Children Services to seek levy in March; commissioners, auditor discuss 2024 general fund outlook

Highland County commissioners Terry Britton, David Daniels and Brad Roades authorized the Highland County Children Services agency to move forward with plans for a tax levy to be placed on the March 2024 primary election ballot and discussed 2024 budget numbers during their Wednesday, Nov. 29 meeting.

Commissioners began the meeting by expressing condolences to those affected by an explosion and fire in Hillsboro Tuesday, Nov. 28. The incident occurred around 4 p.m. Tuesday at 502 S. High Street in Hillsboro at Jimbo's Auto Repair. Three individuals were killed.

“With the tragedy that’s happened in our city last night, we just want to send out our thoughts and prayers to all the families that were involved,” Britton said.

During their passage of resolutions, commissioners voted 3-0 to “declare it necessary to levy a tax and request an estimate from the Highland County Auditor” for Highland County Children Services.

“This would be the first step in investigating a levy for the ballot in March,” Highland County Job & Family Services Director Jeremy Ratcliff said. “This would allow Alex [Butler, county auditor] to run some math and come up with an estimate on revenue that will be generated.”

After receiving those numbers and finalizing paperwork, Ratcliff said the plan is to “come back in two weeks and make a recommendation to place a replacement levy on the ballot, which would be different from the one we ran in November.

“That was a replacement for an increase,” he said. “This would be a replacement, which would not raise the rates. The rate would stay at .9 millage.”

As previously reported, a proposed five-year, one-mill replacement levy for the agency failed in the Nov. 7 general election, with 6,582 votes against the levy and 5,001 votes for the levy.

Commissioners voted in August to approve the request from Ratcliff to seek the levy for Children Services on this year’s ballot, amid rising cases and associated costs for the agency over the past several years.

The current tax levy, which was first approved in November 2013 and renewed by voters in November 2018, is a five-year, .9-mill levy for Children Services placement costs and expires Dec. 31 of this year. Ratcliff said in May that the levy generates approximately $700,000 per year for the agency. The proposed levy replacement would have been an approximate increase of $12 per year per $100,000 valuation.

The filing deadline for the 2024 primary is Dec. 20, and the primary election will be held March 19.

“The hope is that the costs don't continue to increase, and maybe we'll even get fortunate and they'll decrease a little bit,” Ratcliff told commissioners.

As of Nov. 15, the director had reported 172 children currently in the agency’s care, with costs “approaching $4 million” on the year.

“With current trends, it does not appear that that is a scenario that we're likely to see in the coming year,” Daniels said.

“It does not,” Ratcliff agreed. “They continue to rise.”

In other finance-related topics, Highland County Auditor Alex Butler presented the estimated resources for fiscal year 2024 as well as an update on the county’s permissive sales tax receipts.

The auditor submitted the certified estimated resources for 2024, which he has calculated at $14 million for the county’s general fund.

“I tried to come up with a conservative, yet realistic number at the same time, and that’s what I feel pretty comfortable with,” Butler said. "That should give you guys a pretty good idea as you zip up the expense side of the budget over the next couple of weeks. I know the clock is ticking on that, and we want to arrive at some numbers on the expense side.”  

The resources total includes $2.4 million for real estate property taxes; $8.5 million for permissive sales tax; $500,000 in casino revenue; $500,000 in local government funds; $1.1 million in fees; and $1 million in other receipts.  

This is an $800,000 increase over the 2023 anticipated revenues ($13.2 million). The 2023 total in turn was an $800,000 increase from 2022, while the increase from 2021 to 2022 was $1.3 million.

“I looked back over the last five years of historical data we had, and you take into account the numbers, but you also take into account other economic indicators and what could possibly happen in the market,” Butler said. “The county has many general fund funding sources, but our bread and butter is the permissive sales tax. So is it possible with, given the larger economy now, that the number would decrease next year? It's possible.

“We’ve seen this year, some months [for tax receipts] are less than they were last year, but at the same time, it's stable. The bottom hasn't fallen out.”
 
Britton said he thought the $14 million total was “a pretty good estimate.

“I know our ask from all departments went up, but we're working through all that to see if we can get that under control a bit,” Britton said.

Butler pointed out that “revenue has been up, but the cost of business is up as well” for all municipal entities.

“Everyone's revenue has seen an unexpected positive and sustained trend post-COVID, but will that last forever?” Butler said. “Probably not. When will it turn? I don't know. It could be next year. It could be the year after.”

Daniels and Britton both spoke about the recession of 2008 and “how quickly things changed in the course of three months,” as Daniels said.

“While this [2024 estimate] is an educated guess, and a very good guess, there are market forces out there that could come to play that could see us looking at $10 million instead of $14 [million], when you look at how revenue can get lost, all of a sudden,” Daniels said. “We've seen it before. It’s not something you can say will never happen, because it has happened.”

Britton agreed, saying the county was “at $13 million then, and the bottom dropped out and they had to reduced down to $8 million-plus something.”

