Special elections in February will cost public school districts in Clallam County between $52,000 and $60,000.
Both the Port Angeles School District and the Quillayute Valley School District in Forks have placed replacement maintenance and operations property tax levies on the Feb. 8 ballot.
The Port Angeles district will pay between $45,000 and $50,000 to run the special election, but the final amount won’t be known until after the election is over, said Clallam County Auditor Patty Rosand.
The Quillayute Valley School District will pay between $7,000 and $10,000, she said.
Both districts are asking for a small increase over the property tax levies now in place, which will expire at the end of 2011.
If approved, the levies would appear on 2012 property tax bills.
The special election ballot will be sent out Jan. 19 in the all-mail election, Rosand said.
The Port Angeles School District ballot will be sent to 18,837 voters.
The Quillayute Valley School District ballot in Clallam County will be sent to 3,011 voters.
Quillayute Valley School District also has about 160 voters in Jefferson County, said Donna Eldridge, county auditor.
In Jefferson County, Quillayute Valley will pay about $320 for the special election, she said.
Both districts had money set aside in their budgets to run the special elections because it was known that the levies would expire.
In Port Angeles, voters will decide whether or not to approve a four-year levy which would collect about $8.2 million in the first year and successively a little more each year.
Although the amount of the levy would go up a little each year, the estimated rate of $2.65 per $1,000 assessed valuation is expected to stay the same.
That means that the owner of a $200,000 home in Port Angeles would pay $530 a year in property taxes to the school district — about $44 more than the current levy.
“It is vitally important to pass this levy,” said Steve Methner, co-chairman of the Port Angeles Citizens for Education committee, which formed to support the levy.
“It benefits the entire community of Port Angeles.”
The revenue would pay for extracurricular activities and transportation for those activities, said Jim Schwob, business director for the district.
It also would help pay for programs not fully funded by the state, he said.
For example, the state pays for special education, but only up to a certain percentage of student population.
If a district exceeds that percentage, it must make up the difference on its own, Schwob said.
In Forks, the levy amount was increased by about $60,000 per year, in order to bring the revenue up to the level that would get the most state-matching dollars, Quillayute Valley School District Superintendent Diana Reaume said.
The two-year levy would bring in $626,348 each year with an estimated rate of $1.41 per $1,000 assessed valuation.
That means that the owner of a $200,000 home would pay about $282 per year in property taxes.
“We haven’t increased in quite a while,” Reaume said.
“We only increased it to that level because doing so will leverage an additional $725,000 to the district in state dollars.”
If the levy passes, the district hopes to reinstate its music program, which was eliminated five years ago.
“We had to eliminate that when there was quite a budget crunch and then we had to do several [reductions in force] because of state budget cuts and eliminated the program altogether,” Reaume said.
The levy also would pay for replacing the roof of one of the high school gymnasiums and upgrading the heating system at Forks Elementary School.
“It also would help with technology upgrades,” Reaume said.
“When we are outfitting a whole new computer lab, we also have to look at the electrical circuits.”
In Jefferson County, voters will be asked Feb. 8 to approve a sales tax increase of 0.3 percent, bringing the tax rate up to 9 percent, as well as property tax levies for the Port Townsend and Chimacum school districts.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.