Well here it is. When I ran for school board in 2008, I warned that our budgetary practices would get us into trouble. Current and candidate board members a like tried to tell me that running a deficit and running up debt didn't matter, as it wouldn't affect the daily operations. They screwed this up long enough and bad enough that our options are to either fire teachers and close buildings or jack up our taxes. It is a damned shame that only one guy on the board has been willing to fight budgetary issues before now.

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/laporte...e97d71bcaf.html

Step one to any referendum ought to be the resignations of any board member who was elected before 2012. I'd let Burgwald stay because he is the one guy who has really fought budgetary increases over the years.

Can I ask why MCAS with a declinging enrollment still has 3 Junior High Schools feeding one High School? A tough decision has to be made at some point. Can we close Elston Middle School, knock it down and put a new Police Station and Library at that site? Tie in a plan for the South Shore tracks and have a collective effort to fix some of the issues facing the city.

Personally I would love to see enrollment numbers versus capacity for each school.

There is more at the Elston location than just middle school. There is the adult basic education program, plus the MCAS vocational program, too. I see your point, but Barker would be a better location to close in terms of demographics than Elston. Plus, a police station on Barker Rd would put it more in the center of the City.

Then the "city" kids could go to Elston and the "country" kids could go to Krueger.
Besides that, my grandparents graduated from Elston, my parents graduated from Elston, I graduated from Elston, I'd hate to see completely gotten rid of....

We are going to have the same results that we had when we voted on the 05-19-09 $38 million Career and Technical referendum.

http://www.citybythelake.org/forums/index....7&hl=career center&st=20

School board vice president Jim Kintzele said the board is working together and has hired a consultant to educate voters on the need for the referendum prior to it appearing on the Nov. 5 ballot.


"Hired a consultant..." What a surprise.

Sounds to me like no one on The Board has the...I'll use the term "intestinal fortitude"... to explain it to the taxpayers - oops - I mean "voters".

More opinion on the upcoming tax referendum for schools: I thought a bit more about it, and no one wants to see teachers and staff fired, and the kids in the school system to suffer for it. The problem is, I want to see something to tell me that the school system is taking this seriously, and is taking steps to make sure that this never happens again, and we are taking steps to make sure that if you are asking for extra tax dollars, this ship is as tight and as clean as possible.

#1: Resignations of any board member elected before the 2012 election. The reason is that these board members knew the tax situation, and still approved spending and Tax Anticipation Notes knowing that we might never see these funds again. No long term thinking was enacted as a safety valve.

#2: Don't hire a consultant to sell the tax increases to the public. Frankly it is just insulting that at a time when the school system is asking for more money, they would pay our tax dollars to someone for the sole purpose of getting more money out of us.

#3: Where a consultant should be hired is to come into the school system from the outside (completely unconnected to the MCAS) and look at how things are done, and why they are done that way to see if changes can/should be made in places, plus look for efficiencies, economies of scale, and places that can be cut with the least impact on education.

#4: Conduct as close to a forensic audit of the MCAS books as possible. Make sure every penny is where it should be, and how it is supposed to be spent.

#5: Disclose capacities for each building in the MCAS, and see if all of the buildings that are in our school system are still necessary. Also explore if the distribution of students is being done as efficiently as possible to see if there are cheaper ways to allocate students to the various schools.

I would love to here other people's thoughts and to see what other people would like to see in order to consider this tax increase. Also please feel free to share these ideas and concerns with others.

I love your ideas. I real like #4 & #5. I think we would be shocked at some of the finding that would come out of the true numbers on just those two accounts. I can't believe there is a little corruption going on and there has to be other ways to reach the needed figures by cutting some administrative positions, closing a school or a combination of both.

I really like the idea of having someone else look at things. We have no idea what happens there, and they don't tell us anything until it is already too late.

Yeah, but what about the audit from the State Board of Accounts? Isn't that supposed to be for making sure the expenses are legit and no one is misappropriating, or stealing?

The MCAS is footing the bill for this special election.

http://stateimpact.npr.org/indiana/2013/07...cial-elections/

Is this a district-wide referendum? or a county wide referendum?

School district only.

I agree with Jesse B.

My evil alter ego Dr. taxthedeer has developed a theorem that will close down a middle school and two more elementary schools in Michigan City. Diagnosis:

First thing he did was examine how the other seven school systems in the Duneland conference function.

