The previously approved budget represented an increase in the district’s total property taxes of $ 524,654, or 1.32%. The tax rate of approximately $ 14.21 per $ 1,000 tax base in this original budget was lowered to just under $ 13.85 per $ 1,000 tax base with Monday’s promotion. The revised amount reduces tax revenue for the current year by $ 475,346, or 1.19%.
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“We would not have reduced this if we had not considered it sustainable,” said board member Lyle Schmitt, also on the finance committee.
For “a number of years – at least 10 – the board has tried to be as efficient with taxpayers’ money as possible,” he added, and it has been a decade since the Waterloo Schools raised less than expected in 2021-22. “I think this is a clear message that we want to keep encouraging investment in Waterloo.”
The reduction means Waterloo’s tax rate is below the Cedar Falls Community Schools’ approved tax base of $ 13.95 per $ 1,000 for the next fiscal year and near the bottom of the 15 school districts on the Urban Education Network, the largest in the state of Die Tafel.
This translates into lower tax burdens for individual property owners, provided their estimated valuations have not increased. Waterloo Schools’ share of the tax burden and year-over-year decrease to an estimated $ 100,000 is $ 781 for residential real estate, about $ 2 less. $ 935 for apartment buildings, about $ 77 less; $ 1,164 for agriculture, about $ 7 less; $ 1,246 for commercial / industrial, about $ 32 less.