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The Willow Run Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution supporting a 2-mill property tax proposal for Washtenaw County voters.
Richard Leyshock, assistant superintendent for the Washtenaw County Intermediate School District, made a presentation to the board at its meeting Thursday night.
Board Vice President Harold Wimberly and Doris Hope-Jackson, Willow Run superintendent, were absent from the meeting.
Leyshock said the tax increase, if approved by voters in the county’s 10 public school districts on the November ballot, would generate $30 million dollars. All of the money would be doled out to districts based on attendance.
He estimated Willow Run would receive $1.6 million based on last year’s head count with a $680 per-student payout.
Based on information passed out to the board, the millage would cost a tax payer $100 more a year if their home is valued at $100,000. The owner of a $300,000 home would pay $300 more a year.
Leyshock said the only district in the county yet to consider the proposal is Lincoln Consolidated Schools. He said every other board in the county has passed resolutions backing the proposal.
Lincoln is slated to consider the proposal at its meeting Monday.
He said it only takes a majority of the districts in the county supporting the proposal to place it on the Nov. 3 ballot. However, support has been unanimous.
“If we’re going to exist, we need this money,” Clifford Smith, a board trustee, said at the meeting.
“It’s certainly something we cannot afford not to be involved with,” he said.
The district is facing a $2.7 million, five-year deficit. Officials in the district have cited enrollment declines and decreases in state-shared revenue as the main causes behind its revenue shortage.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen with the state’s cuts,” Dorothy Stewart, board treasurer, said. “Right now they seem to be going after schools.”
Leyshock said the WISD had conducted a survey of residents in the county before bringing the proposal for the county’s school boards for consideration. He said respondents “really supported the schools.
“It was a nice thing to see, in terms of the poll,” he said at the meeting.
He said the WISD has set an Aug. 4 meeting to consider the various resolutions passed by districts in the county.