One of the candidates running for the state House of Representatives in District 110 has been on the Rockwood School Board since 2011.
In a campaign mailer, this candidate claims he’s cut taxes in the district. Is that true?
Well, it’s true that the property tax rate in Rockwood has been reduced twice during his tenure. But that’s not even close to the whole picture.
Since the 2010-2011 school year, when this candidate joined the board, Rockwood has raised taxes 5 times.
Moreover, since taking office, that candidate oversaw a net tax increase of 5.3%, from $4.2752 in 2010-2011 to $4.5015 in 2017-2018. (Source: Rockwood School District Tax History)
While the candidate’s claim is not a flat out lie, it is misleading. He’s a tax raiser, not a tax cutter. He shouldn’t claim otherwise.
Flashback: Rockwood’s Very Bad Audit (and weak response) #
UPDATE #
I’ve received complaints that the link to the Rockwood School District Tax History page was broken. So, I tested it from two devices and found the link works on one, not on the other. (404 Page Not Found error.)
Since more than two people experienced the 404 error, it’s possible Rockwood’s site is experiencing intermittent outages just when I’ve exposed bad news about the head of the school board. (Stranger things have happened in RSD.)
In case the RDS site goes down again, below is a PDF of their page that I created last night, just in case something went wrong with their servers.
Rockwood-Tax-Rate-Goes-Down…What-Does-That-Mean-for-Taxpayers_-_-Finance-_-Rockwood-School-DistrictDownload
If you get a 404 error trying to see the district’s tax history page, please leave a comment. As Elliott Davis would say, “After all, you paid for it.”
UPDATE 2 #
It looks like the Rockwood School District server has an invalid SSL certificate. Safari browser warns users when they attempt to access a site that’s not secure or who SSL (security) certificate is expired or invalid. Here’s what it looks like:
You can see this problem in any browser by attempting to navigate to https://www.rsdmo.org/finance/Pages/Rockwood-Tax-Rate-Changes.aspx
Compare Hennessy’s View valid SSL message to the warning on Rockwood’s:
