By Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall
Just to confirm: The CFO, Mr. Gary Platko, confirmed that the Riverside School District will receive a windfall of $3.6 million from the 2024 sexennial revaluation, and the taxpayers will pay approximately $93 per $100K of market value in 2025.
For Concord residents, you will also pay $11 per $100K market value to the County and $32 per $100K to Concord Township. The total estimated increase will be $136 per $100K market value. So if you own a $500K home, your taxes will increase approximately $680 without getting a chance to vote on the increase. If your Housing Affordability Threshold is 25%, then you will need to earn $2,720 per year extra to ensure that you do not move closer to the 30% HAT, which means your home is no longer affordable for you.
We have been speaking out against the use of property taxes to fund the public schools. The whole concept is wrong, and not only are seniors being taxed out of their homes that they have worked all their lives to achieve, but first time home buyers are being shut out because of the increased home values, interest rates, and escalating property taxes.
Why should homeowners pay property taxes on any unrealized gains? Improve your home and the property taxes increase, your neighbor sells their home for an astronomically high prices and your property taxes will go up.
So what is School Board member Ms. Belinda Grassi’s viewpoint on the increasing property valuation, increasing cost to the taxpayers, and the windfall about to inure to the Riverside School District? There is not even a thought by her about the taxpayers in the school district, and the impact that this windfall will have on their personal budget.
Just wait until you try to pass the renewal levy for the Lake County School Financing District this year. A defeat of this levy will be a way for the taxpayers to recoup some of their money stolen by, in our opinion, a tax collected by the unconstitutional 20 mill floor. Mr. Platko may not want to put that revenue stream in his financial projections just yet.
The Article Xll, Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution states that only 10 mills of inside millage can be collected. However, the legislators created a de facto inside millage by codifying the 20 mill floor.
Note to the entire Riverside School Board: We will not stand idly by and let you tax seniors and those living on fixed incomes out of their homes that they have worked all their lives to achieve. Any tax that, if unpaid, causing a citizen to become homeless is immoral.
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Categories: Riverside S.D., Uncategorized