Money, money, money, money, money, money, everybody wants more. Hamblin County may ask voters to increase the Children's Services levy. Last time we did this was about eight years ago. So the current funding is that we just don't have enough money for all the kids and this is not due. Butler County is just going to They just introduced I think a new two mil levee that they want to pass as well. It's all over the state as well, because that poverty gap continues to increase. There's just not
enough money anymore to care for the kids. And this would fund the abuse neglect hotlines, foster care, family preservation, reunification, independent living programs. I'm involved, as you know, King of Mardi Gras coming up in Northern Kentucky Convention Center on Fat Tuesday. We raise money to feed kids for three agencies here in Cincinnati, and so it's a very real thing. Currently, the cost for this levee is eighty one bucks per hundred,
one hundred thousand dollars of home value. This one would increase at minimum eighty percent and eighty percent increase at minimum. On that's joining the show is our good friend. Hamlin County Commissioner Alisha Reese, welcome back.
How are you.
I'm doing good, loan, Happy new.
Year, Happy new Year. I don't know if it's a happy new year yet. And I'm looking at these numbers. I gotta be honest with you, I'm like, oh, it's making me blush. You know, a minimum eighty percent increase, the optimal number would double that from sixty five million to one hundred and twenty three million dollars. The ideal funding levels one hundred and twenty three. That's Alicia. You know,
we've got you. You're out all the time. You talk about, Hey, you know the stadium thing, and you're not getting your money back from that, and then the property tax valuations, and I also I look at all these things that cost of livings going through the roof as well. It's never a good time to enter a levey. But boy, you're not. I'm looking at this going. This is a tough ask right.
Now, Slane, It definitely is. I mean, it's the timing of doing something like this, and one of the things we've got to do. I wasn't on the commisis you know, eight years ago. But when I came on the commission, they said they had combined two levies and at that time we would have, you know, additional money. And in twenty twenty four December had been asking about how much money do we have in the reserves and at that time is that they said one hundred million dollars in reserve.
That's twenty twenty four December. Now you fast forward at twenty twenty five of December, it was well, wait a minute, now we have a thirty million dollars potential gap in order to make it and keep things going. And so I said, wait a minute. You know, I'm going to ask what the taxpayers are going to ask, how did you have one hundred million dollars in reserve? Now you're bankrupt almost and now just in time to have a lege.
And so I've been asking those questions is people have asked me and the timing is just the horrible you know. Number one, the reason there is this Children's services levee because we have unfunded mandates by the state that we have to pay for this and it'll come out of the general fund and those kind of things. If we don't have the levees, I call it trickle down taxation from the state. They say we cut at the state, but then mandate at the local level to raise taxes.
I am not convinced to move toward more money right now, yet I want to get all the information because I'm looking at the timing of this. Homeowners are getting their tax bill. It's an increase on property taxes at the same time, as you've indicated, the city is looking at if you live in the city of Cincinnati, they're looking at an income tax increase. So now your check is going to get shorter at the same time your gas
and electric have gone up. Some people have tripled. Water bills was an increase at the same time, and a lot of people, some people have even lost their jobs, have been forced into retirement. Inflation is there. It can't go to the grocery store and buy anything, you know, because that's jumping out the roof. And so we've got to look at these things at timing and at the same time as government entities. We must look at everything,
not in a silo, but in general. In other words, we can't look at the Bengals deal as a separate thing. And we got money, and we can make it work and we can get creative, which I voted against because it cut out the homeowners getting a break. Now on the other side, so we gave that deal away with no break to the homeowners of thirty percent. Now we come over here, and now you want to say what the homeowner's got to pay an increase because over here
we don't have any money. And so I'm one that don't think, does not think that these are two cents the different money, because they all are you know, that comes from sales tax and those kind of things, and we have to we can't be over here saying no money. And then over here we're talking about arenas, We're talking about eight hundred million dollars, potentially, idea on the bank.
We're talking all these things on here. But then when it at the end, you say, I want the tax payers, the homeowners who barely can make it, to pay for everything. And when we get to them, we're broken.
But we need to develop that.
I like Arena arenas is they bring money and we we you know, we need that outside money to come here, Convention center, all that stuff.
That's good. That's how you increase the tax base and reduce the BRK.
I agree, I agree that we want money to come in. But when we have the money that comes in. I'm looking where it's going. I mean, we're doing things and it's not going to help us. I'm for you know, I'm tourism former assistant director for the whole state and everything. Those dollars should be going in to reduce the cost on the whole home owners. Those dollars don't do that. Those dollars come in and now we're on another development and then they don't have to pay taxes. It's an abatement.
