POSTED: Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009

County plan for rural zoning worries Meridian School District

School officials call for study of tax implications

Leaders at Meridian School District worry that a proposal to change zoning in rural areas could reduce property values in the district and make it harder to pay for public education.

The district's school board on Thursday, Aug. 20, approved a resolution to county officials expressing concern and asking the county to study the proposal's financial impact.

"It could potentially have a real significant impact on the funds available to educate children," district Superintendent Tim Yeomans said.

Whatcom County government is considering a plan to change zoning to reduce growth in some rural areas, to comply with an order by a state growth board.

The proposal is complex and affects different properties differently. Essentially, the county is drawing boundaries around certain rural housing and business centers - areas that aren't slated for urban growth but where there's more development than is considered "rural" under state law.

Inside the boundaries, development could continue similar to what's there now. Outside the boundaries, zoning would be changed to allow only rural levels of development, often one house per 10 acres.

Several of those proposed centers are within Meridian School District, which stretches from north Bellingham almost to Lynden on both sides of Guide Meridian.

School districts follow a budget-based property tax collection method. That means they figure out how much money they want to generate, then figure out how much to tax properties to generate the money.

Owners of properties that are higher in value pay more taxes than those with lower-valued properties. Reducing the amount of development or restricting property uses could result in lower values for those properties. While owners of those properties would pay less in taxes, others in the district would end up paying more to make up for it.

"Somebody else is going to have to take up the burden when somebody else has the burden removed," said County Assessor Keith Willnauer.

The zoning change could make it harder to persuade Meridian voters to approve levies the district relies on.

"If your burden in the Meridian School District is decidedly different than the burdens on property tax payers in other districts," Willnauer said, "you're going to have a hard time, in some cases, convincing your property owners that some of those increases are what they want to do."

County planners have changed the zoning proposal to reduce impacts to land in the district, particularly along Guide Meridian, where more commercial properties have been included in the rural business center boundaries, said county Planning Director David Stalheim.

He estimated a fiscal study of impacts to school districts would cost at least $100,000, and wouldn't change the fact the county has been ordered to do the work, he said.

Until the county is back in compliance with the law, it's ineligible for certain state loans and grants.

"We share the fiscal pain as well," Stalheim said, "because we've been spending a lot of money on state-mandated provisions."

REPORT ONLINE

For more information, go to Whatcomcounty.us/pds/2031/index.jsp and see information for the "Rural Element Update."