You've probably seen the word in our coverage: the school board is having a "levy conversation" on Thursday. The county, the city, the park district — all taxing bodies do levies. But what is a levy, actually?

A levy is a dollar amount. That's the whole concept. It's the total amount of money a taxing body asks to collect from property taxes for the year. When Geneseo's school board talks about a $1.1 million increase, they're talking about requesting roughly $25.5 million total — about $1,111,318 more than last year's request.

It's not a tax rate. The rate comes later, and it's just arithmetic (more on that below). The levy is the decision. Everything else is math.

It's the board's biggest annual revenue choice. For a school district, property taxes are the largest funding source by far — the state contributes a share, plus some federal dollars and local fees, but the levy is the number the board actually controls. Each fall, the administration proposes one, the board debates it, and by the last Tuesday in December, they must adopt it. Miss that deadline and there is no levy.

The levy is built fund by fund. A school district doesn't just pick one number. It levies separately for each purpose — the education fund (the big one: teachers, classrooms), operations and maintenance (buildings), transportation (buses), retirement contributions, tort liability (insurance and legal costs), and a few others. The $25.5 million is the sum of all those individual fund levies.

Request isn't always reality. Here's a subtlety that matters: the board requests a levy, but the county clerk extends it — meaning the clerk calculates the actual tax bills, applying legal limits. If the request exceeds what's allowed under the tax-cap law or a fund's maximum rate, the clerk cuts it down. Districts know this, so they sometimes request slightly above what they expect to receive — partly to make sure they capture revenue from new construction, which the cap treats separately. The number in the headline and the number on your bill aren't always identical.

How the board gets there. The process has a rhythm:

Fall discussion. The administration presents projections — property values, last year's collections, new construction, cost pressures. This is where Geneseo School District is now: Thursday's meeting is a conversation, not a vote.
Tentative levy. The board settles on a proposed number, usually in November.
Truth in Taxation. If the proposal tops 5% over the prior year's actual extension, state law requires a published notice and a public hearing where the board must explain the increase and take testimony. Geneseo's 5.46% clears that bar — expect a December hearing.
Final adoption. By the last Tuesday in December, the board votes. Then the clerk takes it from there.

From levy to your bill. Once every taxing body has adopted its levy, the county clerk adds up each body's levy, divides by the total equalized assessed value (EAV) of all taxable property, and gets a rate — expressed per $100 of EAV. Your bill is your property's EAV times that rate. The district's projected rate of 4.3970 means $4.3970 per $100 of EAV.

Why the rate can fall while your bill rises. The rate is the levy divided by total property values. When values grow faster than the levy — Geneseo's total EAV is estimated up 5.56% — the same dollars spread over more value produce a lower rate. But your bill is the rate times your home's value. If your value rose with the market, a lower rate on a higher value still means a bigger bill. The board controls the levy. The market moves the rate.

The guardrails. Two laws shape what boards can do. The tax-cap law (PTELL) limits annual revenue growth to inflation or 5%, whichever is less, in counties where voters adopted it — it caps the district's total collection, not your individual bill. And Truth in Taxation forces transparency on anything above 5%: a published notice with last year's number, the proposed number, and the percentage increase, plus a hearing. Neither law sets the levy. The board does.

What to watch Thursday. It's a conversation, not a vote — but it's the conversation that sets up the vote. The questions that matter: which funds are driving the $1.1 million, what's behind them (salaries, benefits, insurance, staffing), and how the district's other revenues — like the 1% sales tax, up 16% this year — factor in. The tentative levy comes later; December brings the hearing and the final number.