What he would like to have a consultation about is how come four other school systems (Portage, Crown Point, Valparaiso and La Porte), three of which have much larger student population than Michigan City can operate a three tier K-5, 6-8 and 9-12 grade school system with just two middle schools feeding into the High School but Michigan City still has to have three?

The other grade K-5, 6-8 and 9-12 school system that operates in the Duneland conference that has three middle schools feeding into the high school besides Michigan City is Lake Central which has a virtual army of nearly double the student population of Michigan City.

The other two school systems among our DAC brethren, Merrillville and Chesterton operate a four tier grade K-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-12 system.

Procedure:

Dr. taxthedeer dissected into two options:

Option #1:

Adopt the Portage Model:

Shut down Krueger Middle School and consolidate that building in with two of the elementary schools (Niemann and Springfield). Elston and Barker will become Michigan City's two Middle schools.

Dr. taxthedeer then explored the results of the case study of what happened with the Portage Township School system back when he was a young middle school student some 30 years ago as a model. Here's how they did it:

When the new Portage High School campus opened it's doors on U.S. 6 in 1979 the system operated as a grade K-5, 6-9 at three middle schools and grade 10-12 at high school. Three years later Dr. taxthedeer's colleagues Dr. Bivens and Dr. McKay consolidated all of us refugee middle school students from the now defunct Grissom Middle School and former Aylesworth Middle School over to the then vacant former Portage High School building at Central Ave. & Willowcreek Rd. which is now known to this very day as Willowcreek Middle School. They also closed two elementary schools and consolidated them into the former Aylesworth Middle school buildings which is located right next door to Willowcreek Middle School and it became Aylesworth Elementary School. The defunct Grissom Middle School building which is located on U.S. 6 right next door to the then new Portage High School building then became the 9th grade building. The Portage Township school system then transitioned into a grade K-5 at the elementary schools, grades 6-8 at two middle schools (Willowcreek and Fegley) and grades 9-12 at the two building Portage High School East and West High school campus.

The Portage Township School system remained unchanged up until 2006 when a three year $30 million dollar athletic field house construction project was completed between the two high school buildings (but that's a whole other story for another thread ).

Option #2:

Adopt the Merrillville and Chesterton model:.

Close Krueger Middle School and consolidate the building with Niemann and Springfield elementary.

Transition the 8 elementary schools grades to K-4, grades to 5-6 the intermediate school at Barker and grades 7-8 to the middle school at Elston and grades 9-12 to that great big building off of Pahs Road.

Synopsis:

***-This service has been provided free of charge courtesy of Dr. taxthedeer.

Here are some more detailed thoughts I shared on facebook about how we got into this mess.

First it really angers me that this is being sold as a problem that MCAS couldn't have gotten in front of. The property tax situation started in 2006. By 2007 everyone on the governmental level saw their budgets get screwed up by this. Essentially every year saw an expected budget of figure A, and then an actual collection of figure B. While the lawsuits were going on and the fighting of which tax numbers were correct were going on, all agencies were seeing the difference between figures A and B as an annual shortfall. Bodies faced the choice starting in 2007 of how to address that. Realize that at that point NO ONE knew FOR SURE, if ANY governmental agency was EVER going to get back the differences between figures A and B for 2007, or for any year subsequently after that point (2008 through 2013 now). MCAS decided that they would still base their budgets on Figure B, and that to make up for the difference between A and B, they would borrow that number annually in Tax Anticipation Notes (TANs), again without the promise that they would ever see that money. A large part of my campaign in 2010 was that we should not count on seeing that money, and that we really needed to get our fiscal ship in order until we knew the money was coming. MCAS school board decided to operate under the assumption that the money was coming. At the end of 2009, the State of Indiana also started cutting funding to schools for a couple of reasons, that don't really matter. Again, MCAS had the option of reacting to those funding cuts immediately or budgeting as if they were temporary and coming back. Some cuts were made, but again borrowing took place to make up the difference between what they had been expecting and what they were actually receiving. Again they made the decision knowing full-well that they may never receive those funds. After the TANs funding was essentially maximized, the school moved on to alternative funding sources such as mortgaging schools furthering the debt level. More than anything it infuriates me on a personal level because I was told by a then-sitting school board member that debt and deficit literally didn't matter and they wouldn't affect the school system at all, and had a now school board member who had no idea what they were talking about chime in and agree for a couple of campaign points. They were 100% wrong, and now instead of dealing with a much smaller animal starting 7 or so years ago, we are looking at least at $175 million in debt AND still the same operating losses on an annual basis. Nothing was dealt with when it should have been, and instead these items were kicked down the road in some sort of delirious delusion that somehow funding was going to magically reappear. Anyone who thought otherwise was mocked. Finally instead of their actually being some public discussion of the budget situation with the taxpayers here, where we could look at some other incremental options (any combination of redistricting, school closings, streamlinings, outside review of policies and procedures, etc) to eliminate or minimize tax increases our options are either agree to a 50% tax hike or fire a bunch of teachers. I came up with a list of things I wanted to see happen before I'd be happy with the tax hike to show me that the school system was serious about doing everything it could before asking for more money from a town with some serious poverty.

