By John Kennedy, Portage County Treasurer and Matt Kelly, Portage County Auditor
It’s property tax season in Portage County. The first-half property tax deadline of Feb. 28 looms in less than a week, and our office is seeing a big uptick in residents showing up to pay their bills in-person. This is not unusual in and of itself.
What is different is the number of seniors who show up voicing legitimate concern about rising property taxes, the consequence of higher property valuations completed last year. Valuations rose, on average, just over 31 percent, meaning property taxes rose, on average, around 15 percent. While not a total surprise to most residents — every property owner received notification last summer detailing the valuation increase — when the property tax bill arrived in January, the resulting property tax increase became undeniably real.
Property tax relief for our seniors should be THE top legislative priority for our state lawmakers and our governor. Over the past year, Portage County Auditor Matt Kelly and I traveled across every township, village and city in Portage County, attending dozens of township trustee and city council meetings, educating and informing our
residents about the need to update and amend the state’s Homestead Exemption Act. The Homestead Exemption Act provides a bit of property tax relief to some in our county and across the state. But the impact is limited because eligibility is restricted to those with a household income, excluding Social Security payments, of $40,000 or less. And the maximum benefit to reduce your taxable property value is capped at $25,000. So if your house is valued at $100,000, your taxable value is $75,000.
Both of those limiters — the household income requirement of $40,000 and the max “property value lowering” benefit of $25,000 — don’t go far enough to reduce the real financial burden facing the majority of our seniors, most of whom are living on fixed income.
Auditor Kelly and I believe the best way to provide real and immediate property tax relief is to significantly raise the income requirement to $75,000, enabling thousands of additional seniors to qualify for the Homestead Tax Exemption. And by doubling the max benefit from $25,000 to $50,000, those that do qualify will see real, impactful financial relief.
We should reward — not penalize — our seniors for doing the right thing for their decades of hard work, and for their decades of providing property taxes used and needed to keep our schools, fire stations, township and county
operations functional and financially solvent. Most are not looking to move or sell their homes. They love their communities and they want to stay put, right here in Portage County.
So let’s help them do that. How to pay for it? State leaders and lawmakers could look at taxes on sports gambling, marijuana sales, or tapping a small fraction of Ohio’s Rainy Day fund.
A state budget represents what we value as a people, as a society. Isn’t it time we show our seniors — who have worked hard and paid their taxes for decades — how much we value them?
