By KEITH GRANT
Nor was it an easy year to understand the budget's effect on local taxes. School district officials throughout the county were reluctant to give out information on tax rates this year, afraid that voters would misinterpret the suddenly soaring rates. Due to the county's reassessment of home values, tax rates are largely skewed in comparison with years past. In many areas, the tax rate is double what it was a year ago, but because reassessment cut many home values in half, individual tax increases may not be as large as one would think from looking strictly at one's tax rate.
According to information from the county assessor's office, for residents in the Long Beach City School District the tax rate for 2003-04 is estimated to be about $101 per $100 of assessed valuation.
To compute the impact the proposed budget will have on his wallet next year, a homeowner should divide his home's assessed value by 100 and multiply that number by the tax rate. The assessed value is approximately 1 percent of the home's market value, as determined during the county's recent reassessment.
According to Friedman, had there been no reassessment this year, the tax rate would have actually increased only 5.2 percent. However, reassessment has made it impossible to compare the new numbers directly with the current year.
The superintendent did estimate that the average tax increase for district residents would be slightly under 10 percent. He stressed, though, that it will vary greatly from homeowner to homeowner. Some could see much larger increases, while others could experience a decrease in taxes. That would have happened, he said, even had the district presented an identical budget to the current one.
As has become the norm in recent years, the driving forces behind the 5.9 percent budget increase are contractual salaries and mandated fixed costs, such as health insurance and the district's required payment to the state Teachers Retirement Plan.
Certain fixed costs went up tremendously, Friedman said. With the stock market struggling, the burden to cover expenses such as the retirement plan has fallen as per state law directly to individual school districts.
Adding to the district's burden is the loss of about $350,000 in state aid. While that figure is a far cry from the $1.5 million cut the governor originally proposed, it still amounts to an 8.9 percent loss in aid from the current year.
