School districts in the county are asking for tax bills to be moved back from their original mailing date scheduled for Friday while work continues to remedy a situation caused by an error in the Equalized Assessed Valuation for the 2016 tax year. A lower EAV that year was questioned by the Deb Philpot, the St. Elmo Superintendent at the time due to its decrease being over a million dollars for the year. Current St. Elmo Superintendent Julie Healy, whose district is seeing the largest hit due to the error, said the figure then increased by over $2.5 for the 2017 tax year causing a large effect on the tax money distributed to schools. During Tuesday night’s Fayette County Board meeting, Healy asked the board on behalf of the schools with districts in the county that tax bills be delayed as well as other steps taken to give time for the error to be fixed.
Vandalia Superintendent of Schools Jennifer Garrison also addressed the board saying that the school want to work with the county to fix the problem and says work by the county’s consultant, Kat Lange of Bellwether, they have gotten a lot of information just in the last week and a half.
During her report to the board, Lange spoke that the error also effects the county and other tax districts. And we will hear from Lange about that tomorrow on Newscenter.