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Twenty-five members of the Lake Pend Oreille School District have proposed a school levy, to extract $56 million from our community to fund their facility expansion. This includes an addition to the existing high school, constructing a new middle school, an enormous athletic center for little jocks growing up, a “vo-tech school” addition to the Clark Fork High School with an extensive addition to its existing classrooms, as well as athletic fields and “play areas” for both Washington and Northside elementary schools.

The projected tax rate levy to be added to property taxes beginning in 2017 would begin at an increase of $192 for a home valued at $100,000 home and up the scale to $1,344 for a home valued at $450,000. This levy is scheduled to be paid off in six years. The information that was not disclosed is that another levy follows, once this levy is paid. This is on top of their operational budget, which is 85 percent salary and benefits, already built into our property taxes.

In 2010-’11, the number of K1-12 students were approximately 3,650, with a declining number of 3588 in 2015-16. The population of Bonner County is 41,585 as of 2015. Of the estimated 24,500 taxpayers, 49 percent are private wage earners, 49 percent are self-employed and 2 percent are government workers (city-data.com). It is a portion of these 2 percent government workers who ask that the property owners who already support their salaries and benefits to pay an additional $56 million for 3,588 students a year.

It’s as if they are ignoring the rising costs of inflation — the increases in healthcare, food, gas, utilities, insurance, taxes — and the current amount of tension in the United States, which is almost nuclear. People are already describing the intensity as akin to the brink of civil war. That 2 percent want to impose an additional financial stress on the rest of us, could not have come at a worse time.

VICKY BABAYCO

Sandpoint