated way um so you take the average total property tax liability of all the Homestead Properties in Lake
021Station Community Schools which is more complicated than you might think because there's actually two separate taxing districts and those two separate taxing districts have two entirely different total tax rates which means that members in in one taxing districts are going to experience different results than members in in the other taxing district um but as far as the state's concerned they want to look at everything on an average and they want us to assume that there's no referendum in effect so when we look over here we see the average total property tax liability per year uh for a homestead in Lake Station Community Schools district is $1,080 uh that's based on an average total tax rate of $4.99 per $100 of assessed valuation um from the school corporation side of things they're contributing .95 to this
022four $4.99 total tax rate which comes out to about 38.87 per. so if we multiply and again I didn't come up with this calculation this is all prescribed in State Statute you multiply the total liability by this 39% and you arrive at so what that means is that of this $1,080 that the average Homestead is paying every year the school corporation is receiving $420 in 2017 uh you authorized the school corporation to Levy more property taxes for the operating referendum that 54 Cent operating referendum would generate $194 so if we divide the $94 by the 419 that's where we get the 46. 31 because the this $194 is the amount of increased property taxes paid to the school corporation so does that mean anything to any one of you if you're trying to at The
023Ballot Box figure out what this means for me no it does a great job of showing you what it means for the school and I can illustrate that uh in this next slide a little better so I'll go over here now um so this top box shows the amount of Revenue that the school corporation would receive without the operating referendum so we have the operations Levy of about 1.3 million but unfortunately as I mentioned all of you are at your circuit breaker tax caps which means that over $1.3 million is issued out to all of you uh in the form of credits uh which means that the school corporation doesn't receive any prop property taxes for its operations fund uh which uh is troublesome and that property taxes are the operations fund only source of
024Revenue uh unfortunately School corporations in Indiana um due to the way the state regulates budgets and accounting and Reporting um they assign very specific revenue streams to very specific expenditures which means that um for instance the school corporation levied $3.2 million to make payments on its debt service if it decided that well we could really use some of that money in our operations fund um that's not allowed you can't just simply move money back and forth uh those taxes were levied specifically for the payment of debt service and that's what the state will require those dollars be spent um so as we see here based upon the state's conservative budgeting um you know both of these are regulated by the state and that the school corporation's not allowed to Levy for anything more than they
025absolutely need the operations fund can only grow by a certain percentage year-over-year and then The Debt Service tax rate is calculated to fund whatever you need on your debt service payments and nothing more so um the school corporation should without circuit breaker receive four and a half million dollar a year in property taxes well with the $1.57 five million of credits issued to uh all the homesteads and businesses uh within the community the school corporation actually receives less than $3 million a year so there's that $3 million figure and keep an eye on that because that appears down here as well so now let's take a look at the school corporation's Revenue with the referend well we can see the $1.3 million here is gained by the $1.3 million that's brought in from the referendum
026and if we divide that 1.3 by the 3 million we get 45% I know I said I work with accounts but 45% 46% that's pretty close uh next slide please all right um so I imagine many of you pay your property taxes um I until I started doing this had never actually seen a property tax bill so I wasn't quite sure how to read it um so if you're interested in calculating you know kind of double-checking some of these figures um doing your own calculations or you just want to know how to read a tax bill um these three lines here are your gross assessed value valtion of all of your property divided out based upon which classification that property falls into for purposes of the circuit breaker homesteads in Indiana are kept at 1%
027property tax liability for homesteads which means that if you have um a $100,000 Homestead the most you can pay in property taxes without a referendum is $1,000 uh two the there's a 2% property tax cap which would be if you owned a home that was non not your primary residence uh or if um there's long-term care facility uh an agricultural land would be subject to the 2% and then 3% is essentially any other property kept at 3% um and so this would be the 1% so this gentleman has a homestead valued at $123,500 these should rather closely align to your market value depending on how well the assessor is doing um and then Farmland is brought in here so no farmland and no 3% property a lot of times I see $2,000 $1,500 in here
