10-7-25 Sloan with Alicia Reese

million dollar property tax relief incentive. Number one issue for every man and woman, I would save to say in Hamlin County, Butler County, Warren County, pretty much in the state is the issue of property taxes. I had yesterday on the show, Bill Sites, who was a co chair of the working group the governor put together. They came up with like a twenty point plan, and a lot of it makes you kind of your eyes glaze over. It's just numbers and terms that we don't easily understand.

You know, we start talking about. Bottom line is if you're lucky, maybe you saw a twenty percent increase, but some people have seen two hundred, three hundred percent increases. Now for the average person, it's an extra I don't like eleven bucks, twelve bucks a month. In some cases you're like, Okay, no big deal. If you're a senior

and you're pinching pennies, a little more difficult there. But the big problem, of course, is when you start to see some folks who are getting hit literally with hundreds and hundreds of dollars more, that's a different story entirely. Alicia Reese, Hamlin County Commissioner, on the show on seven hundred WLW welcome back.

some of the burden. You saw this and it was almost what a year ago, I think a year ago, next month, this coming month, when you guys said, you know what, you're finally going to get that property tax rollback. We've guaranteed when we built an new stadiums a couple of several decades ago. Now, so the end result is you look at Butler County said, well, why aren't we doing that?

keep the house they already have. And so I said, we're going to take some of this money to help stop gap that because we've got these new appraisals coming through. So we put six million dollars to try to help people get through and hoping that the state legislature would get this solved. Then the next thing I did, I said, well, wait a minute, I gave my state of the county and I said, hey, governor, let's free the taxes on

senior citizens, particularly until the legislature gets this done. It's good to put a committee together, but I've been at the state House and I know what happens with those committees. They go back and forth, back and forth. In the meantime, your property tax is going up and you're trying to hang on to your house. And we had almost one hundred homeowners come down to the county one of the

county meetings regarding this issue. I said, they need help right now, so I have them and freeze of property taxes on that. The other thing that we did was, you know, the thirty percent that was promised to voters so many years ago with the stadium deals. That was never kept. And in the four years I had been there, I was able to get it passed two of those years. And I've been on your show and certainly some of

your listeners helped us to achieve that as well. But in the new Bengal deal lease, which is what I had the big problem with, we wouldn't be were we got rid of the thirty percent. You can't do thirty percent. I even asked the administrator and he said, no, there'll be no money in here for the taxpayers to get a thirty percent break. Even though that's what was promised, and that's why I didn't go with the deal. I said, the taxpayers are written out of the deal. I can't

go with it. But now we're seeing a law was passed where it allows us at the local level to double the homestead. Now we would have to pay for it, you know, every county would have to pay for it. So Butler County stepped up and I talked to one of the commissioners there because I had some interest in it. They stepped up and said, Hey, we're gonna do fifty million dollars. We're going to double this homestead and we're going to do it with our own money until the

state gets it together. I then introduced the motion just last week when I saw that, and I said, mister Administrator Jeffaluto, who we're putting our budget together for you know, we do one year budget, so we're putting the budget together now. He had never mentioned it at first, and so I introduced the motion in the meeting saying, I want this looked into immediately. And I can't even because each of us turn in our budgets. I can't turn

in a budget. If I didn't know that we could do this because I now want to look at this right. So we would have turned in our budgets and had no idea we could do this. I said, hold on, I need to know about this and come. And then I asked him, I said, well, why did Butler County move so quick? He said, oh, yeah, by the way, you have in October. We have a deadline this month

to make a decision. And so again when we looked at the budgets, we always find money for, you know, the big projects, you know, whether it's a Bengal leave or a big project. But when it comes to the people, they say, oh, we're broke. We're not able to help the homeowner. And I told him, I said, my number one thing, we can't price the people out of Hamilton County where they can't afford to live here and can't afford to hold on to their home. I had gotten

a letter one time from a senior citizen. You could tell she could barely write. And she hands me shaking based on the letter, and she said she had never in her life she missed her property tax. She always pays her taxes, but she just can't do it, and she deserves to hold onto her home and that really touched me. And after that I just have been, you know, relentless on trying to get this done. Now they've issued a report from the state. You know, some of this

stuff got to go to the legislature. They got to take it to the House, and they got to take to the Senate, and they got to go back and forth. But people need help immediately, and so I have put a motion forward to see if we can at least start with this budget doubling the homestead to help our seniors. Again, I would I would encourage the governor to freeze these property taxes until they can get it done, so that

can put some sense of urgency on it. But if Butler County is doing it, Warren County's looking into it, I think we've got to look into it.