It's a you know, free we're taxing everybody, but nothing. I'm looking at the pot. I'm thinking the same thing you're thinking. We bring all this money in, it's to go over here and now we'll help the homeowners and the local people. But it doesn't do that because we haven't put our foot down to make sure that it
does that. There's these dollars, these oh we if we do this, this this Bengal deal, we could have got I think a better deal and gotten where the homeowners wouldn't have had to be written out of the deal. But we did it. So we've got to be more intentional. And that's my fight. My fight is we can't look
at these projects. It's siloed because if I'm grandma with my house and I look and see in the newspaper that you got a you know, a three hundred and fifty million dollar deal with to take for example, the Bengals deal. We wanted to have some state money so we can reduce our money so we can have the homeowners. Guess what, we didn't get that. Now they're saying we're
going to go for state money. And I asked the administrator, if we get this state money, will that reduce the cost so now we can give the homeowners the big break. He said, no, we would have to do matching money. That's more money. So if we go to state, now there's more money. So there hasn't been enough intentionality saying every deal we must leverage in order to cut the cost on the local taxpayers. And that's what they're not seeing.
They're not seeing that that is happening. And so unfortunately, well we're in this situation. But let me just say, in Adams County it went to the ballot. Children and these are people who normally vote for it. I mean, like you said, Adams County, they said they couldn't afford it. They voted it down Claremont County said they couldn't afford
they voted it. So we're in a situation. Yeah, we're in a situation where people don't want to make that choice, but they're making choices between do I save my house? Do I be to buy my groceres my medicine because they keep putting taxes on top of them and the cost keeps going up.
You're not selling this about the vote for it if this thing fails.
What I'm not saying, well, well, one of the things that we're looking at plan A is I told them, mister, let's comb and be creative and see have we looked at everything to be creative, not do what we always been doing. Let's see what's what's available to what would be the level? You know, most of the time we've we've put things on, they've been flat. What would be
the level? Uh. The other thing is going to the state seeing, you know, the governor, can you help because this has been a big thing and these are state mandates. So for me, I want to comb everything first, is what I'm saying. I'm not telling people not to vote. And then the other thing is out their options. Can you put options on the ballot. Can you put a B and C on a ballot? Or do you only have to do one number? You know what I'm saying. So people say, well, wait a minute. I want to
support it, but I can't go to this level. But I can go to this level, why I wait till it get voted down and then come back with a smaller level. So I don't know what those are, but I said, these are difficult and different times, so we have to think differently. So we definitely got to support
our children. I've certainly have been about that youth employment and falster care and those kind of things, but I also think that we've got to come up with some other solutions because when's happening with the foster care, the providers are are charging us out the roofs now and they're not even doing RFPs with us. They just sit back and say, you know you're desperate, you're gonna come to us, and now we're gonna price gal And so
what are we gonna do about the price gouge? Because it's not if we can't stop, the bleeding is going to continue to go up up enough. So I'm looking for us to put all our thinking caps on and look at the what is the best way, But take everything into consideration is what I'm saying, Everything into consideration and put it together and let's see where we go from there. But that's you know, we're in a tough spot right now. But we've got to think it through
because I would hate for it. You know what happened in Adams County, what happened in Claremont County. But if for us that you go back to the drawing board. So my thing is, let's don't go back to the drawing board. Let's go to the drawing board now and try to see if we could come with something that would be a more balance.
Alicia Reese, we've seen this happen before in the county, but also Wells, the Sydney, pretty much everywhere. All right, you weren't around, you were in an office in twenty eighteen when this was last passed. Why did the county wait until the costs became so unsustainable rather than pursuing smaller, more frequent increases.
And you know, if we.
Are we just going to do this every year and now are we going to come back another ten years and go, oh, we need to triple it now?
I mean, why not put this on the ballot sooner?
You know, this is a very good question. I mean those are questions that that I would I have, and that we have to look at. You But I think people didn't want to have to vote on levees every single year. We have other levees as well. We've got the uh, you know, we've got the hospital levee, right, We've got a number of other levees, and I don't I don't think you know, you want to be on
the ballot every year with a levee. Uh. But but I also think that we've got to look at this rising cost of price gouging, if you will, of those uh facilities where we have to you know, place the children in those facilities. But we've got to do something about this price gouging. And that's why I think the governor and uh, you know, possibly you know, the governor Attorney general to all get in place, because this is not just the Hamilton County problem. This is around the
whole state of Ohio. And if we keep going in this way, we're you know, supplying demand, right, it's gonna really it's going to you know, bankrupt the taxpayers and so That's why I want us to not just hey, we're putting a levee on, let's talk about how like you said, let's get some new ways, some new ideas, let's get some help from the state. Uh. So when we do have something, we can tell the taxpayers that, hey, this is not something that's gonna just keep going.
