Ronald Larson argues against increasing the Local Option Budget (LOB) tax in rural school district 400. He claims the superintendent and school board have not been transparent about how the tax increase will burden taxpayers. A 2% increase would raise only $140,000 for district 400 but could encourage state legislators to shift more school funding to property taxes, which rural areas could not afford. Larson believes voting no will send a message to prevent urban legislators from changing the school funding formula to the detriment of rural schools statewide.

1. The Truth About the LOB Tax
The Lindsborg and Marquette papers have an ad encouraging people to vote for the 2% increase in the Local Option
Budget (LOB) this week. The facts about increasing the LOB have not been presented transparently by our district office.
I cannot believe that a rural Superintendent and School Board would encourage their patrons to increase the taxes on
their property to run the consolidated schools of Lindsborg in this way.
The larger districts in Kansas like Blue Valley in Johnson County (Kansas City) are pushing very hard to use more Local
Option Budgets to operate schools. A quarter percent increase in the LOB in those districts is several million dollars. A
2% increase in district 400 is approximately $140,000 and will create a burden on taxpayers in OUR area. The ads in the
papers say, “This tax is already in place.” The truth is that 30% is all that has been voted on by the patrons of district 400;
the other 3% has been added at the Superintendents recommendation and then voted on by only the school board. The
last 2% would have just shown up on this year’s tax statement, so you should not have noticed the raise in district taxes
yet. We in rural areas cannot afford to encourage our urban legislators from the eastern part of the state, to change the
school funding formula in favor of a higher Local Option Budget. The people of Kansas just won a law suit that requires
our state to fund schools at previous levels, using base state aid and LOB equalization funds, which spreads the
responsibility of financing schools, state wide. Voting to increase our LOB to the maximum sends the wrong message to
Topeka. We in rural school districts could never afford the taxes it would take to run the schools on Local Option
Budgets. The school district portion of your tax statement would have to increase around 200% to fund the schools with
LOB’s, and nobody in district 400 would stand for this nor could they afford it.
Very few other districts in Kansas are doing what our Superintendent is asking. Only 9% of the districts in Kansas are
even eligible to increase the LOB to 33% and only 7% of those eligible are trying to do so according to information from
the State Board of Education in Topeka. The Marquette area is probably mostly to blame for giving our Superintendent
the authority to raise the LOB. In 2010 the Marquette area was in hopes that raising the LOB would help to save the
Junior High so they voted very heavily in favor of raising the LOB to the maximum 30%. That was a very big mistake!
They did not understand the downfalls of raising LOB money to fund rural schools. Previous to 2010 the LOB was held to
a fixed amount. They did not realize the authority that this would give the Superintendent to raise taxes in the future.
Later our district office, without a vote of the patrons, recommended a 1% increase. Then in 2013 a 2% increase was
asked for by the Superintendent and voted on by just the School Board. All of these raises were only allowed if you were
already at the maximum LOB and only 9% of the districts in the state were in this position. Now the state says in order
to keep this temporary 2% it will finally be voted on by the patrons of the district. Only 7% of the districts in the state are
doing this. Most of them are wealthy, eastern, urban school districts.
My question now is, “How much taxing authority is going to be given to the Superintendent and School Board to
continue raising property taxes?” If we are going to run rural schools by raising LOB taxes, it is going to get extremely
expensive and impossible to maintain for rural areas. It is my opinion that our eastern, urban, legislators want to see this
happen. The State Constitution states that all students will be given an equal public education. Depending more on
higher LOB funds will guarantee that the wealthiest areas in the state will have a tremendous advantage.
In conclusion, for the sake of rural schools all over Kansas, send a message to our urban legislators and vote NO on the
LOB increase in district 400. The small amount of money that district 400 will receive from this vote is extremely small
compared to what it may cost the students and the patrons of all rural districts in the future.
Ronald W. Larson
Concerned Marquette Taxpayer