028in the 3% that's generally a pole barn or some kind of shed but then we're brought to our total gr gross assess valuation now it's very important to understand that that gross assessed valuation particularly for for homeowners is not the value upon which you pay taxes you have to take out all your deductions so if you are uh a homeowner and you are not receiving the homestead deduction the supplemental deduction and actually the mor mortgage deduction just went away but they increased uh the standard deduction to make up for that uh so if you're not receiving those deductions please uh go down and stop at uh what's that office well you could stop at the assessor's office or the auditor's office and get your forms um but when we subtract out $75,000 of those deductions
029this gentleman pays taxes on $48,000 of value so then the total um property tax rate for Lake Station Hobert taxing unit is $531 so if you multiply the 48,000 by the 5.3 and divide by 100 because tax rates are applied per 100 Val dollars of net assessed value you arrive at your gross property tax liability $2,548 74 uh Lake County has what's called local property tax credits it's an additional reduction to your property taxes that you receive because you pay pay income tax uh so that's what this $330 reduction is here and then the circuit breaker further reduces this bill by $720 and as I mentioned um this gentleman's tax bill is capped at at 1% of that value which is $1,235 referendum liability is outside of that circuit breaker tax cap so at $123,000
030gross assessed valuation or $48,000 net assessed valuation uh this gentleman's property taxes increase $260 a year uh for a grand total property tax bill of $1,494 uh next slide please um so bringing this back back to what does the operating referendum mean for uh the average taxpayer well without the referendum $135 the referendum increases this liability by $21 a month um which represents a 21% increase and if we look at things as we know there's an existing operating referendum if we look at what portion that operating referendum comprises of the average tax bill it's 17.4 perc or somewhere in that neighborhood depending on which taxing district you're talking about um but regardless 21% 17.4% both well below 46.3% so just important to understand what those percentages mean and what you're actually voting for on The
031Ballot Box next slide please if you um would prefer not to use a tax calculator if you'd like to get a ballpark idea of what you're paying for uh this operating referendum right now um you could find what you would believe to be the market value of your home or that gross assessed valuation and then we would assume that you would receive those deductions that I talked about for it being your homestead which means that this would be your net assessed valuation or the value upon which you pay taxes and then this would be the monthly impact that you paid in 2023 which is identical to the monthly impact that you would pay in 2024 which is why we have all these zeros over here on the left hand side so uh Mr music's assessed
032value was just above the average so $108,000 is about the average value which translates to $39,000 net assessed value so on average taxpayers uh for a Homestead Property are paying $17.50 a month uh and that is not projected to increase um barring any fluctuations to assess valuation uh next slide please um the school corporation did request we prepare a tax calculator which is available for your use on their website so I'll just run through very briefly how to access it how to use it um you'll go to the school corporation's website at ls. k12.in.us and up at the top is a referendum button on the ribbon go ahead and click that and then this menu will appear and you can select the C tax calculator button and this will appear next slide please uh so
033then when you you do arrive at the tax calculator the first thing you'll want to do is select your taxing district if you're not sure which taxing district you're in you can find your property tax bill um by clicking this link there that'll take you to um the thirdparty software that the Lake County treasurer's office uses to make their property tax information public um so not only could you figure out what taxing district you're in you could also double check our numbers um next you want to enter those gross assessed valuations from the property tax bill as they showed in order so 1% property 2% tax cap and 3% tax cap and then you can come down here and see how much here's that 17.4% again of the operating referendums represents of your total um
034and then finally on the bottom you can see both the monthly and the estimated annual investment that um we would anticipate you'd be making uh as a result of Lake Station Community Schools Opera in referendum I think that's my last slide yeah um so I'm happy to answer any questions I feel like I'm starting to ramble which is dangerous yes sir no iage [Music] ours absolutely okay they want to repeat that I just want to point it out that the assessed value and the fair market value is there's a large gap there but you think your home fair market value is is a lot higher than the assess value I would encourage everybody to go to our website and click on the assessor link all you have to do is type in your name it'll