Okay, God, yeah, you know it's a it's a tough ask.
But at the same time, I think most of us are pretty empathetic towards us because we have kids, young, young kids who you know, you're born in this world. You don't get to choose who your parents are, your economic situation, we have no say in that. And they are entering care with more intensive mental health problems, more behavioral issues, more developmental needs. Uh. The cases from the case workers I talked to are getting more severe. There's an increase in total case load. Uh. And so the
whole system, it's not just one air. It seems like the whole system is strained, and we got to figure out a way to fund that.
Well, I definitely agree with you. I mean, these are innocent children who you know is not on them, And that's why I don't want to have a put the taxpayers in a position because we've had people that have been supportive. I mean, we've supported this. I feel like our county has been you know, we've always been one to step up. We want children to have a fair chance. Children are not born in equal circumstances, but we don't
want to put the homeowner in that position. And that's what I'm trying to do because I'm hearing from people that they have normally support this and everything else, but I can't survive, and so we've got to have some kind of a balance so that the people who are allies don't become adversaries. And that's what I think. We got to show that we've looked at everything. We're trying something different where we we we've we've talked to it.
We've got try to get the state involved where we're dealing with this price gouging of some of the placement areas that have you know, went up on not everybody, but there's some that have went skyrocketed. And that's how we went from one hundred million dollars in one year of one hundred million dollars that we had in reserve in one year. So now you know we're rope in terms of that. So we we've got to do something about that problem as well. And then I don't think
it's just solved with just Jeff's the levee. We've got to now come with you know, here are some new parameters or some new things, like you said, So it just does a balloon out of control.
How do you stay ahead of inflation?
And that's the thing is, you know, we'll pay for this, but in short term, you know that's the budget's going to shrink anyway because of our inflation out stable zing some degree. But seems like the cost of everything is going on. Is that all the reason for the big ask here?
Well, inflation is. But my understanding is that some of the providers and the care that we need, they around the state. This is a problem around the state. They skyrocketed their prices, you know what I'm saying, And we didn't have a choice, so either you take it or leave it. And those were the things that I understand. The consultants he had as a consultant. I don't know if he or shed the consultants had factored in some inflation.
You know, you always cost the living, but they hadn't factored in that these providers that would not participate in the RFP process but would sit back and say they got to come to us. And then when the county came to them, they said, this is the price, take it or leave it. They didn't factory was going to be that high. So I think inflation is something that I mean, of course you can't say how high and place it's going to be, but it's it is factored in. We've got to kill our c group and they do
factor in some inflationary costs. But what wasn't factored in is I mean, these costs were astronomical and it was no choice because we are mandated to place the children in the care and they might be the only game in town you got me or around and it's not just in town, and they're seeing that across the whole state. And so that's why I think it's important that the governor intervened and maybe Attorney General to see is their price gouging going on at the expense of helping our children.
Yeah, you know, if only we could have got more than the twenty five percent with the e Bengal Stadium deal from the team, right, we.
Got four percent only and if we could have gotten that, maybe the thirty percent could have helped. My point, every bit help and every deal we look at. We've got to try to leverage every single deal because from a messaging standpoint, people are out there saying, well, wait a minute, you just did this over here and you couldn't give
me a homeowner a break. And now over here you're gonna raise it over here, and then over here you're coming after my check with income tax minute now, yeah, because that's Seth.
That's Seth walshown at nine this morning talking about the city income tax increase as well. And you live in Hamlin County. If you live in the city, ELSEO live in Hamlin County. So here it's coming at you with both barrels. She is Alicia Reese on the show on seven hundred WW Hamlin County Commissioner. Next step is going to be figuring out whether this goes on the spring of the fall ballot. We'll pick up that conversation then you'd be well, thanks for jumping on this morning.
Oh yeah, I appreciate it. And again, like I said, this is something that we need to we need the governor, we need to turn to general. We've got to deal with the price gouging on the backs of our children and then creating this cost burden that comes all the way down to people who have been allies for children services, and now you're forcing them to make a choice between
food on their table or helping our children. That's insane, and so I hope that we can get something worked out to help us with this.
Yeah, fingers crossed. Be well, we'll talk again soon. Appreciate you, all right, thank you? All right, we'll get a news update and how about that. And then just ahead, it's Julie on the job. Julie Balki jumps in to talk about I wonder what we're talking. Oh, we're talking about the the autoworker flipped off Trump, or Trump flipped off rather and because he said some unsavory things at the president. We'll get that next here seven hundred w all the