Few would argue that the Bellevue schools don’t need the additional funds provided by local option levies. The question is whether the district needs the full amounts proposed on the current ballot.

Since the ballot only allows for a yes or no vote, the arguments made for the levies simply compare the effects of the requested amount to zero.

This is a straw man argument. I invite the School Board to justify the amounts of these levies, instead. I ask for this justification because the local school support portion of my property tax bill has been growing at what I would consider an unsustainable rate in the 15 years that I have lived in Bellevue.

From 1994 to 2009, the cost of living (as measured by the CPI) has grown 49 percent, the local school portion of my property tax bill has grown 117 percent, and all other components of that bill have grown by 53 percent.

Looking to the next five years and using the numbers provided by the district, my school tax will grow 19.7 percent from 2009 to 2011, totaling 34.6 percent in 2014 and amounting to a 20-year growth of 192 percent over the period 1994-2014. (These numbers are significantly different from the ones cited on the BSD web site and in the Bellevue Reporter because my assessment declined by 14.4 percent for 2010 taxes, not the 20 percent figure used in the illustration.) While there may be a good deal of fluctuation from one property to another in the near term, these fluctuations should even out over 20 years, and the 192 percent figure should be fairly representative of most Bellevue taxpayers.

The School Board is limited by statute in the amount it can request for these levies, and the current request represents the maximum. I would like to know why the maximum is the appropriate amount and why the board feels that the growth rate should not be more in line with the general inflation rate.

Chris Curry, Bellevue