LEVY ELECTIONS DON’T all play by the same rules.
Two levy issues will be on North Olympic Peninsula primary election ballots, going in the mail to registered voters July 28.
Throughout Clallam County, voters will be asked to lift the North Olympic Library System’s levy lid.
Within the Port Townsend city limit, voters will be asked to approve a new levy as a dedicated funding source for fire service.
Forget about approving a stated dollar amount to be collected at a rate that fluctuates according to assessed property values until the levy expires after a set number of years, as is true for school levies.
These are library and fire district levies that ask voters to approve a set rate that will be permanent unless changed by vote of the people.
The Port Townsend proposal would establish a new levy, matching the $1 levy approved by East Jefferson Fire-Rescue voters outside the city last year.
Clallam’s North Olympic Library System seeks a lid lift, affecting a levy approved in 1978 that will continue to be collected — albeit at a lower rate — even if voters reject the lid lift.
Lid lifts are an aberration resulting from the property tax cap instituted by Initiative 747, which was approved by voters statewide in 2001, ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in 2007, but largely restored by the state Legislature in 2008, in response to voter outrage.
The cap states that the dollar amount each taxing entity collects cannot increase by more than 1 percent per year without voter approval.
That cap destabilized junior taxing districts’ revenue stream, which formerly grew naturally as property values expanded.
The cap overrules voter-approved rates, instead tying revenue to the amount collected the previous year.
The result is a steadily dropping levy rate, producing insufficient revenue to cover inflation.
Since 2001, inflation has averaged 2.3 percent per year, while all junior taxing districts in the state have been limited to collecting no more than 1 percent more than the previous year’s property tax revenue.
In Clallam County, Olympic Medical Center was the first to feel the pinch, recalls County Auditor Patty Rosand, who had to learn a new set of rules when confronted by the hospital district’s lid lift, which raised Olympic Medical’s rate to 44 cents.
This year, the North Olympic Library System is collecting 33 cents per $1,000 of assessed property valuation, although voters approved a rate of 50 cents 32 years ago.
For 30 years, the 50-cents rate “sustained the library,” Don Zanon, a member of the NOLS board, told me.
It would still sustain the system, he said, if not for the effect of the cap.
NOLS is asking for restoration of that same 50-cents rate.
“It will again be subject to the 1 percent rule, so there will be gradual erosion, but we anticipate it will carry us for 10 years,” Zanon said.
Presently, NOLS is using reserve funds to maintain library operations at reduced levels, with efficiencies and temporary cuts such as two weeklong employee furloughs.
“If the levy passes, we will use the rest of our reserves to bridge over to 2012,” when increased revenue from the 50 cents rate starts flowing, he said.
“The lid lift really is a bridge to the future,” he said.
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Martha Ireland was a Clallam County commissioner from 1996 through 1999 and is the secretary of the Republican Women of Clallam County, among other community endeavors.
Martha and her husband, Dale, live on their Carlsborg-area farm with their critters.
Her column appears Fridays.
E-mail her at irelands@olypen.com.
