REGIONAL— Taxpayers in the St. Louis County School District will receive some long-promised relief on the district’s school bonds following action by the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board on Monday. The board gave unanimous approval to a resolution that will provide $2 million annually to help cover a portion of the district’s bonding costs for the remaining 12 years of the bonds.

The school district currently pays about $5.2 million per year on its bonding, so the funds approved Monday will trim that by roughly 40 percent.

“That’s a big deal,” said state Sen. Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, after the vote. Superintendent Steve Sallee agreed. “This is great news for our taxpayers,” he said.

Bakk had engineered the funding mechanism back in 2014 as a means of supporting moves towards school consolidation and cooperation in the taconite relief area. The original law had made funding proposals retroactive to 2006, which allowed the St. Louis County and Mesabi East school districts to qualify, since both had undergone significant school consolidations in recent years.

About two-thirds of the funding comes from the taconite production tax, while the remaining money comes from the occupation tax paid by area mines.