I also wanted to add this tidbit. Of the three people that have run our school system for a year or more over the past 10 years, I want to give Carla Iacona some credit for handling the budget problems the best. During her tenure the system had a major cutback, but the way that she handled it was to have an open public forum to outline the situation, how much needed to be cut, what sources we had, and options for possible cuts. Even if the cuts had already been decided, it wasn't presented to the public that way. They very nicely outlined all the things we could do. It at least made the general public feel like they were a part of the process.

With a few days to reflect on the presentation given by the MCAS on the financial situation, I did want to offer some thoughts. First and foremost is any time a presentation is given like that, there is always some artistic license with how facts and figures are presented. I didn't like the way that there wasn't any consistency given in how figures were given. For example, at one point in the presentation the figures were given for the Indiana state average numbers for how much reimbursement is given for each student enrolled in a particular school system. This number was about $4300 per kid. What wasn't given was the number that Michigan City receives, which is over $6000 per kid. It doesn't really matter what the rest of the state gets, it matters what our kids get. Another spot was where the property tax reform was being talked about and it was pointed out that property taxes went down $600 million state-wide. While that number is absolutely true, but it doesn't tell the whole truth. The other half of that is that our sales taxes were increased from 6% to 7%, meaning that if you spend $10,000 in tax eligible items annually, you are paying $100 a year more to the State of Indiana, which is going to education to replace those property tax dollars. This number wasn't mentioned. So you aren't just paying less in property taxes if you are a home owner. We are ALL paying more for the everyday items we purchase at the store. No mention at all was made about what the levels of per-student funding were before the student funding formula came from Indianapolis.

The item that troubled me the most, was barely acknowledged in the meeting, but is the biggest source of our financial problems as a school district. According the figures listed on the Department of Educations webpage, the Michigan City Area Schools have lost about 500 students corporation wide since the 2007-2008 school year. I was told that night that the MCAS receives about $6100 per student from the state of Indiana right now, meaning that if those 500 students were still here, we would be looking at about $3.05 million a year in additional funding. For every 100 students we lose, we receive about $600,000 a year in reduced funding. This tax increase would raise about $5.5 million a year in additional funding. Even accepting the figures presented by the consultant hired for the purpose of selling the tax increase to the general public, we aren't scheduled to see a deficit in the MCAS of over $3 million until 2016.

Object #1 in the Michigan City Area Schools needs to be finding away to attract people back into the school system. That would close the funding gap just as quick as a tax increase. The problem is that we haven't even stabilized our census in the school system, let alone started to increase it. With the school year ending in May 2008, we had 7106 K-12 students, 2009 it was 6927, 2010 it was 6842, 2011 it was 6789, 2012 it was 6676, at the end of May 2013 it was 6609.

Here is why this is really important. If we don't stem the tide of students leaving MCAS, this tax increase will only go to replace the funds of future students who leave. If we go from 6600 to 5700 in the future, every single dollar of this tax increase will be lost to students who leave.

Thoughts?

The mobility report which shows MCHS had 118 students "removed by parents" last year, or about $720,000 in lost funding.

www.doe.in.gov/sites/default/files/accountability/2012-mobility-report-school.xlsx

Student defections have been a long time problem. So many MCAS students from my era list faith in the MCAS system when it came time to start a family of their own. The big common denominator was violence and student safety.

The problem for a long time in Michigan City is two-fold. The system catered to the troublemakers and didn't kick them out of school so they could continue to terrorize the students who did come to school and learn. The second issue was the constant barrage of low income housing that has been built in MC for years. You can look at every good housing development in MC and find low income housing right next door. This could be said for Edgewood, Village Green, Trail Creek and now out in the county across from the High School.

