I don’t have a problem with it necessarily.  Not a fan of people forced to be effectively renting their own home from the government; let’s end that.

And yes, this has been a topic since bidenflation elevated home values causing massive increases in property taxes which sometimes forces seniors out of their own homes.

I don’t live in Ohio, but I looked around the site and couldn’t find any ideas on how the counties would recoup all of the lost cash inflow. Also see the word equitable thrown out a lot, so I’d vote bad idea. 

That said, it is fucked up that you could lose your paid off house due to not paying property tax, but again what options are there. 

That’s where schools get their funding primarily. I live in a higher tax community primarily because of the schools. I know the taxes are going to suck, but I’m willing to make that deal for the benefit. If property tax were eliminated, I’d be concerned with how community like mine would maintain its excellent school system. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I’ve not heard any alternatives put forth. 

The initiative won't succeed, but that's not the point. It is to bring attention to the issue. 

It's a cascade of issues, with rising home values, the counties reassessing property taxes the last few years, and schools coming each year with new school levies all adding to increases in property taxes.

Central Ohio especially has seen property taxes increases. It doesn't surprise that most school levies are getting killed and voted down. 

The statehouse needs to pick up the slack, which i think is the goal.  The problem is the Republicans in the house and senate have zero interest in real property tax reform to offset any reduction. 

Hell, if the statehouse had their way, school funding would go down. This last state budget was a fucking joke. Not a surprise Dewine had like 60 line item vetoes.

Go look at your unclaimed funds too by the way....

Horrible idea unless you can come up with a viable way to get all that money to keep everything else up and running. 

Schools, roads, parks, landscaping, fire dept, police dept, etc. 

if i remember correctly funding schools through property taxes was found unconstitutional in ohio in like 1997.  Somehow it hasn't changed because no one has came up with a better system

So the main options are raising sales tax or income tax, or both, and then hoping that the state government won’t fuck your school district up by giving it less money than they usually get from their own property taxes.

We actually have to pay property tax here on cars which is dumb too, so that seems like the same problem as house property tax for Ohio to raise more money.

For comparison

i think dublin city schools takes in like 250,000,000 in property taxes for their schools which is probably 25

columbus city schools takes in roughly 175,000,000 for 116 schools.  Lots of businesses also get tax abatements to come to columbus which would have went to CCS but they pay 0.

I lived in the Dublin School district in the Plain City area. Our property taxes were insane. 

Also you can look at cities like Nashville. Areas are becoming gentrified because people who have lived in their home for 30+ years and paid it off can no longer afford property taxes. Those people get a decent price for the land when they sale then the developer splits the lot and builds two tall and skinny’s. Then the people who sold have no where to go in the area they have lived their whole lives that is affordable. 

I know where we bought out street is about 80% new builds. The people holding on are all 70+ and hoping to hold on until they die. 

Property taxes are a social contract. I am willing to pay the tax I do to live in the community I live it. I like its schools and other amenities and services. I could go find a cheaper place to live or live. I also believe the quality of schools and services here keeps my property value appreciating at a stronger rate than if these amenities were not good. I see my property taxes as something I pay that kind of gets paid back in my home value. So I don't feel that bad when I write that check twice per year (well, it does hurt at that moment).

This is off topic but it has to do with schools so why not.

Summer break badly needs to be reworked. I’m saying what every other parent is thinking right now. 

Summer break of June 1st through mid July. Winter break of mid December through January. Six weeks each. They already miss multiple days in the winter anyways due to cold or winter. 

12 weeks all at once is fucking stupid and idk who it works for. 

friendfromlowry wrote:

This is off topic but it has to do with schools so why not.

Summer break badly needs to be reworked. I’m saying what every other parent is thinking right now. 

Summer break of June 1st through mid July. Winter break of mid December through January. Six weeks each. They already miss multiple days in the winter anyways due to cold or winter. 

12 weeks all at once is fucking stupid and idk who it works for. 

I especially enjoy paying $400-$600 a week for my 2 kids to go to camps all summer. The 30 minutes of extra sleep in the morning is nice though.

friendfromlowry wrote:

This is off topic but it has to do with schools so why not.

