SEQUIM — Citizens for Sequim Schools members will present arguments for a proposed levy for the Sequim School District on Tuesday.
The meeting, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Clallam County, will be at 1:30 p.m. at the Sequim Library, 630 N. Sequim Ave.
Citizens for Sequim Schools members Michael McAleer, Virginia O’Neil and Sarah Bedinger will have a PowerPoint presentation and offer handouts. Audience members will be able to ask questions of them.
The proposal is for a three-year levy that would replace the one expiring in 2010.
If approved in February, it would raise property taxes across the Sequim School District, which reaches from Blue Mountain Road to Gardiner.
The all-mail levy election is set for Feb. 9, with ballots to be mailed to Sequim School District residents Jan. 22.
The present levy is 72.1 cents per $1,000 in assessed valuation.
During the first year, the new levy would mean 87 cents in property tax for every $1,000 in assessed valuation, so on a $250,000 home, the levy would add $217.50 to the annual bill.
In year two, the rate would rise to $1.03 per thousand, or $257.50 per year in property tax, and in the third year it would go to $1.18 per thousand, or $295 on that quarter-million-dollar house.
What levy funds
Sequim Schools Superintendent Bill Bentley earlier this month gave members of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce a picture of what the levy money funds.
The biggest piece, $1.93 million, goes toward teachers’ salaries and benefits.
Some $120,000 funds the buses that take children to school and on field trips.
Another $160,000 is for textbooks, while $160,000 funds technology and $340,000 goes to extracurricular activities.
During the first year of the replacement levy, which would be the 2010-2011 academic year, Bentley hopes to use the funds to restore teaching positions that were cut this year, buy new textbooks and possibly restore some programs hurt in the 2009 cutting.
In the second and third years, levy revenue would go toward restoring the school nurse, a counselor and other positions and programs that were taken out of the district budget this year.
Bentley predicted that the district’s need for a levy will increase because of state budget woes and declining enrollment.
Bentley reported Sequim’s current enrollment at 2,891, and projected that it will slip to about 2,600 three years from now.
The state pays $4,800 annually per student.
The district has an annual budget of $25.1 million and a staff of 354 people.
