Gila County property owners received a bit of shock this last week when their property tax bills came in the mail. Due to an error in calculation,  the Globe Unified School District portion of the bill was calculated at $4.88 per $100 of assessed value, or almost double the $2.80%  that it was expected to be.

The Property Tax grew to a monstrous size and caused questions - which led to the discovery of an error

Upset by the large increase, Globe resident Tom Conto called the Globe School District, who was unaware of the error.  “We thank those in the community for alerting us to this problem,” said Globe School District Superintendent Dr. Ron Nelson.

After consulting with the Gila County School Superintendent’s office and the Gila County Treasurer’s office, an emergency meeting was called at the Mofford Center by Globe School Board this morning   to quickly fix the problem. Board members signed a resolution (see below) to request that the Gila County Board of Supervisors recalculate and revise the rate.

Today’s Globe School Board meeting began with a “Truth in Taxation” hearing, where School Superintendent Dr. Ron Nelson explained to the public what had happened.

Globe resident Caryl Fuller asked if they did not need to have a 48 hour notice before this meeting, to which Board Clerk Frankie Dalmolin replied that there only needed to be 24 hour’s notice, which was met.

Board member Jacquie Cline Griffin thanked the public for pointing out the error. “It’s easy to call the media before us, so I thank Tom Conto for coming to us first,” she said.

The normal procedure for calculating the school district’s tax rate starts with the school district, which sends information based on the annual budget as okayed by the Governing Board to the County School Superintendent’s office. The County School Superintendent’s office then passes the information to the County Assessor’s office, and a tax rate is set. After okayed by the County Board of Supervisors, the County Treasurer’s office sends out the bills.

Where things went terribly wrong was when the State of Arizona skipped their payments to school districts this last year, due to their own shortfalls in this economy. By law, the year’s tax rate must be set on the third Monday in August (August 16 this year). When the State skipped six payments this last year, which was expected to be $750,000 each, the shortfall caused the school district rate to come to 4.88%.  On August 16th the County Board of Supervisors approved the rate, and the County Treasurer’s office sent the bills to the printer. Then on August 27th,  payment from the State in the amount of $1.4-million to the Globe School District,  was received at the County Treasurer’s office!  So now the whole process, beginning with the Globe Unified School District, will have to start over to revise the tax rate. All parties hope to present the Board of Supervisors with a new rate to approve at their next meeting, and revised property tax bills can be sent out.

Dr. Nelson points out that there is really nowhere to “put blame” in this error. “Everybody did what they had to do with the information they had at the time,” he said. He also said he was pleased that all entities involved quickly gathered  and worked together to fix the problem, from the public to the school district, County Schools office and Treasurer’s office.

According to Debi Savage, Gila County Treasurer, revised bills  for those in the Globe School District only, will be mailed out  2-4 weeks after the Board of Supervisors okays revision.  Those who have already paid the first half of their bill will have their second payment reduced from the revised amount. Those who paid their bill in full will be issued a refund. Anyone with questions about their bill can call the Gila County Treasurer’s office at 402-8702.

Gila County property owners will still see an increase in their tax bills, as many portions were raised. The largest of these is for Gila County itself, as their tax rate rose from 3.75% last year to 4.19% this year.

The recent letter from the State Auditor General’s office dated Dec 15th refers to “significant deficiencies in internal controls that indicate the District has not complied with USFR (Uniform System of Financial Records) for the school year ending June 2008.  GlobeUSD_12-09(2)

The School Board consisting of Jacque Cline Griffin,Frankie Dalmolin, Cayci Vucksanovich, Anna Harmon and Dale Fletcher discuss the presentation by Nelson *The State has given the District 90 days (counting down from Dec 15th...so we're now at about 60 days) to correct the issues before an on-site visit by State officials.

In the letter, the State outlines multiple issues with procurement and tracking student attendance. Nelson explained that in 2004 the District also received a 90-day letter outlining similar problems and that those problems were addressed with a “bandaid”. Additional letters from the State which cited problems with improperly tracking assets, ordering goods and services without purchase orders, and mis-reporting student attendance have further been addressed with stop-gap measures which failed to be internalized by the overall District.

“The time for band-aide solutions is over,” says Nelson. If the District doesn’t identify, institute and carry out significant changes in its purchasing and personnel record-keeping they will be flirting with the very real possibility of being taken over by the State.

It appears the District has been over inflating attendance figures for some time. That means they have received more money from the State than was due to the District. “Someone is going to want some money back.” says Nelson.

Dr. Ron Nelson, Chief Administrative Officer for GUSD, addresses the Board on Wednesday night regarding the most recent 90-Day letter from the State Auditor General. It pertains to the school year ending June 2008, and cites deficiencies in both procurement and personnel records.

Nelson spent a a good deal of time at the podium answering questions by the Board and talking about examples. IE: If you are going on a trip, you can’t just run in and pull $800 from the revolving fund. When we send teachers and administrators on trips we will know in advance what the rooms and conference costs will be. We will beable to send a check with them and they can pay for it when they check in.”

Board President, Cayci Vuksanovich acknowledged the problems which Nelson identified and said “…other schools have managed to work with these guidelines successfully. So there is no reason why we shouldn’t beable to as well.”

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