Most parents have given up on MC. No job growth in the area and no protection for their children. This city no matter what the Road Atlas says is a lot closer to Gary than it is to Valparaiso and Chesterton.

Social promotion is a problem too. I pulled my kids out of the MCAS for that very reason.
My son hit 6th grade and didn't adjust well. In elementary school he always got good grades, but he was too immature for middle school and didn't make the transition well. I begged the school to hold him back and repeat 6th grade. They refused citing social promotion as the reason....my child did not EARN the right to progress to 7th grade, but they sent him anyway. He failed that and was put in 8th grade. We moved between 8th and 9th grade, but it was too late for him and he never caught up and he dropped out in the 10th grade. I made him go to job corps and he ended up passing the GED exam at 17. He is very smart and I don't believe he failed school. School failed him.

And that is another reason why people pull their kids out the MCAS. Don't get me wrong, there are excellent teachers at the MCAS, but the system is flawed and until that gets fixed, people are going to continue to leave.

Absentee voting begins today and the following two Fridays for the referendum at the Michigan City courthouse from 10AM to 4PM.

Clearing up some bad information out there...

#1- Indiana state law makes any tax referendum for the schools good for a max of 7 years. After that a new referendum has to be passed, or the funding dies.

#2- The classroom big screen HD TVs came from a teacher applied for, and written grant. MCAS did not pay for a dime of those televisions.

#3- What casinos fund through taxation is governed by the State of Indiana. MCAS has nothing to do with that, and neither does the City of MC. MCAS receives no funds directly from Blue Chip, and does not have the power to do so. Any changes have to go through the State.

#4- The Park system is paid for by taxes from the residents of the City of Michigan City. They don't get "free" stickers. They pay taxes for them. The only people who have to pay for stickers are people whose taxes are not going to the City of Michigan City. Also the City of Michigan City has no power or authority over the MCAS. They are two completely different and separate entities who have no taxation or revenue relationships. They also have no governance relationships. They are separated in theory to keep the school system independent of political influence, which is the same reason that the school board is supposed to be a non-partisan body.

#5- Yes the contracted work year for teachers is 185 days. The typical American employee by the time their vacation time, holidays, and weekends are subtracted works about is more like 240-250. Those numbers do not include the unpaid overtime that teachers don't get paid as exempt employees.

#6- Per student funding to the MCAS has dropped $353 per student, or about 5%. The biggest loss in funding for MCAS over the past five years or so isn't from the State of Indiana, and it isn't from the property tax fiasco. It is from the huge drop in the number of students in the MCAS over that time period. Last I saw we had lost about 700 students during that time, or about $4.2 million in funding. This referendum is due to bring in around $5.6 million annually.

#7- The free and reduced rate in MCAS is not 90%. System-wide it is more like 70%. There might be a single school that high.

#8 -Another thing worth pointing out is that the average CEO salary for a company with $100 million in annual revenue (or right about the size of the MCAS budget annually) is just under $800,000 annually. The fun part is that the salaries of Supers aren't disclosed the way that all other school system salaries are disclosed. Here are some numbers as of the end of 2011 that I found through the Courier Journal. BEW $145k + $200 mo for a car, Chesterton $128,900 + $5400 annually for retriement and 90 free sick days, LaPorte $133,334 + $700/ mo for car, Valpo $168k, Portage $122k +320 free sick days total, MVille, $136,721 + $12,500 annually for retirement. We are right in the middle of the pack for salaries in the area.

Another factoid worth adding. The MCAS fact about your property taxes being lower than the previously were after this is true. What isn't being said is the whole taxation story. With the property tax cap laws, a full percentage point increase in sales tax was also passed to fund the cuts in property taxes. So while people are paying less in property taxes, they are probably paying more overall because of the increases in sales taxes they are paying out instead. This hits a poor town like Michigan City harder, because most residents houses are cheap enough to where they didn't see a big return on the property tax cuts, or they rent. The poor do see the sales tax increase harder than the rich because they have to spend all of their money to survive. A good chunk of that is sales taxable, that they are now paying an extra 1.00 per $100.00. People with bigger incomes are able to save money, which doesn't see that extra sales tax hit.

Another explanatory post on the school system. This one is on the funding formula, and why it is the way it is in MCAS.

