After several years of dramatic increases in enrollment, the total number of students enrolled in Alpine School District has plateaued, and is even projected to decline slightly over the next two years, according to the district's own projections. Which begs the question - if the school district is no longer growing, why does the school board continue to raise our property taxes? Can't they do a great job educating the same number of students with the current tax rates?
The answers to these questions are important because every time the school board raises our property taxes, each homeowner, condo owner, business owner, and any other property owner in North Utah County is forced to hand over more of their hard-earned money to pay the tax bill. And even each renter, who doesn't pay property taxes directly, ends up paying for higher property taxes indirectly in the form of higher rent, due to his or her landlord raising the rent to cover the higher property tax bill.
But wait, you might ask, is it really true that enrollment in Alpine School District schools has plateaued? They talk about growth all the time! How is that possible given the continuing growth in North Utah County, especially in areas like Vineyard, Lehi, Saratoga Springs, and Eagle Mountain?
The answer is yes, it's true, enrollment has plateaued, according to the school district's own enrollment numbers and projections. Here is a chart from page 7 of the district's 2023 Enrollment History and Projection document (with outdated projections removed for clarity):
As you can see from this chart, after rapid growth from 2012 to 2022, where enrollment grew by 13,803 students (an average increase of 1,380 students per year), enrollment last year (2023) grew by only 36 students. Next year (2024), enrollment is only projected to increase by 71 students. Then the next year (2025), enrollment is actually projected to decrease by 84 students. And although slight increases are projected over the following 3 years (2026-2028), the total projected increase each year is only 213 students per year above the current 2023 level, which is an increase of less than 1/3 of 1% per year.
So why did Alpine School Board try to get voters to pass a $595 Million bond in 2022 for all sorts of new school building construction if the board knew that enrollment in the district had plateaued?
I suspect the answer is that Alpine School Board has a never-ending appetite for more money and, whether they really need the money or not, they will continue to raise our taxes to get more money until We The People do something to stop them.
Which is exactly what we did when when a majority of voters voted No! in November 2022 against the $595 Million bond that the school board wanted. In fact, a strong majority voted No, with the bond failing by 5.58%, with 6,970 more voters voting No than voting Yes. (See page 14 of Official Election Results).
But as I describe on my Positions page about how I want the school board to stop raising our taxes, this defeat of the $595 Million bond didn't stop the school board from turning right around and raising our taxes anyway, twice, over the next 9 months.
The bottom line for me is this. Alpine School District already receives over a Billion of our hard-earned tax dollars every year at current tax rates, and thus the school board already has plenty of our money to do a great job educating all of the currently enrolled students (See page 13 of the board's '23-'24 budget). Since the school district enrollment has plateaued, the school district already has enough space in current school buildings to handle current and projected future enrollment, although some boundary realignment may be necessary to accommodate students in growing areas with space in shrinking areas. But realigning boundaries in existing school buildings is exponentially more cost-effective than building expensive new school buildings while current school buildings get underutilized. The current school board believes that they always need more of our hard-earned money, and they are continually increasing our property taxes to forcefully take that money from us. I am convinced, based on his past votes to raise our taxes, that our current representative on the school board, Mark Clement (School Board District 5), will continue to raise our taxes. If I am elected to replace Mark Clement, my promise is that I will never vote to raise our taxes. Instead, I will work to do a great job educating all students with the ample tax dollars already allocated to the school district.
If you are tired of Alpine School Board continually raising your property taxes, please vote for me for Alpine School Board in the primary election on June 25th and in the general election on November 5th.
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