County and school proposals on the August ballot; expert discusses their importance

LANSING -- While most eyes are on the November general election, voters will have an important opportunity to weigh in on their local government’s spending in the coming weeks.

On Aug. 6, voters will head to the polls to pick candidates for state House and US Senate, but also consider local tax proposals that could impact your wallet.

They’re an essential part of counties and schools being able to provide the services they do.

“In order for our local governments to levy a new tax or increase the rate on an existing tax, the people have to give their consent,” said Eric Lupher, president of the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a non profit that analyzes state and local policy.

He says that funding requests can take many forms, since local governments have limited revenue sources.

Services like police, firefighters and ambulances often need to receive voter approval for service expansion.

Voters can also expect to see several different types of school funding proposals.

Operating proposals cover a school’s basic day to day costs, and essentially keep the lights on. Without operating revenue, schools wouldn’t have the funds to function.

There are also sinking fund proposals, covering more substantial maintenance like school buses and HVAC systems.

On your ballot, you’ll see questions split into proposals and renewals — as the names suggest, voters are asked to approve a new tax for some kind of expanded service or re-approve a charge that they’re already paying.

“The city says, ‘this tax levy is expiring, our authority to levy that tax is expiring. We still want to provide police and fire, we still want to do mosquito control, we still want to have the ambulance service — will you renew that tax for us so we can keep on doing what we were doing?’,” Lupher said.

Millages are only approved for a certain number of years, leading to renewal questions. Some millages are weakened after their approval due to the state constitution, which requires governments to lower their tax rate if the area’s taxable value outpaces inflation.

“So we’d ask the voters, ‘hey, we’re down to 14.9 mills — would you put us back to the 15 mills we were at before?’ So it doesn’t ask for extra voting authority — it says, ‘will you just put us back to where we were before before all those millage rollbacks?’,” Lupher said.