A word of caution about the funding formula. It isn't as simple as the dollar amount per student that people are talking about. The formula is a complex algorithm that takes into account many different factors that make up a particular school system. Some of the bigger ones are the poverty rates in the school district, and the ratio of special education students amongst the population. City having a high funding number means two things. #1 it means we live in a town with lots of poor people, and #2 it means we have a lot of special education students. The big reason we have high dollars is that we have a lot of students that we know as a socioeconomic group will come into the school system behind their peers, and we have a lot students that are not easy to educate. Think of it in the simplest terms. For your typical B/C student, they are fine with a regular teacher and a regular lesson plan. By state and federal law this subsection of students is due an education, at least until age 18, but there are all of these extra steps involved in their education process, which will not render the same test results as the average student with much less dollars required for their education. We have a very high number of these students. It isn't as easy as saying that $4000 (or whatever numbers) should educate a student because that is how surrounding towns, that don't face the same challenges face, are able to do it. Let's face it the average student in Valpo or Chesterton or New Prairie is easier and cheaper to educate. The other issue is something you see in this very discussion. White Flight is also a fact of life in Michigan City. The middle class is gone, they have moved on to green pastures, to follow the jobs that also left. Those students by average measure, are statistically easier to educate, in terms of resources. The demographics of MC have shifted radically even just in the 21 years since I graduated from Elston, let alone in the 30/40 or more years since many in this discussion have graduated. There is no need to speak in code about what Michigan City has become. That is obvious. It isn't the same place we all grew up in. For some that means to continue the White Flight. For others that means to stay and continue the fight. I will also say this much about school spending. The real problems happened long before our current administration took office. Spending has been curtailed, all you have to do is look at the budgets to understand that. Michael Harding's administration was a disaster to this school system that is still being undone. I'll never understand why the school board protected him for so long. The transformation since then has actually been pretty amazing. Even besides anecdotal evidence, all you have to do is look at the school standardized measures to see the recovery that has taken place since Harding took his destructive act to East Chicago. Our test scores have gone up a ridiculous amount since he left. Yes they are still below average, but they are moving up across the board. Our top students earned almost 2000 hours of college credit last year while at the HS. That is 2000 hours of college that City students won't have to pay for after leaving our halls. Those hours could be the difference between getting a college degree and not, which in terms of average earnings adds about a million dollars to a persons lifetime earnings, or about $25,000 average annually. Don't get me wrong, we have a long way to go as a system. I'll be the first to admit it. But it is intellectually dishonest to not look at where we have been before looking where we are at now.

Why does the school system own 20 acres of wooded land at at the SW corner Karwick Rd. and Springland Ave. across from Potawatomie golf course/Krueger Middle School. It's valued at nearly $800,000.00 Couldn't this land be sold and developed?

http://beacon.schneidercorp.com/Applicatio...127400013000022

Another 42 1/2 acres across from Krueger, worth nearly 1.5 million:

http://beacon.schneidercorp.com/Applicatio...126176001000022

14.5 acres next to that $450,000



http://beacon.schneidercorp.com/Applicatio...126251001000022

more shenanigans, lol. What a mess... How in the world can that property be worth THAT much? Is there gold in the ground? Check out this one right down the road, 17 acres "worth" 7M?
Yes, this is a parcel that in 2008 and before was valued at 160k and is now at over 7M with no improvements done to it.
I need to find some investements that return like this!

http://beacon.schneidercorp.com/Applicatio...127400018000022

Note who it belongs to.

Oh, I saw that first thing. So what kind of value manipulation is going on here?

I'm not sure why it is needed though. That is what confuses me.

Another 62 acres behind the high school.

http://beacon.schneidercorp.com/Applicatio...510400022000046

All this undeveloped land needs to be liquidated to pay down the MCAS debt.

First thing that comes to mind is equity.

Looks like it is time for another truth squad type post for the MCAS tax referendum. There is a poster circulating that claims the "opposition" is calling the tax a 47% increase, and that number is "false". Looking at it from a nuetral standpoint, this is a true claim, but a misleading claim, much like the claim that your property taxes will still be lower than the used to be, even if the referendum is passed. The tax rate, if the referendum passes would go up 47%. That part is 100% true. Why that is misleading is because most people do NOT pay the full tax rate. If you have your first home that you are paying property taxes on, you receive certain exemptions, which means you do not pay the full possible amount of taxes. The reality is that unless you are talking about second home, rental property, or some sort of situation putting a second, or more, home in your name, you won't see this as a 47% tax in increase. The actual number will be much less for anyone who has a median home price or less. The higher the value of your home, the higher the effect increase will be.