“On the positive side, the city of Hillsboro has seen some recent growth and new businesses coming,” Butler said. “It's not all doom and gloom, but we have to be wise and hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

As Butler also discussed, for November, the county collected $764,917.17 in permissive sales tax receipts. That is both a decrease from the previous month’s totals ($768,164.35 in October) and from the previous year’s receipts ($773,513.75).

However, the county has now officially topped $8.5 million on the year, and with one month left, Butler said he believes the county will still surpass 2022’s then-record totals of $9,264,748.25. The December total needs to meet or exceed $691,230.15 to do so, and the county has not reported a total lower than that since April.

“We have one more month to collect this year in December, and I think we will exceed what we collected last year,” Butler said.

In other discussion:

• Commissioners gave a brief update on several of the ongoing county construction projects.

Daniels said that he attended a recent meeting with contractors for the Rocky Fork Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant improvements.

Commissioners voted in April to award the Rocky Fork Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant Improvements Project (Phase 1) bid to Doll Layman, Ltd., in the amount of $2,597,700.

According to the project description, bids were to include “all labor, tools, equipment and materials necessary” for a number of improvements, including construction of two new secondary clarifiers; construction of new RAS/WAS pump station; replacement of up to four brush aerators in the oxidation ditches with new disc aerators; replacement of existing mixer with new mixer; construction of new flow splitter; demolition and utility relocation work; yard piping/valves; and electrical work.

“Phase one of the project has been underway for a while,” Daniels said. “They completed concrete pours on the bottom of the clarifiers and expect to have walls poured on clarifier one in mid-December and walls poured on clarifier two in mid-January. The remainder of the conversation is the project is on schedule with so far no problems encountered that they were not aware of.”

As of the most recent construction meeting for the Ohio State University Extension office building at the Highland County Fairgrounds, Roades said the project is “on schedule” and making quick progress.

That project was approved in July. As outlined by the county’s American Rescue Plan Act funding coordinator Nicole Oberrecht, the resolution for the $1,113,599 project included awarding general work and labor to Tag Williams, Inc. in the amount of $771,249; mechanical ($100,800) and plumbing ($112,950) to Weller’s Plumbing and Heating; electrical to CT Electric, in the amount of $92,000; and an alternate bid ($36,600) for a standing seam metal roof to Tag Williams, Inc.

“The roof is on,” Roades said. “It looks like all the venting and everything's out the sides for the HVAC. As of the last meeting, they were hoping to have gas to the furnaces I believe this week so they can have heat inside, and watching stuff going on, I’d say they probably do.”

Daniels said that Oberrecht also gave them an update recently on the county’s records storage building on Beech Street.

After more than a year of planning and discussions, commissioners voted Aug. 30 to award the new county records storage building project to Alpha Construction Inc., who had submitted a $2,797,000 proposal for “all necessary labor, materials, tools, machinery, warranties and all other items required to construct a new masonry two-floor 13,020 square foot building.”

“They’re working on compaction,” Daniels said. “They’ve done soil tests. The soil that they’re moving around is good for compaction, so there’s going to be a little bit more activity over there.”

• Highland County Health Commissioner Jared Warner, who was in attendance Wednesday morning, encouraged the community to take advantage of free flu shots at the department during the week of Dec. 4, amid rising respiratory illnesses in the community.

“It’s kind of the last time of the season we really push out flu shots, because it usually takes a couple of weeks for those to kick in and provide protection,” Warner said. “I encourage anybody who hasn't got it yet to stop at the health department and get your flu shot for the season, and at no cost.”

Daniels asked Warner about respiratory illnesses, and he said he did not have concrete data but is aware of various respiratory illnesses, including COVID, affecting individuals in the county.

“In talking to some of the health care providers in the hospital, they were seeing some higher numbers, some increases in hospitalization,” Warner said. “Numbers are trending up. I don't think anybody's surprised by it.

“Anecdotally, we’re hearing that the cases are up and hospitals  are feeling the pinch a little bit. That's not unexpected, especially after get-togethers at Thanksgiving. People, if you're sick, stay home.”

• Commissioners reminded the community that their Wednesday, Dec. 6 meeting will be moved up one day, to Tuesday, Dec. 5 at 9 a.m. The commissioners office will also be closed Dec. 6-7 due to staff attending the CCAO Winter Conference.

• Following the regular meeting, commissioners held a work session with Julie Wallingford to discuss records storage and an executive session to discuss economic development. No action was taken after either session, according to commission clerk Ashleigh Willey.

In other action, commissioners approved the following resolutions, each by a 3-0 vote:

• An additional appropriation from unanticipated revenue within the Emergency Management Agency fund in the amount of $22,561.

• A budget modification within Auditor’s Real Estate Assessment Fund (2055) in the amount of $15,500. Also requested is an additional appropriation from unappropriated funds in the
amount of $20,000.

• A budget modification within County General Fund (1000) in the amount of $1,400.

• A budget modification within County General Fund (1000) in the amount of $150.

• A budget modification within County General Fund (1000) in the amount of $2,500.

• Also approved was a contract between commissioners and the State of Ohio for the CDBG PY2023 Residential Public Infrastructure Program, effective Nov. 1, 2023-Dec. 31, 2025.