Tyrone Area School District joined the vast majority of area districts by voting no to \u201copt in\u201d to the state\u2019s gambling-generated property tax relief program.
\nLast night, the board voted by a 7 to 2 margin against \u201copting in\u201d to allow property owners to receive a reduction on their tax bills in return for raising the earned income tax by 0.1 percent for district residents effective with the year the district would have started receiving slot machine-generated gaming funds. School board members Raymond Detwiler and Peter Dutrow were the two school board members who voted yes for participation in the program.
\nStatewide, the latest figures show only 88 districts had opted in and 269 had opted out as of yesterday at 4:30 p.m., according to the Pennsylvania School Board Association\u2019s Web site. The figure does not include Tyrone\u2019s decision. The site is updated twice daily at 12 noon and 4:30 p.m.
\nDistricts have until Monday to decide whether or not they want to participate in the Act 72 program. Based on the figures from PSBA, only about one-fourth of the state\u2019s 501 districts have decided to \u201copt in.\u201d Locally, an even higher percentage of districts voted against accepting the funding. In addition to Tyrone Area, Bellwood-Antis, Altoona, Huntingdon and Phillipsburg-Osceola have been among schools which voted against participating in the program.
\nAfter last night\u2019s meeting, Detwiler said, \u201cI felt it was in the best interest of the people, the taxpayers are being gouged, and here\u2019s $150 to $250 maybe more, that was substantial relief as far as taxes. Over 70 percent of the people here in Blair County filled out the Homestead Exclusion (form) that they wanted it, so I had to support it.
\n\u201c(School education expert) Dr. Hartman, who we hired, has told the school board and our administration that Act 72 would not affect Tyrone because of how we sit financially and the fact our schools are, hopefully, almost completed. Act 72 would not affect us, so why not give it a try.\u201d
\nDutrow said, \u201c(I) looked at the people who are paying taxes and my personal feeling is that it was in the best interest of the people to \u2018opt in.\u2019\u201d
\nDutrow also reacted to the board\u2019s overall vote to decline participation.
\n\u201cI hope it was correct, obviously, I\u2019ll go along with the decision of the board.\u201d
\nSchool board member Rev. Norman Huff said, \u201cWith the whole Act 72, no one understands it, I don\u2019t understand it.\u201d
\nHuff, who voted to \u201copt out\u201d of the program, indicated he thought state lawmakers had done things in such a way that it was difficult to \u201cknow what they were up to.\u201d
\nHe said he had attended dozens of seminars and meetings about the issue during the last year-and-a-half and still came away without a clear understanding of the law.
\nIn regard to his decision, he said, \u201cGambling was a part of it, but it\u2019s not the main issue. There\u2019s going to be gambling.\u201d
\nIn reaction to the board\u2019s decision, superintendent Dr. William N. Miller said, \u201cIt was difficult to predict what action they might take, at one point in time I thought they might opt in. As of late, I questioned whether they actually would. So, the vote tonight really didn\u2019t surprise me.
\n\u201cPersonally, I was a little concerned about those on fixed incomes, those retired, that (it) would have benefited them.\u201d
\nHe added, \u201cNot looking at it from the aspect of evils and the social aspect of gambling and promoting it and the time tables (regarding) budgeting, and all the other issues that are confusing…if you mix it all together, it was a benefit to some select individuals, the farmers too.\u201d
\nMiller mentioned those with higher incomes would have been negatively impacted. He also said the district\u2019s expert, Dr. Hartman, never gave the district a specific recommendation on whether or not it should \u201copt in\u201d or \u201cout.\u201d
\nHe explained Hartman presented information to allow the districts which used his services to make a decision based on the specific economic make-up of a district.
\nBasically, the lower the income a district\u2019s residents have, the more they would stand to benefit from the property tax break.
\nHe also said the district could have lived with the various issues which might have come up had the board decided to go along with the program. Those issues included having to create budgets sooner rather than later and getting determinations from the state education department if certain tax increases would require a voter referendum.
\n\u201cI thought those were conditions we could have probably lived with because our tax increases have never been significant enough that would have caused a referendum (under Act 72 requirements).\u201d
\nAfter the vote on Act 72, the board also approved a preliminary budget for the 2005-06 which calls for a three-mill tax increase. The budget must be advertised before final adoption. The board scheduled a June 28 meeting to consider final adoption of the budget among other regular business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tyrone Area School District joined the vast majority of area districts by voting no to \u201copt in\u201d to the state\u2019s gambling-generated property tax relief program. Last night, the board voted by a 7 to 2 margin against \u201copting in\u201d to allow property owners to receive a reduction on their tax bills in return for raising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}