As I eluded to earlier, it reminds me of the pro-referedum PAC's claim that your property taxes would still be lower than previous years if this passes. That part is 100% true. Why it is misleading is because we don't only pay property taxes. As a part of the 1/2/3 tax caps relief plan, the State of Indiana increased the sales tax rate one full percentage point to make up for it. So while if you just isolate out property taxes, your burden is lower, the reality is as a low income town, most of Michigan City has a higher overall tax burden because they are being hit much harder by the sales tax increase. A great example is buying a car. If you were to pay $20,000 for a car, previously you would have been hit with a $1200 sales tax bill. Now it is $1400. That is a $200 increase due to these very rules. Sales tax applies to all purchases made not involving things like food.

With these things in mind, we are now just over a week from the referendum. Are there questions that people still have on this referendum? If there are please feel free to post them. If you would rather ask questions in private, please send a private message to the page, and I will do my best to post an answer to them with both sides of the story.

My answer to what benefits would MCAS see from this referendum being successful.

I was in Mishawaka on Sunday. Residents there have many VOTE NO signs posted in their yards in protest of their referendum. There are a lot of blue and white signs signs scattered about in our district but there are much more residents that do not have signs.

I expect to see the same results in this referendum as in the 2009 Career and Tech Center referendum. Where would we be if that had passed?

I don't. There is one big difference between then and now. Leadership. This administration is actually out in the community connecting with every from the preschoolers all of the way up to the top leadership in this town. Harding was a disaster and an arrogant joke. Watkins is a real leader here. The referendum might not win, but it won't go down 70-30. It will at least be very close.

Today is the day.

With the MCAS about to go into cost cutting mode, I wonder if they could consider something like this?

http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/mishawaka-s...uz/-/index.html

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/laporte...fb111882c3.html

Don Delaney needs to stop with the negative scare tactics and get to work on a budget. Please stop blaming the taxpayers who voted "No". The board needs to take a good long look in the mirror and do their job they are getting paid for. Make the tough decisions and quit whining. If you can save that much money by redistricting Mr. Burgwald I suggest you look at this again in conjunction with the junior high schools this time too. If Lake Hills and Pine are underutilized there is your answer without having to axe 100 teachers. Can the same be done at the middle school level? Can we just use Elston as a middle school and close two others(Barker & Krueger). Can we down the road renovate Barker or Krueger and turn those into large Elementary schools closing an Edgewood or Coolspring? Just ideas but the School Board needs to come up with ideas, they cannot just be a rubber stamp. If you are too foolish to realize it as well your options of cutting sports, ROTC, the arts will only force other families to leave with their $6000 state dollars. May I suggest you make next years budget out with real secured $$$ and not money that is hoped to secure through a less than successful marketing campaign.

Attended a jammed packed Michigan Area School Board Meeting tonight. Looks like Elston Middle School and Niemann Elementary school are going to close (or be "repurposed" was the term Dr. Botana used). Elston is primarily going to be used for vocational & adult education. Also grades K through 6 will be redistricted among the remaining elementary schools and 7th & 8th grade will be redistricted among Barker and Krueger Middle Schools. Grades 9-12 will still be at Michigan City High School.

They also said enrollment at Michigan City Area Schools will continue to decline at the rate 50 - 100 students every year for the next 10 years.

Don Delaney shouldn't even be on the Board. Why is someone who sent his kids to Chesterton even serving on the Michigan City Area Schools Board?

Agreed 110%.

I finally drew a nice comparison to show how what Michigan City home owners pay into the school system based on local tax rates of area school systems. Starting off, Michigan City would have had a rate of 53 cents per $100 of Net Assessed value, which dropped to 36 cents this year.

For arguments sake, say that total ended up meaning the average City resident would have paid $100 to the school system in taxes per year, at the $.53/1000 NAV rate. Using the same base house value, with the new tax rate, this is how we compare to the area, based on school system tax rates...

Michigan City $67.92
LaPorte $173.58
Duneland $207.54
Merrillville $226.41
South Bend $254.71

Any questions why our schools are closing?

My 70 year old widowed mother with no children or grandchildren in the system. Would have had to pay almost an extra $1600.00 in property taxes over the next seven years (god willing she is still living) if the referendum would have passed.