Mehlville School District officials have proposed keeping the district’s blended tax rate for the 2008-2009 school year virtually the same by raising it by less than one cent per $100 of assessed valuation.

District officials are recommending to the Board of Education that Mehlville’s blended tax rate be set at $3.2805 per $100 for the 2008-2009 school year.

A public hearing on the proposed tax rate will be conducted when the board meets at 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 25, at the John Cary Early Childhood Center, 3155 Koch Road, to vote on the proposed 2008-2009 tax rate.

The district’s 2007-2008 blended tax rate was $3.2731 per $100. Because of in-creased assessed valuation of property in St. Louis County last year, the district was forced for the 2007-2008 school year to roll back its tax rate by 37.12 cents.

The school district is projected to collect additional new revenue in the next school year. District officials project collecting $774,484 in new revenue from construction and $65,599.16 — or 10 percent — from new revenue due to reassessment.

While the district’s proposed blended tax rate for the next school year is $3.2805 per $100, no one resident will actually pay it because it is a combination of four separate property taxes — residential, agricultural, commercial and personal property.

The four rates proposed for 2008-2009 are: residential property, $3.1469; agricultural property, $4.0880; commercial property, $3.2747; and personal property, $3.9628.

In 2007-2008, those tax rates were: residential property, $3.1414; agricultural property, $4.0900; commercial property, $3.2562; and personal property, $3.9648.

The school district’s total assessed valuation in each of those taxing categories is $1,329,533,050 in residential property, $291,197,820 in commercial property, $262,476,070 in personal property and $352,760 in agricultural property.

That places Mehlville’s total assessed valuation at $1,883,559,700.