Where is the money- it sure isn't in the schools?

Folks are fixated on the sheer numbers of blue code remonstration petitions that were collected to prevent Fort Wayne Community Schools from spending millions of dollars to improve its school buildings. Its does not matter that many of the signatures will be discarded after certification, just so school administration understand the taxpayers does not want their money spent on improving public schools. The reason is because many signers believe taxes are already too high. And the main reason they believe taxes are too high is because of the vast majority of the taxes they pay go toward schools.


The argument become that the administration is ineffective and the school budget needs to be cut to reduce homeowners property tax. Because the education of children are secondary to the lives of the those who send their children to private school. The more wealthy do not want to pay their fair share and look for ways to reduce their tax paying burden and that becomes blaming the school, those who run the public schools and those who attend the public schools.


It much safer to blame the school for the increase in taxes, rather than place blame directly on the auditor or assessor who increases property values and tax rate to capture large amount of revenue to support special projects and bloated departments. These same folks whom children more than likely do not attend public schools are afraid to confront those who are driving up their tax bill by increases the tax rate after the homestead credit, local credit, and exemption have been applied to reduce the burden of high taxes. These homeowners don’t get it. Even when trending was employed by officials to increase the value of their homes yearly, knowing these homes would not be sold at the assessed value refuse to tell the auditor or assessor no more.

The City of Fort Wayne's budget for 2007 is over $200,000,000. That is $200,000,000 for just one year! Over $51 million is spent alone in the police department budget of public safety. Mayor Graham Richard likes to state that the city has the lowest tax rate under his administration, when in fact the tax rate has remained around the same amount after a 10% increase in 1997. The tax rate has remained steady around an increase in the tax rate to 3.33 percent or more from 1997 to 2007. The tax rate should have gone down, with the increases in the amount of the levy, the increases in the homestead credit. But taxpayers do not check the number cruncher as close as it inspect funding for school buildings.

To hide the windfall, it was not buildings that were changed numbers. In 1960 the City of Fort Wayne Property Tax and Assessed Valuation History record showed that property assessed value was slightly less than $300,000,000 but in 2002 the 1960 figure was changed to $898,433,400.



The property was not valued at the 1960 actual amount of $898, 433,400 to hide the fact that taxes were collected on the huge increase in the property value from 2002-2007.

In 2002 taxes were collected on properties valued at $5,606 420, 503 after the previous year the property was valued at only $1,725,238,130. But to hide this increase, the value for 2002 was changed to $5,175,714,390. Instead of showing the acutal value of a $3, 881, 182, 373 increase in property value the auditor office revealed only an increase of of 8.32% in property value and this was after the exclusion of business inventory.

So where is the money collected from a jump in property value in almost $4 billion taxed at 3.3 percent? In 2007, the record show Property tax and assessed valuation of over $11 billion dollars taxed at the average rate of 3.3 percent.

This does not count the amount of money that is collected in COIT or CEDIT millions of dollars. Both the COIT and The CEDIT amounts have shown an increase until 2003 and the amounts have gone down. In 2002 COIT was $14, 535, 078. In 2003 just in time for the property assessment the number dropped to only $10, 703, 146 in 2004 $10, 478,580, in 2005 $9,781.044, and in 2006 $9,781,044 the exact same number. Come on give me a break!

But it's the schools that's drive up our taxes you say. The City of Fort Wayne has assessed property value at over $11 billion dollars to collect in its levy at over 3.3 percent where is the money?