FWCS $500M Facilities Upgrade and the Impact on Property Taxes

Cross-Posted at Left of Centrist:

I decided to put together a few charts to show people what the implication is for their property taxes if the board recommends the $500M plan coming from the Yellow Ribbon Task Force.

The first chart shows how much of our current property taxes go to Fort Wayne Community Schools - 42.5%.



Now under the $500M plan the school tax rate is estimated to go up .532 which would be a 36% increase in the SCHOOL tax rate and a 15.3% increase in the TOTAL property tax rate. This increase is shown in the next chart.



As you can see under the new proposal over half of our property tax dollars would now be going to FWCS.

Now I've heard a lot about how FWCS currently has the lowest tax rate of the 4 school districts in the county. While this is true, the next chart shows that under the $500M proposal FWCS rates would jump from the lowest to the highest - 25% HIGHER than the next highest district Southwest Allen County Schools.

(Note: Blogger keeps butchering my chart and removing the labels on each axis; the x-axis labels from left to right should read - FWCS, NACS, EACS, SACS, FWCS $500M Proposal - and they Y-axis labels should go from 0.0 to 2.5 in 0.5 steps.)



What this means is that if you own a $138,000 home you will be paying roughly $45 MORE every month to support this new project. (Proposed tax increase taken from the 2-5-07 school board presentation found here)