Warrant articles paid for with unassigned fund balance are paid for with tax dollars

Warrant articles paid for with unassigned fund balance have a tax impact.  They are paid for with tax dollars.  The warrant articles state that no NEW taxation is required.  The warrant articles do not state that no taxation is required.  Taxation IS required.  The school district has over-taxed you and is going to keep those tax dollars to pay for items in warrant articles funded with unassigned fund balance.  The voters can vote in favor of this, or they can vote against it.  Either way, tax dollars are being used to pay for the items in these warrant articles.  For those who think no taxes are required, the obvious question becomes, where do you think this money comes from?  

When this over-taxation technically occurs is not the point.  Maybe in happens late in the prior calendar year.  Maybe it occurs very early in the current calendar year.  The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter.  You pick a year, and you stick with the same accounting method year after year, so that meaningful comparisons can be made between years.  This is a foundational principle of GAAP, or Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.  It is known as the Principle of Consistency.  This is what the tax estimator does.  In designing the tax estimator, the choice was made to account for these warrant articles in this fashion.  When the money is technically collected is irrelevant.  The important point is, these articles require tax dollars for funding.  The most accurate way to show this in a tax estimator is to present them in the same, consistent manner, year after year.  This is what the tax estimator does. 

In terms of the design of the tax estimator, there are two ways to show the impact of these articles.  The first way is to show them having no tax impact when they pass, and a negative tax impact when they fail.  The other way is to show them having a positive tax impact when they pass, and no tax impact when they fail.  The end result is the same, as long as they are presented in the same, consistent way, year after year.  The tax estimator presents these articles as having a positive tax impact when they pass, and no tax impact when they fail.  This choice was made because this is what people experience as taxpayers.  Warrant articles that pass cost money.  Warrant articles that fail do not cost money. 

Does the tax estimator accurately calculate your tax bill when the actual tax bill amount is known?  The answer is yes.  Look at the actual numbers for 2022 and 2023 in the tax estimator, and compare them to your 2022 and 2023 tax bills.  The tax estimator shows these warrant articles that passed as having a positive tax impact.  This is accurate because tax dollars needed to be raised to fund them.  The tax estimates for 2024 are presented in the same way as they were in 2022 and 2023.