Casinos giveth, the state takes away: City schools losing dollars overall for 2013-14

By SALLY BOYD

Gazette Neigh­bors Editor

There was good news and bad news at the Jan­u­ary meet­ing of the Belle­vue Board of Education.

The good news: The dis­trict will be receiv­ing upwards of $250,000 from Ohio casino profits.

The bad: Despite that pay­off, dis­tricts includ­ing Belle­vue, will still be receiv­ing less because of cut­backs in the state edu­ca­tion budget.

Dis­trict Trea­surer Nancy Beier, using a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion, detailed the “good” and “bad” news when the board met Thurs­day evening at Belle­vue High School.

Casino rev­enues for the dis­trict, the first to be dis­trib­uted by the Ohio Depart­ment of Tax­a­tion, will be $43,388.96 on Jan. 31. A sec­ond pay­ment will come in August, she said, adding the year’s total is pre­dicted at $240,000.

“We’ll see when that time comes,” Beier said, point­ing out that the casino rev­enues were not counted in the fore­cast she pre­sented to the board last fall.

Accord­ing to Beier, 34 per­cent of the casino taxes are to go to Ohio school dis­tricts and are dis­trib­uted based on enroll­ment. The remain­ing taxes are to be shared as fol­lows: 51 per­cent to Ohio coun­ties, based on pop­u­la­tion; five per­cent to casino host cities of Cincin­nati, Cleve­land, Colum­bus and Toledo; three per­cent to the Ohio Casino Con­trol Com­mis­sion; three per­cent to the Ohio State Rac­ing Com­mis­sion; two per­cent to Ohio law enforce­ment train­ing; and two per­cent to Ohio gam­bling and sub­stance abuse treatment.

“Unfor­tu­nately, what we are get­ting is still far less than what the state has taken away,” said Beier.

The trea­surer said the local dis­trict will receive $58,000 less in prop­erty taxes this year com­pared to what was fore­cast for the cur­rent fis­cal year of 2012–13. She stated her new fore­cast for the 2013–14 school year will reflect this drop in prop­erty taxes which are based on prop­erty valuations.

Beier pro­vided a prop­erty value break­down for the four coun­ties included in the Belle­vue School Dis­trict. Both San­dusky and Huron Coun­ties have seen a drop while Seneca County has remained the same and Erie County has actu­ally climbed slightly.

Her fig­ures show the prop­erty value com­par­isons as follow:

•San­dusky County –– $110,496,340 in 2012, a drop of $9,687,030 or eight per­cent from 2011’s value of $120,183,370.

•Huron County –– $82,734,470 in 2012, a drop of $2,400,760 or three per­cent from 2011’s value of $85,135,230.

•Seneca County — $34,889,740 in 2012, an increase of $68,070 or zero per­cent from 2011’s value of $34,821,670.

•Erie County — $18,273,280 in 2012, an increase of $897,900 or five per­cent from 2011’s value of $17,375,380.

The 2012 val­ues for the dis­trict prop­er­ties in all four coun­ties are $246,393,830, a drop of $11,121,820 or four per­cent from 2011’s total of $257,515,650.

In other finan­cial news, Beier said the dis­trict is hold­ing its own and will be fil­ing the annual Esti­mated Tax Rev­enue report with the San­dusky County Bud­get Com­mis­sion, the pur­pose of which is to demon­strate the need to levy prop­erty taxes to cover the esti­mated expen­di­tures for the upcom­ing bud­get year (July 1, 2013 — June 30, 2014).

“From this report, the county bud­get com­mis­sion will approve the tax rates that will be levied on behalf of the school dis­trict. Their tax rate res­o­lu­tion will be received in the spring and brought to the Board of Edu­ca­tion for your approval,” Beier said.

The board, which moved its reg­u­lar monthly meet­ing night up one week in order to also hold the required reor­ga­ni­za­tional meet­ing, con­ducted the lat­ter first on Thurs­day, re-electing Dr. Ted Clark as pres­i­dent of the board and Diane Streeter as vice pres­i­dent. Both were sworn in by Beier before the reg­u­lar agenda was addressed.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jan 11 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.