Hey, fellow Angry Ohioans.
This is a continuation of my evaluation of the issues appearing on the November ballot.
The Cuyahoga County Democratic Party distributed its endorsements for Issues 3 and 10 through 14.
Democratic Party position: Yes
My position: No
A no vote rejects the combined renewal and increase.
It does not immediately eliminate the existing 4.7-mill levy.
What a Yes Vote Does
Issue 11 combines two separate decisions:
Renew the existing 4.7-mill Health and Human Services levy.
Add another 2.5 mills.
Together, the proposal creates a levy of up to 7.2 mills for 10 years.
The county estimates that the full levy would raise approximately $261.5 million annually. The additional 2.5 mills would reportedly generate approximately $110.76 million in new annual revenue.
The county has identified possible uses including:
Child-placement costs
Services for older adults
Homelessness services
The ADAMHS Board
MetroHealth
Juvenile Court
Other health and social services
What a No Vote Does
A no vote rejects the combined renewal and increase.
It does not immediately eliminate the existing 4.7-mill levy.
That levy remains authorized through the end of 2028.
Therefore:
A no vote prevents the additional 2.5 mills from beginning.
The existing levy continues through 2028.
County officials could return to voters with another proposal before the existing levy expires.
If no replacement or renewal is subsequently approved, the existing levy would expire after 2028.
What Is a Mill?
A mill is $1 (one dollar) in tax for every $1,000 of assessed property value.
Ohio generally assesses residential property at 35% of its market value. That means a house with a county market value of $300,000 has an assessed value of:
$300,000 × 35% = $105,000
One mill on that property would cost approximately:
$105,000 ÷ 1,000 = $105 annually
That works out to approximately $8.75 per month for each new mill.
For the additional 2.5-mill levy:
$105 × 2.5 = approximately $262.50 annually
For a property valued at $300,000, the additional portion of Issue 11 would therefore cost approximately:
$262.50 annually
About $21.88 monthly
The county provides an online calculator that residents can use with the official market value assigned to their property. Cuyahoga County levy calculator
My Reasoning
My objection is that Issue 11 combines renewal and expansion into one vote.
Voters cannot support continuation of the existing levy while rejecting the increase.
This is political extortion.
Voting no does not immediately eliminate the existing Health and Human Services levy. The county will continue collecting the existing 4.7 mills through 2028.
We should be able to reevaluated both the existing millage and an increase separately.
It's hard to take any of your arguments about levies seriously when you make no mention of the impact of HB920.
For those that don't know, Ohio is one of several states that fixes the dollar amount collected from a levy passed by the voters. That means that if we passed a levy 10 years ago for X dollars, the income from that levy today is still X dollars, even though assessed property values and costs have all risen dramatically in that time.
So things that are funded by voted property tax levies get no "cost of living" increase over time, unless we vote to give them one with new levies.
That's not to say we should automatically vote for every levy. But the things I would want to know are like, how has the organization's budget changed over time, adjusted for inflation? Is the new levy effectively just a cost-of-living increase, or is it more than that? Is there evidence that the organization has been significantly wasteful, or has its need for property tax revenue gone down for some reason? Or would a "no" vote on the levy be a vote to effectively cut services?