Summary of $1,000,000 Mix-up in Assessor’s Office between School Districts
October 18th, 2017 by
Drew Central was originally designed to consolidate area county school districts.
MLive was told that schoolhouses were located 4 miles apart, so no student would have to walk more than 2 miles to school. This would explain why there were so many original districts.
1980, Drew Central superintendent Norman Hill realized that the Arvin/Hood Packaging property tax was funding Monticello Schools, instead of Drew Central, and had it corrected.
In 2006, this was un-corrected, possibly due to the annexation of the industrial park by the city of Monticello. Actually, this would be irrelevant to which school district received the property’s tax support.
Since 2006, the huge majority of the tax funding has gone to Monticello Schools, instead of Drew Central. It is been estimated this could be in the range of $1 million over the ten-year period.
Both districts have agreed for Drew Central to receive 92% and Monticello receiving 8% of future tax revenues, based on actual boundary lines.
How the previously paid funds will be equalized, has not been decided.