035pull up your property you click on it it tells you exactly what your assess value is so you don't have to guess because the assess Val is G be a lot less than what you think your fair micr value is thank you that is true um unfortunately I just bought a house so they're rather close but of course all right well if uh anything comes to mind following the meeting please feel free to reach out to Dr KP Le or other members of the administration uh they know how to get in contact with you thank you thank you Sean I appreciate Sean coming this evening and making this presentation as to how your taxes as well as the average property tax increase so it says in our referendum question how that is calculated what I'd
036like for you to remember from Sean's presentation is two things the first thing I'd like for you to remember is the where it says in the question the average property tax increase is 46.3 one% remember when you're figuring averages there'll be some lower than 46 6.31% and there'll be some that are higher so the average is kind of the Middle Point the 46.3 one% is the increase of the property taxes that you pay that will now go toward the schools it's not an increase in property taxes of all the property taxes you already pay 46. 31% is paid to the schools it's not an increase the second thing I'd like for you to remember is on our website go to the tax calculator people like to see dollars and cents they want to know what
037is it going to cost me and my family and my household go to the lake station website click on the referendum button click on the tax calculator be sure to put in your assessed valuation of your home get enter or return and it will show you what you pay monthly and what you pay for the year what I'm asking our community to do is give up one pizza a month and what you would pay for one pizza because what I'm asking you you to invest in our schools because that's on average what it's going to come out to a cost of a pizza I think our students are worth that I hope you agree getting back to your packet I want to talk about some things that first I'm excited about if the referendum passes
038on Tuesday looking in your packet at the items that are highlighted in green those are the things that we will be able to continue to do and build upon with the renewed referendum that would be approved on November 7th again not reading all of them but some important things transportation to and from school and to the boys and girls Girls Club after school and our late bus will be able to continue athletes will not have to pay to use the bus for away games field trip costs for the transportation will continue to be paid by the school not individual students Edison College and Career Readiness coordinator we will be able to keep that person Elementary counselors will stay edicon counselors will stay high ability instruction that we do in our elementary schools that teacher will
039be able to stay and continue to offer that high ability or gifted and talented program for our students reading coaches they will be able to stay in the elementary schools music art physical education stem will be able to remain most importantly we'll be able to keep all of our teachers all of our staff intact we'll be able to keep all of our prayer professionals and in addition hire additional instructional aids to help our students we'll be able to keep our elementary library clerks our elementary nurses AIDS currently we have a nurse aid in the elementary schools prior to 2017's referendum we did not have a nurse or any person of training in our elementary schools the person we had traveled if the referendum is not successful on Tuesday then we look at the items that
040are in red Number One Transportation to and from school to the Boys and Girls Club after school and the late bus will be eliminated students and parents will be charged for bus driver and fuel cost for field trips Elementary counselors and Edison counselors will be laid off Elementary High ability teacher laid off reading coaches at the elementaries laid off Edison College and Career writing to help our seniors get prepared to go to college laid off Elementary specials such as art music phys physical education stem those programs will be reduced approximately 20 teachers will be laid off athletes pay the transportation fees for the buses to take them to away games eliminate Library clerks at the elementary schools eliminate a nurses Aid at the elementary schools eliminate the nurse aid at Edison I think you get
041the idea it will be devastating to our school district absolutely devastating it will be paralyzing to our school district the last thing I want to draw your attention to and then we will be happy to take questions on May the 8th 2023 our school board approved a resolution to have a referendum placed on the ballot next Tuesday in that resolution they also had to approve a revenue spending plan that Revenue spending plan is the last page of your packet please look at it with me we are asking for an operations referendum should we be successful on Tuesday how will that referendum money be spent look at the plan number one $466,000 will go directly for transportation expenses 31 will be to maintain and expand academic programs 332,000 will be used to recruit and retain our