Summer break badly needs to be reworked. I’m saying what every other parent is thinking right now. 

Summer break of June 1st through mid July. Winter break of mid December through January. Six weeks each. They already miss multiple days in the winter anyways due to cold or winter. 

12 weeks all at once is fucking stupid and idk who it works for. 

our district has a couple of buildings at each level that go year round.  Idk if i agree that most parents dont want a whole summer break tho.  They love vacations and sports leagues etc. Also it can have an effect on knowledge retention and also behavior issues when kids are constantly on and off routine.  I think both models have advantages and disadvantages.

geeblock wrote:

our district has a couple of buildings at each level that go year round.  Idk if i agree that most parents dont want a whole summer break tho.  They love vacations and sports leagues etc. Also it can have an effect on knowledge retention and also behavior issues when kids are constantly on and off routine.  I think both models have advantages and disadvantages.

Agreed on last part. 

But I think being off for 12+ weeks also has an effect on retention. I have to really work with my son (6yo) else he can easily forget everything he just learned. Also if there aren’t kids around the neighborhood, they don’t get a lot of social stimulation. I actually enrolled him in a few weeks of summer school to help those issues. 

IMO, the sweet spot is somewhere within 7-9 weeks. And extend winter break by a week or two since weather can usually fuck with that time of year anyways.

There isn’t a perfect system but every parent I’ve talked to is burnt out by this point, with a month still to go. 

Crazy thing is I've heard of a number of places where property taxes are a higher burden on the poor.  Not quite sure how that works out, other than maybe they don't know about appealing an assessment (it's HAS to be a racket - get a law firm to spend an hour filing the paper work and they take 1/3 of the savings).

I'll just say with most property taxes going to fund schools it's a bit unfair to people with no children, especially given the many tax credits already in the code for dependents.  I wonder what funds are available to home schoolers, because then that property tax has to be a real kick in the teeth.

gut wrote:

Crazy thing is I've heard of a number of places where property taxes are a higher burden on the poor.  Not quite sure how that works out, other than maybe they don't know about appealing an assessment (it's HAS to be a racket - get a law firm to spend an hour filing the paper work and they take 1/3 of the savings).

I'll just say with most property taxes going to fund schools it's a bit unfair to people with no children, especially given the many tax credits already in the code for dependents.  I wonder what funds are available to home schoolers, because then that property tax has to be a real kick in the teeth.

I only pay to live in the community I live in for the schools. Come this fall, we’re empty nesters, so I’ll be looking for a downsized in a lower tax zip code.

• Dr Winston O'Boogie wrote:
• 
  

I only pay to live in the community I live in for the schools. Come this fall, we’re empty nesters, so I’ll be looking for a downsized in a lower tax zip code.

That's fair.  Between the taxes and higher property values in school districts there's definitely a hidden cost to it.

I just wish someone would figure out on how to get better results in a country that spends the most on education in the world.

Also a pretty good time to downsize.  Trade a larger place for a comparatively overvalued, but smaller place.

gut wrote:

That's fair.  Between the taxes and higher property values in school districts there's definitely a hidden cost to it.

I just wish someone would figure out on how to get better results in a country that spends the most on education in the world.

Also a pretty good time to downsize.  Trade a larger place for a comparatively overvalued, but smaller place.

I think there are certainly cultural value differences. But also the countries were measured against have very centralized education systems whereas ours is mostly local with a little state involvement. So the range in quality here has to be vast compared to many other developed nations. 

I think our (US) problem is that we are heavily, if not completely, reliant on a bureaucracy that focuses on its own continuation and existence that it cannot be efficient or improve anything. Federal, State and local - all have this problem. Like an ant trying to sprint through molasses.

The quality used to be very good; we were #1 in the ‘70’s, then the federal Dept of Education got involved and the militant unions took over and now we’re 32nd, despite MASSIVE spending increases.

I think increasing sales taxes could work— a baseline level at state, with tweaks by county.  Additionally, eliminating to DoE will free up $80 billion a year to return to the states.

