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West Carrollton school district officials plan to return to the ballot this fall after Tuesday's rejection of a 5.5-mill continuous operating levy seeking a tax hike.
They also plan this spring to outline possible cuts should the issue fail in November in a district that has been showing budget deficits the past few years, West Carrollton Superintendent Rusty Clifford said Wednesday.
“There’s logical consequences for any levy regardless of the outcome,” he said. “What you can do, can’t do. Might do, might not do. Start, stop – all of those types of things.”
To this point, officials “have not spent one second on any of that,” Clifford said.
Voters defeated Issue 20 by nearly 10 percentage points, a margin of about 700 votes, according to final but unofficial results from the Montgomery County Board of Elections. Clifford called it a "good first step."
If approved, the levy would have generated $1.93 million annually and cost the owner of a home valued at $100,000 about $192 a year, according to the county auditor’s office.
Voters in the district – which includes parts of Miami Twp. and Moraine – last approved new taxes in 2007.
Clifford said the 45 percent who voted for the levy is the largest show of support for first-time requests of the four tax increases on the ballot in the district since 1995.
Going forward, the district has several months to present what may occur without passage of the levy, which district officials have repeatedly said is “a revenue issue, not an expenditure issue.”
“We have a very appropriate amount of time to put plans in place,” Clifford said, “and let everybody know what we’re going to look like as we roll into the 2016-17 school year and as we move forward to the 2017-18 school year.”
Deficits of West Carrollton’s nearly $40 million budget are projected to continue through 2020, district records show. Those numbers show the district more than $3 million in the red annually during that time.
Since a 6.5-mill levy was renewed in 2010, district officials said, caps in the state funding formula and the phasing out of the tangible personal property tax reimbursements have resulted in budget deficits.
The district has added $1.1 million in upgrades “at no cost to the taxpayer” with joint agreements to improve to its athletic facilities at the high school and playground equipment at C.F. Holliday, district officials have said.
They said West Carrollton is below the state average in administration, operations, maintenance and per-pupil spending, while being above the state average in percentage of the general fund budget going to classroom for instruction.
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