Back to $chools!

In Solano County, a total of $78,423,027 was taken out of school-allocated property taxes to pay unrelated State obligations in 2010-2011.  $65,751,593 was redirected to satisfy the State's VLF backfill obligation. $12,671,434 was redirected to pay for the State's 2004 Economic Recovery Bonds.  In 2011-12, $77,703,801 was diverted.  The entire county-wide Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund was emptied, along with $5 million directly from specific school-district allocations, including over a million each from Fairfield-Suisun Unified and Vallejo City Unified.  This represents a diversion of almost 20% of all property tax paid in the County.

 

In 2011-12, $74,956,897 was not paid to K-12 school districts until after the end of the school year ($51 millon of which was formal deferrals).  Thanks to Proposition 30, this dropped to $63,539,174 last summer.  This year, the First Principal Apportionment has already detailed $30,975,362 in deferrals past June 2014, with approximately 50% more expected in the Second Principal Apportionment later in the school year.  Solano Community Colleges face about $5 million in deferrals this year.

 

Solano County should be slightly more fortunate, compared with other California counties, in receiving about 35% of the diversion back before the end of the year.  (30% is the average.)  This may be little comfort to Fairfield-Suisun and Vallejo City Unifieds, as they figure out how to cope with at least $8 million arriving in arrears each, or Vacaville, Travis and Benicia Unifieds, each looking at $2+ million in late payments.  The County Office of Education will be $3.6 million short this June.  Plus whatever more is unveiled with the Second Principal Apportionment for each of them.

 

Source: State Controller's Office, Local Government Reporting Section. (City and county detail shown in the reports, totals upon request from the SCO.); California Department of Education, First and Second Principal Apportionments.