The Greene County School Board recently approved to continue a property tax levy.

At their board meeting earlier this month, the School Board approved renewing the Instructional Support Levy for the next five years, following the public hearing where no comments were made. Superintendent Brett Abbotts says this levy allows for the Board to have the authority to spend additional money for education materials and staffing, and can not be spent on capital improvements or purchasing vehicles.

Abbotts points out, the Instructional Support Levy rate is set by the Iowa Department of Management and so the school district does not have the ability to change that. He explains that this kind of property tax levy is not a new tax.

“It is something that we’ve always had and the Board is going through a process of just renewing this every five years. The other option would be to put it to an election vote which would then allow us to go every ten years. The rate wouldn’t change at all if we were to do that. But it is additional funding again that has always been there, it’s been there for as long as I can see back in the history of Greene County.”

The new rate for the next fiscal year is $0.38 per $1,000 of property valuation, which Abbotts says will generate about $300,000.