042highly qualified teachers and staff we in Indiana are experiencing a teacher shortage we must be able to have money to keep our highly qualified teachers and attract highly qualified teachers to our school district because our students come second to none our students deserve the very best teachers and staff that we could afford 133,134 Security 66586 will be for other educational needs which will be used to expand our current academic programs that totals 1, 331,750townhouse they are misinformed the school board approved this Revenue spending plan May the 8th 2023 and this is how the referendum money is allocated and how it is used the last comment I would like to make is I have heard that some people are under the impression that if the referendum here in Lake Station schools passes on Tuesday it will
043eliminate the tax caps that Sean talked about the 1% cap on your home 2% cap on rental property businesses 3% cap on Farmland those tax Caps or circuit breakers is embedded in the Indiana State con institution no election for a referendum anywhere in the state of Indiana can overturn those tax caps because they are embedded in the state constitution so I wanted to bring that to everyone's attention I've talked a lot I appreciate Sean coming and giving us valuable information remember 46 31% is the average of money paid to the school district of your already paid property taxes and utilize the tax calculator that we have at our website I want to thank you for coming I do very sincerely appreciate it I hope I was able to give good information to help you make
044a informed decision on the referendum that Lake Station schools is asking for the operating referendum and I encourage everyone please go out and vote on Tuesday November the 7th and with that if there are any questions or comments or suggestions um I would very much be interested in hearing those at this time Margie wait wait wait because we're recording I need a microphone thank you I just want to make a comment because I'm the um ACC student bus driver I pick them up here at the school at 11 every day and take them to Hammond sit out there for two and a half hours and eat and Bre and work crosswords then I pick them up and bring him back here by 3 o'clock to catch their buses to take them home I have 22
045students on the buses this year these kids have the they're the best and the programs there are excellent if we don't have transportation for these kids I don't know how many parents could afford to be taking them every day into Hammond and back as well as coming to the school it would be so it would make me so sad because they deserve this opportunity and that's all I wanted to say thank you Margie uh just a general comment um follow up Dr cripp remind me so there are the 1% 2% 3% circuit breakers that everyone in this room would be eligible for um as mentioned just the if the operating referendum is successful just the operating referendum tax rate would be exempt from those one one two and 3% caps there is an additional cap
046um which is really the it's called a true circuit breaker because even the referendum isn't exempt from it and that is if you are 65 or older there is a 65 or older circuit breaker that is based upon the amount that your tax bill increases year over year over year and um it takes into account things like the assessed valuation of your home and your income so those are things that I can't model because I don't know your specific tax situation but just know if you are 65 or older uh the information the the impacts uh discussed tonight may be higher uh than what you would experience thank you Sean at your place I have also given you a small type index card it is written in English on one side in Spanish on the
047other this is basically what I call a cheat sheet that you can take with you that basically outlines what we are looking forward to continue doing should the referendum be successful on Tuesday there are some extra ones on that small back table take extra ones if you would like also you will find a sticker proud Eagle Lake Station Community Schools if you peel off the back it reveals the sticky part of it that you can put on your shirt your jersey your hoodie whatever you like uh I invite you to take that with you there are also some extra ones on the back table take as many as you would like uh show your Eagles pride and show your pride at Lake Station Community School students who really work very hard each and every day
048and I'm really proud of our students and I'm proud of our staff and our teachers that uh represent our school districts and our strengths every day for our students Kevin not him this time um I was just wondering if be willing to guarantee that if the referendum passes school bus service will continue I can guarantee that hi there I am a teacher and a Lake Station resident I do want to say that I think it's very important for our kids to have bus transportation because we are one of many schools that do not have to pay for their bus transportation so that is a big issue for me on this refer referendum because I really think that um our parents are not even thinking about that they would have to start pay for bus services
049thank you Mr music hello Dr cripper can you tell us how this is not just a Lake Station issue that how most schools in Indiana are passing a referendum how many in Lake County and our in our neighboring schools have passed a referendum it's not just Lake Station as most schools are are trying to pass a referendum you give us a list possibly who's done it who's trying for one this election cycle and who has in the past in Northwest Indiana uh thank you Greg for that question uh yes School District seeking referendums is not unique to Lake Station schools school districts here in Northwest Indiana that have successfully won a referendum those communities such as Val perzo Community School District Chesterton Community School District in fact Chesterton has two referendum that their Community is
