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Cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 73F. Winds light and variable..
Cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 73F. Winds light and variable.
Updated: July 24, 2026 @ 10:21 pm
Blockburger
Blockburger
An error by the White County Tax Assessor’s Office has left the Riverview School District with nearly $500,000 less in tax revenue this year, according to Riverview Interim Superintendent Susan Blockburger.
“We see a significant decrease in our personal property valuation and so the taxes the state collects, there was a large difference this year,” Blockburger told the Riverview School Board last Thursday. “It’s $492,965 less than what we collected in 2025.”
Blockburger said the error involves Happy Solar Farm, a 135-megawatt facility located on 700 acres near Happy, south of West Point. She said it is the first solar farm in White County to be brought in and put under a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) program.
“It [PILOT] is an incentive that is used all across the nation to bring business in,” Blockburger said. “There are many solar farms in the state of Arkansas – there’s actually steel industry and windmill industry that we see the PILOT tax program being used to bring those businesses into communities – [but] it’s the first one in White County so our tax assessor’s office has never dealt with this program before, so it’s new to them just like anybody else.”
Blockburger said that when the district got word about the solar farm coming online in 2023, former Riverview Superintendent Stan Stratton reached out to find out if there was going to be any difference in the way a solar farm depreciates or is taxed but he could not find any answers even though he contacted several people.
In the payment in lieu of taxes system, Blockburger said, she learned from the district’s financial advisor, Michael Dobbs of First Security Bank, that the solar farm should never have been put on the district’s tax valuation. She said a PILOT organization is supposed to make a payment instead of taxes and it’s typically 35 percent of whatever that tax would have been that it owed.
She said White County put the solar farm on the district’s valuation in 2025 and 100 percent of the taxes that the business would have owed were collected. “So they must correct that,” Blockburger said. “And so they have removed that from our valuation and that business has a credit, so they really won’t be making that payment in lieu of taxes until they’re paid back what they overpaid on 2025.”
Blockburger said she needs to find out how much of a credit the solar farm is owed and when it might start having to make its payment in lieu of taxes back to the county. She said when that happens, the district will get it. She said it will come in as miscellaneous funds, which the state considers income from local revenue.
Blockburger said Riverview is expecting to see roughly $480,000 less in revenue this year than it did last year. She said she will let the board know when she has updated information on the solar farm.
Board member Rocky Joslin asked Blockburger, “Is there anything from like, I don’t know, the state or whatnot? Because this was a colossal mistake by a county agency, a government agency, and even one we had gone to to make sure this was going to get handled correctly and it still wasn’t. Is there anything that is a backup for us?”
Blockburger said she reached out to the state financial office of the Department of Education. “This has happened elsewhere in the past. They were not surprised. It was not something unusual to the state office. They have seen this happen to districts in the past. There was not some system to help us. It is a very good example for all school districts, especially for us since we’re in it, why it’s so important for school districts to be efficient.”
Blockburger said that 80 percent of Riverview’s budget is salaries and benefits, “so we have a very small piece of our budget to work with for other things, so you have to be efficient on staffing. I mean, any business, any entity could go out of business and shut down and move out of our district and they no longer pay taxes, so we have to be ready for this at all times.
“The last five years that we’ve been here, we have been very diligent after somebody leaves, do we have to replace them? We do have a declining enrollment so as we have fewer students, do we need those positions? We have to look at that. I am so thankful that we reorganized the elementaries.”
She said the district’s final budget this year “would be looking very different” if the board had not decided to make its two elementaries Riverview Primary School and Riverview Intermediate School. “I mean, we did not rehire or replace six of the elementary teachers that left us last year and that’s because we now have the pre-K-2 campus and a 3-6 campus. We’re now able to be a lot more efficient. So we have to continue to be very efficient with our staff going toward the future.”
Blockburger
Riverview
School District
What: To receive nearly $500,000 less in tax revenue this year than it received last year
Why: Interim superintendent says White County Tax Assessor’s Office made error involving Happy Solar Farm
Error: Solar farm put on district’s tax valuation even though it was part of PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) program, given tax credit for overpayment in 2025
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