UPDATE, Nov. 4: The Belmont County Auditor’s office states that the 0.65 mills charge for the 1976 Children Services Levy in 2023 in was $1,576,383.32. It doesn’t necessarily mean they collected that in 2024 because of delinquent taxes. The levy on the Nov. 5 ballot is expected to generate $1,084,806 per year.
BELMONT COUNTY, Ohio – The Belmont County Children’s Services levy on the Nov. 5 ballot is a replacement levy with a millage decrease, but it will essentially replace an old levy from the 1970s and collect funds based on today’s higher property values.
Agency leaders say it will reduce the tax burden for Belmont County residents. It is one of two levies the agency has. Jeff Felton, Director of Belmont County Job & Family Services, spoke with River News Network about how the children’s services levy is calculated, what the levy funds are used for and why the levy mill may be reduced.
Felton said the levy is a replacement of the current 0.65 mil levy reduced to 0.45 mils beginning in the 2025 tax year. It is a five-year levy running from 2025 to 2029 and is expected to generate $1,084,806 per year per the Belmont County Auditor’s website.
It’s a replacement with a reduction.
Jeff Felton, Director of Belmont County Job & Family Services
Felton explained that two levies support Children’s Services, a 0.35 mil and a 0.65 mil. The 0.35 mil levy is up for renewal next year but may be phased out if the current levy passes.
Under Ohio Revised Code, entities can propose a brand new levy, ask to renew an existing levy, or they can replace an existing levy, Felton said. With a renewal levy, the collection must stay the same as when the levy was enacted. Replacement levies can use current property values for collections.
A replacement levy is the same. You can either keep it at the same millage, you can increase the millage or decrease it. But the biggest impact on a replacement levy is it brings your tax collections based upon your current, on current property values.
Jeff Felton, Director of Belmont County Job & Family Services
The current children’s services levy is NOT a renewal levy. However, it is incorrectly listed on the Belmont County Auditor’s website as a renewal levy, due to what that office calls a technical website issue. Multiple local media outlets also incorrectly describe it as a renewal levy.
The distinction between a replacement and renewal levy is important since renewal levies are based on the property values on the year they were passed. Replacement levies, however, can be based on current property values. Although the children’s services levy is a replacement levy with a reduction, it will be based on 2025 property values, which are obviously much higher than they were in the 1970s. In addition, property taxes are increasing in Belmont County by up to 20 percent due to a mandated re-valuation by the state of Ohio.
On the sample Belmont County Nov. 5 ballot, the levy is correctly listed as a “Replacement and Decrease.” The levy will be placed on the 2025 tax list and will first be collected in the 2026 calendar year, according to the Belmont County Auditor’s office. The millage for the requested levy is 0.45 mill per $1 of taxable value, which amounts to $15.75 for each $100,000 of the county auditor’s appraised value for a property, per the Belmont County Auditor’s office.
Felton said the 0.65 mill levy was originally passed in the 1970s and its collection amounts are based on property values from around 50 years ago.
the collection is based upon the property value as assessed in 1970. And each time you renew that levy, you collect on the basis of the property values when it was originally passed.
Jeff Felton, Director of Belmont County Job & Family Services
The levy reduction is possible due to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s increase in state funding for children’s services, Felton said.
Felton said his agency and the Belmont County Commissioners want to give “relief to the taxpayers” without interfering with services, hence the reduction.
Ohio revised code allows us to replace a levy with a reduction.
Jeff Felton, Director of Belmont County Job & Family Services
Felton says that even though the proposed replacement levy would be based on the higher 2025 property values, the amount collected will be about $100,000 less than what the two levies draw combined.
When we look at both levies together, this four or five mill levy will generate about $100,000 less than the two levies generate combined. So it’s still, it’s going to be a decrease in the tax burden to the local taxpayers.
Jeff Felton, Director of Belmont County Job & Family Services
Felton explained how the levy would benefit Belmont County children.
Felton said Children’s Services receives approximately 100 calls per month concerning abused or neglected children. As of the beginning of Oct., the agency had 59 children in placement.
He said levy monies go to support, mainly through placement costs, children who are in foster care and residential facilities.
the biggest thing is supporting kids in placement and for those types of expenses that we can’t use any other source of funding for.
Jeff Felton, Director of Belmont County Job & Family Services
Felton says using levy funds is advantageous since all the money comes from local dollars and the agency can spend it as it needs it without limitations imposed by federal or state government.
Children go into foster homes or residential facility placement for a variety of reasons, Felton explained. The family may be homeless. Rarely, a mother may need surgery and have no support while she is hospitalized and recovering, or children may be abused or neglected.
Typically, it is those children who’ve been abused, physically abused, or neglected. The family may be homeless. A variety of situations where it’s not safe for the child to remain in their own home, and they could go into regular foster care.
Jeff Felton, Director of Belmont County Job & Family Services
Felton said agencies try to place children in foster family settings rather that congregate residential facilities since studies show children do better in a home setting. Children’s Services works with family members to make kinship placements where a child may live with a grandparent, aunt, uncle or family friend.
When a child has severe mental or physical problems, Children’s Services makes specialized placements in what are called treatment foster care homes. The program will connects foster children who are facing significant behavioral challenges with treatment foster families who are trained to support these youth in their homes. Youth can then avoid placement in congregate or group facilities.
Treatment foster care and residential care is expensive, and the levies offset those costs.
And then the more expensive types of placements are those kids that have significant mental health issues or sometimes developmental disabilities, severe kind of medical needs that these sometimes newborns have. The cost of those placements are significantly higher than regular foster care, particularly on the mental health side, where you have, typically adolescents who are suicidal, homicidal, experience trauma in their lives, and they need kind of specialized care, and those placements can run $300. I have some colleagues [outside belmont] that pay $2,000 a day for those kids.
Jeff Felton, Director of Belmont County Job & Family Services
Felton explained that Belmont County Children’s Services collaborates with other county agencies for care.
One of the things we have going for us in our county, unlike a lot of counties, is just a tremendous level of cooperation with our board of developmental Disabilities and our mental health board. So when we have those kids who were paying $900 a day, or $1,000 a day for, we share those costs among the three agencies, the JFS mental health board and the DD board. So it’s not only our burden or mental health burden, and those levy dollars go to support that.
Jeff Felton, Director of Belmont County Job & Family Services
Felton said Belmont County residents should vote for the levy to help the community’s children.
We’re asking for the support for a couple of reasons. One is to be able for us to continue the services that we provide to the kids and the families, and that includes foster family, recruiting foster families, and so forth. We don’t want to be a burden on the general fund. I don’t want to compete with the engineer’s office or with the courts, with sanitary, water, engineer’s office, or with the courts. all that stuff, because those services are important, too. So it puts us in a position not to have to compete for general fund revenue and keeps the commissioners out of, you know, if I fund you, then I don’t have resources to do other things that are important to the county.
Felton urges anyone with concerns about a child’s welfare to call the agency at (740) 695-1074.
