Questions Seeking Answers, Again
At this previous meeting of the Extension District Board Bob Howlett had wanted to make his concerns heard, but he got his chance this past month.
By Greg Wells
CCN-Editor
“I’m just wanting to see the record of how they calculated the tax rates,” said Bob Howlett.
This isn’t the first time Howlett has had questions that it took a while to sort out.
“Well yeah, the water district had problems with their record keeping,” Howlett said. “but now they’ve got everything sorted out.”
As a man who worked in military procurement, Howlett is particular about things being done properly, and this recent difficulty with the extension office was just one of several he has had with local boards.
County Judge-Executive Luke King said of the man, “he just wants to see that everything is done by the law.”
Howlett said that there have been issues with the minutes of meetings at a number of the boards where he has sought access to open records.
“Heck, a lot of the time the minutes aren’t even signed,” He added.
The county water District, tourism board, and Chamber of Commerce are just a few of the local organizations the retiree has visited.
“I just think that a lot of the time no one has told them that they have to keep these records and make them available to the public anytime they want to see them,” Howlett said.
In a separate interview King agreed with his assessment. He said that he didn’t feel that groups like The Kentucky League of Cities and the Kentucky Association of Counties, along with other such groups have been providing education on how to do the jobs these board members are doing.
One of the big contentions Howlett had with the extension board was the calculations used to arrive at the tax rates they have been charging.
He pointed to a spreadsheet taken from his own property tax records showing that according to his calculations many times the extension service increases were, at the least, very close to the 4% cap.
King later explained that that cap is the rate at which a taxing entity can face a rollback petition and vote by the public.
He explained that the cost of such a vote would be between $6,000 and $10,000 for any taxing district that had a successful petition filed against it.
King added another explanation regarding something often misunderstood, the compensating rate. That is a rate that is intended to bring in an equal amount of money in the coming year as in the previous year for a taxing district.
With continued growth in the county property values and additional homes being built he said that often results in a lower tax bill for those with older homes due to the rate being spread over more taxpayers.
However, he indicated that often times it results in a net increase in funds for those taxing districts.
And as far as a district “keeping the same rate,” he said that could be a significant increase for those districts, even though individual taxpayers might not see that much of an effect, again because of the increased number of property taxpayers.
“I just wanna see what they based these rates on,” Howlett concluded.
