Analysis: Local property taxes up 28% for some, down for others

How property taxes are calculated in Ohio is complicated, and a big boost in property value doesn’t always trigger large tax increases. Other factors that can fuel large increases include new taxes, charter millage, and whether a school district is at the 20-mill floor.

Greene County Auditor David Graham said the highest average tax bill increase was $1,400 in Miami Twp. in the Yellow Springs Exempted Village School District. He said the huge increase was due in part to the fact voters approved a 6.1-mill bond levy and it includes agricultural properties where increases were even higher than residential.

The Montgomery County Auditor’s Office previously estimated that city of Dayton taxpayers would see taxes spike 10-12% because of the city’s voter-approved charter millage. But when they ran the numbers they realized Dayton Public Schools has a bond levy to finance new buildings from 2002 that was adjusted from 12 mills to 6.37 mills.

“It just so happens that additional rate decrease coincided with a very large value increase this year,” said auditor’s office spokesman Mike Brill. “Overall, this is very good news for DPS property owners.”

Because of this, while Dayton residents saw their property values increase an average of nearly 29%, their tax bills went down an average of .3%. In real dollars, this comes out to an average $83 tax decrease.

Likewise enough of Jefferson Twp. is in the Dayton Public Schools district that taxes there went down an average 3.6% while property values went up an average 15.6%.

Local property tax changes

Below are average property value and tax increases by community this year in Montgomery and Greene counties. These are the community-wide averages. Individual homes will see different amounts based on factors such as value, school district, and other assessments that may not apply to the whole jurisdiction.

Source: Montgomery County and Greene County auditor’s offices

‘That’s a substantial increase’

Mike Kraus, 83, of Yellow Springs, said though his increase in property taxes are not an exceptional burden to himself, he knows there are others who are less fortunate.

In the last triennial revaluation three years ago, Kraus said the assessed value of his home, off of Dayton Street, went up by 40%. This year, it went up again by 19%.

“I complained both times, and it didn’t do me a bit of good,” he said.

Kraus, a retired history teacher and former Antioch College professor, said he formally objected to a similar reassessment in Yellow Springs in the 1970s, which successfully reduced his tax burden.

This time around, there was no such luck.

“I’m not in any financial straits, even with the increase in the taxes, but that’s not true of a lot of other people,” he said. “My complaint is that you have no control over what an auditor decides the revaluation of your property ought to be.”

In addition to the revaluation process, Miami Twp. is also largely within the Yellow Springs school district, which recently passed its bond issue on its third attempt. Kraus said though he voted against the first two bond issues, he changed his mind and voted in favor of the third, after “reading about the difficulties it did represent for other people in town,” he said.

“That’s a substantial increase to pay for,” he said. “That’s why a lot of elderly people who live here in town weren’t terribly enthusiastic about the new school construction.”

20-mill floor

The smallest increase in Greene County was in Bellbrook with an average increase of 4% or $253, largely because that is the only school district countywide that is at the 20-mill floor.

“Those school districts that are not at the floor saw a larger percentage increase in their taxes because the floor creates this false minimum, where most levies get reduced when reappraisal increases occur,” Graham explained. “If a school district is at the floor some of their levies cannot be reduced because they’re already at the floor.”

There are mechanisms in place to ensure taxpayers are generally protected from huge value hikes. Voted levies are capped at the amount taxpayers approved. Unvoted taxes are allowed to be collected up to a certain level, by Ohio law. That level is 10 mills for governmental bodies and 20 mills for schools.

Once a school district’s total current expense millage is reduced to 20 mills, it cannot be reduced any further, so tax revenues grow as property values increase. It only applies to operating levies not bond, permanent improvement, emergency, or income tax levies.

The highest average community tax increase in Montgomery County was $655 in Miami Twp. because of the 20-mill floor and a new police levy, according to Brill.

There are seven K-12 school districts plus the Greene County Career Center in Greene County and only one is not subject to the 20-mill floor. The entities combined are receiving $42.5 million due to the value explosion and $34.4 million goes to the schools.

Montgomery County has 16 school districts plus the Miami Valley Career Technology Center, only three are at the 20-mill floor, which meant tax increases weren’t as extreme. County taxing bodies are receiving an estimated $56.6 million and $32.3 million belongs to the schools.

