During a presentation discussing the county budget someone whispered that eliminating the East Fork Swimming Pool District from the tax rolls might be a means to increase revenue.
The district’s current tax rate is 13 cents per $100 assessed valuation which was approved by voters in 1986, according to the Clerk-Treasurer’s site.
The bond was approved by 57.7 percent of voters. The tax rate for the bonds to build the pool was running 6.1 cents when it was paid off in 2006.
Pool trustees bumped the operations rate to 16.45 cents at some point before decreasing it back to 13 cents in 2012 at the request of the county.
The district wasn’t the only outfit that gave up tax rate that year.
Facing a $3.3 million deficit, the county sought property tax reductions from the towns of Minden and Gardnerville, East Fork Fire Protection District, the Indian Hills General Improvement District and the Western Nevada Regional Youth Center.
Those changes didn’t affect anyone’s overall tax rate, because Douglas remains pinned against the $3.66 per $100 assessed valuation tax cap.
The tax rates towns and the Indian Hills, Topaz Ranch Estates and Oliver Park improvement districts were cited by Chief Financial Officer Kathy Lewis as one reason why the county couldn’t increase the property tax rate even if commissioners were interested.
And since the swimming pool district doesn’t extend to Tahoe Township, anything that didn’t include Oliver Park wouldn’t help.
Lewis pointed out that estimating property taxes for any given home is an issue because they are all unique and depend on some factors beyond the county’s control.
It has been 46 years since a report by consultant Lou Schaffer suggesting eliminating most of the county’s many taxing districts in order to balance out both tax rates and revenues was essentially met by crickets.
Last year, when county commissioners actually had an opportunity to take over the Topaz Ranch Estates General Improvement District, they said they were not in the business of taking over districts.
Maybe that’s true of the swimming pool, mosquito abatement and all those little districts at Lake Tahoe that it seems so difficult to find candidates for, too.