Beatrice Public Schools Logo

 

The Board of Education of Beatrice Public Schools #15 is sending a clarifying statement regarding the tax levy that has been circulated recently on social media. 

The district levy is capped at $1.05 by state statute when you add the general fund levy ($0.909) and the building fund levy ($0.139) together to total $1.048.  No school in the state can go over that levy of $1.05 between the general and building fund.  

The past year, the district had a general fund levy of 94-cents and the coming year, that levy would decrease to 90-cents under the proposed budget. The district's building fund levy would go from 10.6 cents to nearly 14-cents.  Increased valuations set by the county will increase our revenue, it is not a tax asking increase but a by-product of the increase in valuations.

“Regardless of the new building project we would have moved our levy to the building fund to cover needed maintenance and reconditioning of the old buildings. In short it’s a choice to recondition old buildings and continue to operate inefficiently in areas of personnel and safety, or upgrade to a new building that meets the goals of providing a building that meets code in 1. Safety and Security, 2.Equitable Services for ALL Students, 3. Efficiency of operations in personnel and programs management”, Trusty said. 

The Quality Capital Purpose Undertaking Fund (QCPUF) is a fund utilized by schools outside of the district $1.05 levy to make improvements to buildings. BPS utilized this fund in 2010-11 to make lighting and roofing upgrades to buildings in the district.  This fund is capped by state statute at $0.03 cents.  It has been in place since the 2011 budget cycle. This coming year BPS is levying $0.026 cents into the fund to continue to pay off the repairs made in 2009-10. This levy will be in place until 2030 in order to pay off the debt service for the work.

Therefore the levies are sorted and displayed below in accordance with state statute.

2021-2022 TOTALS/$100 Valuation                         2022-23 TOTALS/$100 Valuation

General Fund         $0.943                                           General Fund          $0.909

Building Fund        $.1060                                            Building Fund        $0.139

Bond Fund             $0.000                                            Bond Fund              $0.000

QCPUF Fund          $0.026                                            QCPUF Fund           $0.026

Total Levy             $1.076                                             Total Levy              $1.075

 

*Note : The $0.07 - $0.12 cent bond fund assessed from the High School Bond Project was paid off and eliminated in 2019. Which is why there is no levy for the bond fund.

We hope this clarifies and explains the misinformation. 

 

Sincerely,

Eric Trusty

BPS Board President