People WILL pay (extra) for good education, as evidenced by parochial and charter schools.  If the public product was better, levies wouldn’t be such an issue, but until the union whack jobs controlling the monopoly are eliminated, good luck with that.

QuakerOats wrote:

The quality used to be very good; we were #1 in the ‘70’s, then the federal Dept of Education got involved and the militant unions took over and now we’re 32nd, despite MASSIVE spending increases.

I think increasing sales taxes could work— a baseline level at state, with tweaks by county.  Additionally, eliminating to DoE will free up $80 billion a year to return to the states.

People WILL pay (extra) for good education, as evidenced by parochial and charter schools.  If the public product was better, levies wouldn’t be such an issue, but until the union whack jobs controlling the monopoly are eliminated, good luck with that.

I know this talking point gets regurgitated regularly, but there was no official "ranking" of countries by education until very recently. That we were number 1 is just an oft repeated anecdote. 

The Department of Education doesn't run classrooms; it’s primary role is distributing money that goes back to the states for low income districts and special ed type things. That's where the that $80 billion primarily goes. So take that away and what's your alternative?

Unions are not ideal, but they didn’t cause underfunded schools, crumbling buildings, or decades of mismanagement. Ohio schools survive by property tax levies. That’s the problem — not a conspiracy by teachers.

You think raising sales tax is a fix? How would a guy like Trump explain to working-class families why they’re paying more for groceries and diapers to subsidize tax cuts for people in gated communities.

Ranking of education, by country, started before I was born. If that is what is meant by very recently. 

And as far as comparisons are/were considered, the US did tank first compared to the rest of the world because of the erosion of education by class since the early 1900's.

This is all verifiable by google.

CenterBHSFan wrote:

Ranking of education, by country, started before I was born. If that is what is meant by very recently. 

And as far as comparisons are/were considered, the US did tank first compared to the rest of the world because of the erosion of education by class since the early 1900's.

This is all verifiable by google.

Alright, I checked out this Google you speak of. I can see pretty clearly, as a result, that modern apples-to-apples rankings weren’t really available until 30 years ago. Anything before that is non standardized and really just an assumption. This business about us “tanking” around when the DoE was started only comes up in political articles and sites. I don’t see any evidence of any measured verifiable “ranking”. 

 To your point, maybe class erosion is part of the problem if quality hasn’t been consistent. 

The DoE was supposed to set the standard of excellence of education. I have posted before that the data shows that no real improvement in education has occured since Carter gifted it to teachers unions. In other words, since it's creation. That is the complaint that most people have. And since govt thought that the remedy to the remedy was to just keep dumping more money into it without results, yes, people bitched about it. 

These are two examples of what people bitch about, one of them is from the DoE itself.

You keep saying this is ancedotal because reasons, I guess.

Dr Winston O'Boogie wrote:

I know this talking point gets regurgitated regularly, but there was no official "ranking" of countries by education until very recently. That we were number 1 is just an oft repeated anecdote. 

The Department of Education doesn't run classrooms; it’s primary role is distributing money that goes back to the states for low income districts and special ed type things. That's where the that $80 billion primarily goes. So take that away and what's your alternative?

Unions are not ideal, but they didn’t cause underfunded schools, crumbling buildings, or decades of mismanagement. Ohio schools survive by property tax levies. That’s the problem — not a conspiracy by teachers.

You think raising sales tax is a fix? How would a guy like Trump explain to working-class families why they’re paying more for groceries and diapers to subsidize tax cuts for people in gated communities.

If you don’t think federal funding comes with (woke) strings attached, I don’t kniw what to tell you.  If you don’t think ciltural marxism emanates from militant monopolistic union hierarchy, I don’t know what to tell.  If you don’t know we spend more on education at all levels combined than any other country, and turn out less than a superior product, I don’t know what to tell you.

And yes, the funding vehicle can be changed to move away from property taxes.  If you don’t think property taxes are built into people’s rent (who don’t live in gated communities), I don’t know what to tell you.