MOUNT VERNON — The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community has decided to contribute $400,000 to the La Conner School District next year and continue employing 11 education paraprofessionals to work at the school at a cost of about $550,000, but that will still leave the district almost $400,000 short of what it previously received in county tax revenue.
The change is coming as a result of a 2013 federal court decision that found properties on tribal trust lands are exempt from local property taxes.
The Swinomish tribe announced recently that it will tax residents on 931 properties in the Shelter Bay community and along Pull and Be Damned Road at the same rate the county did previously. But how that revenue is spent is now the tribe’s decision.
Last year, the school district received almost $800,000 in local property tax revenues from the parcels before they were pulled from the county’s tax rolls.
The tribe’s cash contribution for 2015 will be about half that.
“The tribe’s contribution of $400,000, it goes a long way. But the additional revenues we collected under the old system was another $380,000,” said Tim Bruce, La Conner School District superintendent.
Bruce said the school has three options to make up the shortfall from its $9.35 million budget: levy additional taxes, cut services or find some combination of both.
The La Conner School Board will hold a special meeting at 6 p.m. Monday in the high school library to consider its options.
Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby said the tribe’s relationships with tax districts and the value it places on local services spurred the Swinomish Indian Senate to offer the contributions, though it is not legally bound to do so.
“I think any school district in Skagit County would be happy to be receiving that kind of commitment from any agency, let alone a tribe,” Cladoosby said by phone Wednesday. “I think it speaks volumes to the commitment we have to education.”
Cladoosby pointed out in the news release that the nearly $1 million the tribe will spend to support schools could be going toward other tribal needs.
“This is an enormous amount of money to anyone. And when I look around at our tribal community, I see so many other unmet needs,” he said in the release. “We still cannot provide
A 2013 decision on the Great Wolf Lodge case in Lewis County by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that state and local governments could no longer tax houses and other improvements built on leased reservation trust land. That took 931 buildings valued at approximately $138 million in the Shelter Bay and Pull and Be Damned Road communities off Skagit County property tax rolls.
Tax districts that depend on that property tax revenue, especially small districts in La Conner, would have been faced with either shrinking their budgets or increasing the tax burden on remaining taxpayers in their districts.
The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community has the authority to tax those buildings. By instituting an interim tax code for 2011 through 2014, the tribe closed the possibility for those property owners to seek refunds for taxes – sidestepping a potential $5.4 million expense for local tax districts and property owners.
The tribe is organizing a method to collect property taxes from those property owners moving forward, but a new code and separate interlocal agreements with each tax district will determine how the money is collected and disbursed.
ty had levied. That effectively closed down the possibility of property owners requesting tax refunds and spared La Conner tax districts from paying back millions of dollars.
“That was our biggest worry,” Superintendent Bruce said. “That was a great help, what the tribe did to seal that off.”
Cladoosby noted that the tribe has supported La Conner schools for years because the state “has been unwilling to carry out its duty” to fully fund education.
the level of medical and other services that we want our tribal members to receive. We see opportunities for salmon habitat restoration that we cannot fund. We see reservation land for sale that we cannot purchase to restore to tribal ownership.”
The Swinomish Indian Senate intends to adopt a new tax code to take effect Jan. 1, according to a news release from the tribe.
In October, the Swinomish adopted an interim tax code for 2011 through 2014 that set rates identical to those Skagit Coun-The school district is not the only entity affected by the tax ruling. Others included Fire District 13, Medic One and the La Conner Library.
Those districts will set up their own interlocal agreements with the tribe.
“Just like the Swinomish Tribe’s own government, each of these districts provides valuable services to the Swinomish Reservation,” said Cladoosby. “But each one is in a different situation, so we have negotiated separate arrangements with each.”
Fire District 13’s $106,098 in property tax revenue will remain unchanged, said Chief Roy Horn. The tribe also is increasing its additional annual contribution to the district from $120,000 to $150,000.
Those additional funds will allow the district to keep three firefighters at the station at all times, which will cut response times to calls, Horn said.
“We have a contract with the tribe. They generously upped it $30,000, which we’re very appreciative of. They’ve been very good to work with,” Horn said.
Medic One has reached its statutory levy rate limit and can’t raise taxes to compensate for revenues it lost from trust land, but the tribe will provide $52,957 in 2015.
In a similar situation, the tribe committed $25,734 to the La Conner Library so it can maintain 2014 service levels.
“We realize that this is a difficult year of transition and we look forward to working with the tribe on the goal of full funding in 2016 and beyond,” the Library Board of Trustees noted in the press release.
Cladoosby said the tribe is doing what it can to “ease the transition from state to tribal taxation.”
“For decades we have seen a flood of tax monies leave the Reservation and flow to other governments,” he said in the release. “Those are funds that we desperately needed when we had so few other sources of government revenue. So we are thankful that we now have the opportunity to receive tax revenues to help pay for the essential governmental services the tribe provides throughout the Reservation.”