“No question about it the true driver here is school funding,” Montgomery County Auditor Karl Keith said. “That’s what we’ve been saying all along, the school funding issue has not been effectively addressed by the state legislature at any time during the last decade and continues to be the fly in the ointment.”

Windfalls and levies

Keith said while entities knew they’d be getting a windfall, a hefty one in some cases, there were four school districts that had tax levies on the ballot last November.

The Beavercreek City School District received an estimated $13 million hike — the highest in Greene County — but that included voter passage of a 1-mill replacement levy last November that doubled the taxpayers’ cost from $14 to $35 per $100,000 of value.

There were three districts in Montgomery County nearly neck-and-neck with revenue hikes this year around $5 million, Miamisburg, Centerville and Kettering. Miamisburg was the top with nearly $5.3 million, an 11.6% increase.

“Even with seeing those record increases the schools are saying that is not enough to meet the expenses we have, and they still put levies on,” Keith said.

In a recent summit among Butler County leaders to discuss how to address property tax increases — that county saw larger value and tax increases than Montgomery or Greene counties — state Rep. Thomas Hall, R-Madison Twp. noted that much of it is driven by people passing levies.

Hall said in November there were 1,009 property tax questions on the ballot statewide and 858 were successful, according to lobbyists from the Department of Taxation.

“They shared that data with us to basically say you guys are complaining about property taxes, but overwhelmingly they keep passing,” Hall said.

State debate

The state is attempting to tackle the property tax issue and formed a special Joint Committee on Property Tax Review and Reform. The 10-member panel wrapped up hearings a couple weeks ago after eight sessions.

A group of school district officials gave testimony in April including Northmont City Schools Superintendent Tony Thomas in Montgomery County. He told the legislators while many districts did receive a windfall it was tempered by reduced state funding.

“Since we are not at the 20-mill floor, (state law) reduces the effective tax rate of our levies, and we will see no growth in funding from our voted mills. Therefore, the 36% increase in property values will increase our property tax revenue on our inside mills by $1.5 million,” Thomas said.

“While we appreciate the increase in property tax revenue, the effect of the increase in property valuations will reduce the state funding we are projected to receive by $1.18 million. The net effect will be less than a 1% increase in revenue. This does not keep pace with inflation and results in fewer services for our students.”

The joint committee had hoped to issue a report before they recessed for the summer, but missed that deadline. Several solutions have been discussed including addressing the 20-mill floor, several adjustments to the homestead exemption, a “circuit breaker” approach and the latest, a constitutional amendment that would cap tax increases at 4%.

Local efforts

In Butler County, Auditor Nancy Nix issued a challenge last summer to all taxing bodies, asking them to forgo the windfall.

The county commissioners and officials in Middletown and Seven Mile and Fairfield, Liberty and West Chester townships accepted the challenge saving taxpayers $8 million combined.

In Montgomery County, Keith did not ask the taxing bodies to forgo funding because he knew he had little chance of success, because many school districts seem to need more money based on the recent levy requests. As for the rest of the taxing bodies.

“It really wouldn’t amount to much and I don’t like playing games with taxpayers,” Keith told this news outlet. “Telling them we’re giving them a big tax break and it ends up being five bucks, that’s silly I think.”

Graham took a shot at trying to get the schools to reduce their millage but only the Greene County Career Center — their windfall was $2.7 million — responded.

“I pointed out to them they were the only school district that had reached out to me and their reducing their rate alone, by themselves wasn’t going to do anything,” Graham said. “It would require the other school districts and county.”

He said he talked to the county administrator about a tax break and was told with the ongoing $76 million jail project and volatile construction costs he didn’t “feel comfortable reducing our inside millage right now.”

The county’s estimated windfall was $4.1 million. Assistant County Administrator Lisa Hale told this news outlet it would have been risky to forgo revenue.

“Inflation has really affected discretionary spending and that in turn affects sales tax which is more than half of our general fund revenue,” she said. “So in general, with multimillion dollar projects like the jail and our water treatment plant upgrades and expansion, it doesn’t really make sense to cut revenues and take the risk of having to borrow money at a high interest rate if there happen to be project overruns.”

Graham suggested a tax break to the other taxing bodies as well saying “look you’re going to get a large cash windfall and you need to look out for your taxpayers,” to no avail.