Chino school board passes adjacent ways levy hike, budget

Money to go toward bus lanes

Along with the $16 million budget for the 2019-20 school year, the Chino Valley Unified School District Governing Board adopted the $85,000 Adjacent Ways Levy increase at its meeting Tuesday, July 2.

Both were adopted unanimously.

The total Adjacent Ways Budget is $211,285, and of that number, only $85,000 has to be levied, said Business Office Director Rebekka Bartels. Superintendent John Scholl said that while the school district has to advertise it as a new tax every year, as required by law, it is not.

“It is something that the school board has levied in all but one year of the last 10 that I know of,” Scholl said. “This is a tax that has been going on for many, many years.”

For a $100,000 house, the levy is $4.31 for the year, Bartels said. If your house has a value of $200,000, that’s what you can sell it for, and many times, the assessed value is 60% of that number, Scholl said. Those figures are taken from all of the different properties in the school district and multiplied by an assessment ratio, which then is added up for all the houses, he said.

As for commercial property, Scholl said he believes the ratio is 16% or 17%. The values for both residential and commercial properties are then added together, he said.

The whole number is almost $200 million, but that does not mean there’s $200 million of property in the district. That number comes from the sum of the ratio multiplied by the assessed value, he said.

The money that comes in from the levy is going toward a bus lane project behind Del Rio Elementary School and Heritage Middle School, Bartels said.

“Instead of the buses being on Road 1 West to drop off and pick up, they’re going to go behind the schools,” she said. “That’ll help eliminate all that traffic on Road 1 West.”

Having those bus lanes behind the schools also will make it safer for the kids who are walking and drivers in the community, Bartels said.