050paying for Monster Community Schools has successfully passed four referendums because the need is there at monster Community Schools and currently on the ballot next Tuesday across our state there are 29 school districts that are asking for a referendum it could be an operating referendum such as what we are asking for it could be a capital referendum to build or remodel schools or it could be a safety referendum those funds geared specifically for School Safety and Security so those are the three types of referendums 29 school districts caral down by Indianapolis for example they are seeking a referendum so this is not a Lake Station issue this is a Statewide issue our sister School River Forest has a referendum I believe HT has a referendum uh River Forest our neighboring School District yes they have a
051referendum uh and they have also renewed their referendum about two years ago so they have that referendum Crownpoint Community Schools has a referendum uh our neighbors uh to the West Gary Community Schools has a referendum uh Griffith Handover Community Schools Lake Central School City of Hammond and Hammond is also asking for two referendums on their ballot this coming Tuesday hbert monster that I've mentioned uh Lake Ridge marville East Chicago School City of Whiting Whiting has a referendum on the ballot Tuesday as I already mentioned Hammond has two referendum questions on the ballot so again this just illustrates that this is not a Lake Station schools issue this is a state issue and we have become referendum State thank you for that question thank you Sean um I just wanted to come up for a moment
052because the tax information you saw tonight was mine I wanted to make sure that everyone had an example of someone here living in Lake Station um my as Sean said my assessed value is slightly above average so most people are paying less than what I'm paying um I don't think what I'm paying is unfair um and Ralph is it possible to pull up my tax information again for me please um while he's trying to grab that um I just wanted to say that when we're looking at mine being a little over $20 um I mentioned at the Schoolboard meeting last night one example is my Netflix bill I mean it's probably about 18 bucks a month it's not the only streaming service I have either so I'm paying more than that for streaming services I
053don't think we're asking a whole lot to make sure that our kids are taken care of our teachers are taken care of the rest of the staff here are taken care of um obviously um with some of this here one thing I wanted to point out was that my property tax liability is this 1494 34 um I understand this may be your mileage may vary a little bit on this because I can't say what everyone's tax situation is but after factoring in the um tax cap 1% and then adding the referendum back in I'm really just paying what my original tax liability would have been without the property tax cap and I mean I'm with everyone else I like to spend less money if I can or spend more money on the things I want
054to spend money on but um this is really just Shoring up a shortage that was created by how the the tax Gap was implemented and how it affects the schools and I can tell you right now the $20 a month the average was what about 17 you said um $17 a month on average is a lot less than you're going to pay if you have to take your kid to school every day and miss a half an hour work here leave early to pick them up from school it's going to be a lot harder for you to try to navigate those things and you're going to be spending a lot more money that way um you'll be spending an awful lot more money you know at every turn and if you're really that concerned about
055how high your tax bill is I can assure you one one great way to lower your tax bill is to tank your home values and to do that would be to hurt your schools as much as you would by not voting for this referendum I I can't illustrate that enough it's uh good schools bring people to our city and we have we have some good schools here we have great teachers we have great people here and I think if we can continue the trajectory we're on we will grab more people bring more people in uh I hear all the people wanting a grocery store wanting a bank back things like that that won't happen if we don't have good schools and we're just going to hurt the whole Community if we don't continue to support
056our school the way we need to and I look at the clock we have about two minutes left before the end of our program so if there are other questions or comments people would like to make you are certainly welcome to do that but if not I'll let you go a little early thank you again for coming I really do appreciate it our administrators Sean and myself we will be staying behind a little bit so if you do have a question you'd like to ask any of us please feel free and thank you again for coming uh take your sticker please wear it proudly take your little cheat sheet take it with you and wear proudly and thanks again for coming