School levy passes in a landslide

Voters in La Conner School District approved a $2.5 million property tax increase that will be collected over two years starting in 2018.

In a special election that ended at 8 p.m. Tuesday, a levy to fund operations and educational programs was passing with more than 61 percent of the vote.

The numbers in the early returns were 660 yes votes and 418 no.

One of the goals of the levy is to enhance teacher pay to make La Conner Schools more competitive with other school districts in attracting and retaining good educators.

The La Conner levy will add about $2.50 per $1,000 of assessed value to the property tax bills of people whose homes and land are taxable. Most of the registered voters in the district live on land that the district cannot tax, including tribal land and property owned by housing authorities.

Meanwhile, the Washington State Legislature has been working on ways to fully fund basic education after the state Supreme Court ruled that relying on local levies for that purpose is unconstitutional.

A plan put forth by the State Senate, SB 5607, would add $1.80 per $1,000 of a home’s value to the state levy rate, which is currently about $2.04.

The money would be distributed to school districts throughout the state. According figures from the state’s Office for Financial Management, La Conner School District would gain about $875 per student, for a total of $18,309 per student while the district’s taxpayers would see a savings of $1.54 over the levy rate they were paying in 2016.

According to Laudan Espinoza, spokesman for the state Senate Majority Coalition Caucus, should the senate plan become law, the voter approved levy would be eliminated in 2019.

After that voters would be able to approve levies of up to 10 percent of a district’s budget to pay for athletics and other enhancements.

The ballot count released by the Elections Department of the Skagit County Auditor’s Officer on Tuesday is preliminary and included only ballots that were on hand. More ballots are expected to be counted today, Wednesday, and in coming days. The election will be certified and the results will be final on Feb. 24.