Tax money well spent

If you own a $200,000 home, your taxes will soon go up by $43.92, thanks to ballot measures passed this past week by Mat-Su Borough voters.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that you will be getting a lot of bang for your buck.

Voters approved a proposal put forward by the Borough’s board of education to increase security features and provide other non-aesthetic upgrades at area schools. Nothing glitzy or fancy about this; just very real concerns for the integrity of schools’ security in this increasingly violent world.

The $6.07 a year for every $100,000 of tax assessment will be more than matched by the state, with the state promising to fund 70 percent of the projects, which will affect every school in the district.

According to the unofficial tallies, the school bond passed 4,400 to 3,286 — 57 percent to 43 percent, with a dismayingly low 14 percent of registered Borough voters casting ballots on the issue. It passed in 27 of the 34 precincts.

As for the road bonds, voters approved them by a slightly smaller margin, 4,334 to 3,450, with voters in 24 of the 34 precincts approving the measure.

Approving Proposition No. 2 will cost voters $15.89 for each $100,000 of assessed property values.

But here, too, there is a 70-percent silver lining.

According to the bond language, the Borough will not move forward on any one project unless the state first agrees to cover 70 percent of the project’s cost.

What that means, in the long term, is that for about the price of a modest lunch for four at your favorite local restaurant each year, we can look forward to the Valley’s road construction making some headway in catching up with its traffic congestion and for a modicum of added safety for our students while they are at school.

While some may bemoan that so few “no” voters went to the polls on Tuesday, we appreciate the farsightedness of those voters who approved the measures.

And voters in Big Lake, where both measures failed, and in Meadow Lakes, where the school measure failed, can take heart with the knowledge that their approval of the merging of the Big Lake and Meadow Lake fire service areas could reduce their home insurance costs in the future and give them the funds to pay the extra taxes they didn’t approve.