doing this. It's happening all of the states simply because it is so broken. Yesterday in the show, I had the code chair and former Ohio House Minority Speaker from Green Township, Bill Sites on the show. He was the co chair of the working group the governor put together to try and come up with a plan. They issued a twenty point plan to try and fix the property

tax issue. One of the things came up and see if you agree with this or not, and that is the control through the county Budget Commission, which would be the Hamlet County Budget Commissioner, or your concern would be the reduction of unnecessary excessive levees basically meaning instad saying that you know, you can't if a levee fails, you can't come back right away put the levee back on the ballot. From someone who is very pro local control, county control, how does that sit with you?

that because the state. You got to get approval from a state, and then the state never did give us approval. They're still running around talking about they got a build, but they never put it in the budget. You know, some of this control they're talking about, it was never put in the state budget. And being at the state, if it's not at the state budget, it doesn't have

a deadline. And if it doesn't have a deadline at the state, you know how they do, They study, study, study, at what they do is say go back home, and then when you go home, they you know, they cut the local government fund. I don't, we don't have money to do anything. Uh. You know, I was up in the state. I remember they kept saying, well, raise the taxes at the local level, and we're gonna cut it up at this level. And I jumped them and said, this is trickle down taxation. So again it's almost a

passing of the buck. Uh. You know, because what I've seen is that the state could fix this problem immediately. And what we have right now is we have a we have you know, property tax are do and bills are due right now, and we're talking about studying and a long term approach. I think we need a long term plan, but you know, the lady that wrote me and the other people that I've interacted with, they need a right now plan. And I'm hoping that there are

some things that we can do. Hopefully doubling this homestead will be Hopefully we can move forward with it. The debate, though, is does the local people pay or does the state give us the money to pay the doll.

do Washington and it trickles back to us. And that was the plan, all right, so we send our money, well, you know what, we're gonna do stuff at the state level we're going to cut off the local supply to counties and municipalities and alike. And that, of course, over the years, has put a lot of areas in a crunch. Property tax has a hand in that to some degree. But the thing is, okay, Well, the state is flushed with cash. Look at our well balanced budget. We've got

a surplus at the state. The problem is that the money's not flo flowing back to the local communities and hasn't for some time. So in order to raise capital, you guys have to, Well, we got to raise taxes, We've got to put levies out there, and now we're going to put a cap on the lobbies. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it's it's the state of politics because the entities at the time, to put

it together, we're trying to run for higher office. That makes you look good when you're flushed with cash at the state level, doesn't it.

relief bus. We're trying to help people get their money back. They want to give our money to Cleveland. We're not getting it back here. They gave six hundred million in the budget for Cleveland Browns out of our unclaim money. Focus on everybody claim our money.

She jumped up and said, what they had two hundred of my money? You know, where the hell are you being? She thought it was a fraud.

money and we could have saved at Grandma's house. And so now we're fighting again to hold the property taxes. We took out the thirty percent, so now you can't get the thirty percent rebate that you and I have been fighting for every single year at least you can get something back, and that's not happening. And now we're not winning. And now we've got a deal, and we got a lease that will end at the same time as the Reds lease. Oh my god, we got problem.

Maybe I said, have come on here you and gave me a headache.

We're getting ready to the budget. And I told the vister Ludo, Now we can't say we're broke today and then tomorrow you got an eight hundred and fifty million dollar post almost a billion dollar Bengal lease and the taxpayers are left out. So that's what we're doing. But throw on Wednesday, next Wednesday, put on your pink. Put on your pink is Breast Cancer Awareness Day. My mother passed from it. A lot of other people had cancer. I've got a cancer Caucus state of cancer. It's hitting everybody.

He doesn't care about your age, your race, your social status. The rates have gone up in Hamilton County. So we've got doctors in a call to action so that we get more screenings that no co pay and all that. And we're doing it next Wednesday. I want all celebrities, all the people in Hamilton County. We're wearing pink. But it's not just breast cancer. We're gonna take on all of the cancer and look at how we could get more money, more clinical trials, and more cures.

You're a spark of light in another wase dismal Hamlin County. Let me put it that way.