Noblesville voter takes deeper dive into school referendum numbers

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Dear Editor:

Chris Hartig’s reply to Denise Dye deserves a response because he gets some things right and leaves out the parts that matter most.

He’s right that the cuts the district listed are real. If the referendum fails, the current 37-cent levy expires and the district loses about $25 million a year. Under the 2025 law, the next chance to vote is November 2028. I won’t pretend that’s painless.

But that all-or-nothing choice was the school board’s doing, not the voters’. The board could have asked us to renew the 37-cent rate. Instead it put 57 cents on the ballot, a 54-percent increase for eight years, with a maximum levy of $43.8 million against roughly $25 million today.

A NO vote doesn’t reject funding. It rejects the size of this ask.

Mr. Hartig repeats the district’s “$1.88 more per month” for a $350,000 home. Here’s where that number comes from, using the district’s own calculator: take the 2034 bill, subtract the 2026 bill, and divide by eight. That isn’t the average monthly increase. The calculator’s own year-by-year figures average $8.19 a month above today’s bill, and $9.37 if the rate climbs as fast as the board’s August resolution allows. By 2034 it’s $15 to $18 a month.

Even those numbers understate the referendum’s own price, because they count the state’s new property tax cut (SEA 1). Compare 57 cents with 37 cents in the same year and the referendum alone costs about $19 a month on that $350,000 home. Bills look nearly flat only because the tax relief the legislature just passed is being used to absorb the increase. So the honest question isn’t “will my bill go up?” It’s “who keeps the state tax cut, my family or the school district?”

Renters, landlords, and small businesses get no homestead relief at all. They pay the full increase.

Mr. Hartig also argues against something Ms. Dye never said. She didn’t allege “gross mismanagement.” She asked for an independent audit and a spending review before an eight-year commitment. That isn’t a radical position. And the money isn’t as locked up as we’re told. State transfer reports show Noblesville Schools moved about $54 million from its Education Fund (the one that pays teachers) to its Operations Fund between 2021 and 2025. That’s legal, but it shows the district has more flexibility than its message suggests, and that money has been flowing away from teacher pay.

Voters also aren’t told that Noblesville already has a second voter-approved levy: an 8-cent debt referendum from the 2010 and 2013 bond votes that runs through 2032. The district’s referendum page doesn’t mention it. If the new rate reaches its cap before 2032, the combined referendum rate is 65 cents.

To be fair, the board passed a resolution in August limiting increases to 4 cents a year. That’s a real commitment and I give the board credit for it. But it fixes only 2027. After that it limits the yearly step, not where the rate ends up, and it says the 57-cent maximum may be reached “if ever.” A future board can repeal a resolution with one vote. The 57-cent rate on the ballot can’t be changed.

Mr. Hartig is right that many Indiana districts need referendums. Since 2009 the state has paid for classroom operations, and a referendum is the only way local money reaches teacher pay. Nobody serious disputes that.

The question in front of us is narrower: is 57 cents for eight years the right amount, and has the district made its case clearly? On the numbers, it hasn’t.

Ms. Dye said it well: “We should never have to choose between loving our schools and holding them financially accountable.”

Voting NO is how we ask for a more honest number.

Carl Sampson
Noblesville