Property taxes for residents of the Eastern Iowa Community Colleges district will probably go down next year. Monday night the board of trustees will consider a recommendation to lower the tax rate by about 16 per cent.
Chancellor Don Doucette says this year's rate is 99-cents per 1,000 dollars assessed value, and under the proposed budget for next year, it would drop to 82-cents. And the reason is lower costs in two major annual expenses - early retirement, and insurance and maintenance.
"Specifically the downtown campus is less expensive to operate, and maintenance agreements and things like that associated with it are substantially less costly than they have been for older buildings."
Trustees for the community college district, with campuses in the Quad Cities, Muscatine, and Clinton, will hold a public hearing Monday night for next year's proposed budget, with final approval set for March 9th.
A budget must be submitted to the state by March 15th.