This Fiscal Conservative Offers a Word on Prop RT

Vote NO April 7 on Prop RT.

To the Taxpayers and Voters of St. Charles County,

I have been following school finances closely for ten years. I am a fiscal conservative and want to lay out my concerns with Prop RT:

1. I am OPPOSED to Prop RT as it will cause significant reductions in local property tax revenue for local school districts (and other taxing districts) without any offsetting alternative tax increases. The Senior Citizen Property Tax Freeze previously enacted cost the FHSD ~$1 million last year. Prop RT is expected to cost as much as $4 million the first year and increase cumulatively from there.

2. I believe the education of our citizens is vital to a fully functioning and free society. I also believe that the costs for educating our children should be borne by most citizens.

3. To be clear, I’m not one who believes that school districts deserve unlimited funding or that higher funding levels will necessarily correlate with higher student outcomes. I was one of a handful of voters that successfully defeated the last tax levy proposal in 2018.

4. This ballot proposal appears to me as “a solution looking for a problem”. The premise of this ballot proposal must be that taxes are escalating way too much and people can’t afford them. Below are my arguments against this premise.

5. Prop RT is basically an expansion of the Senior Property Tax Freeze to all property owners. The Senior Property Tax Freeze is flawed for the following reasons:

a. The Hancock Amendment has been in place for many years and limits property tax increases to the Consumer Price Increase (CPI) or 5%, whichever is less. This protects taxpayers from unusually large increases in taxes simply because property values are escalating more than inflation.

b. The Missouri Property Tax Credit (Circuit Breaker) provides a tax credit up to $1,100 for homeowners (couples) earning less than $34,000 per year. If the legislature wanted to provide additional relief to the poorest taxpayers, they could have simply increased the existing credit and eligibility level. However, in so doing the legislature would have to had pay for it, whereas the cost of the Senior Property Tax Freeze falls to all the local taxing jurisdictions.

c. The other fallacy is that seniors are on fixed incomes and can’t afford any increases in taxes:

i. Social Security recipients receive annual cost of living adjustments based on CPI

ii. Public Pension recipients generally receive annual cost of living adjustments

iii. Private Pension recipients generally do not receive increases, but very few people are entitled to these now.

iv. Those with 401k / IRA accounts (replacing many private pensions) have benefitted immensely as the stock market historically returns 10% per year, significantly more than the CPI.

v. We need to expand the tax base (local, state, & federal) instead of contracting it as these amendments do. Everyone needs “to have a little skin in the game”.

6. Prop RT takes the Senior Property Tax Freeze and expands it to all taxpayers. In addition to the issues identified above with the Senior Property Tax Freeze, Prop RT may introduce even more concerns:

a. Missouri will have different taxation rules between neighboring counties. St. Louis County does not have an April ballot property tax proposal like St. Charles does. So, what will happen if taxes are frozen in St. Charles but not in St. Louis County?

i. Will teachers lean toward St. Louis County school districts since they will be better able to pay annual increases?

ii. Will parents tend to migrate to St. Louis County since the schools will be better funded?

b. You’ll end up after several years if Prop RT is approved where neighbors with similar houses will pay significantly different property taxes, for the same level of services (schools, ambulance, library, etc). How is that fair?

c. Again, with the potential passage of this flawed ballot proposal, will it depress home sales as homeowners won’t want to give up the accumulated credits from the freeze and expose themselves to higher taxes on a different house. If sales are depressed, will this not hurt local businesses that support home sales such as realtors, lenders, furniture and home improvement stores?

d. Similar to the Senior Property Tax Freeze, all accumulated credits could be lost if the property owner fails to renew the application one time, thus resulting in a significant increase in their tax bill. This is poor policy.

Thank you for taking the time to understand this important issue for St. Charles County and I hope you will join me in defeating this terrible ballot measure.

Carl Suhre

2/27/2026

Vote NO April 7 on Prop RT.

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