Do want to be an American idiot?
Hi Scott flown back on seven hundred wals of it, And so we heard the news that last week Hamilic County commissioners with four and a half percent Carbert Tech rebate for next year. Of course, we all remember the thirty percent promise when voters approved the half scent sales tax increased back in the mid nineties to fund the stadiums downtown. Was also finding out that that's the lowest number we've had as far as their rebate goes. Now,
the vote two to one. Commissioner Alisia Reese was dissenting supporting it. Of course, we're we're a commissioner's Denise Treehouse, the Hamlin County commissioned president who joins us now on the show to talk about it on seven hundred ww welcome back Denise Hau's life.
Yeah doing well, Scott.
How are you?
I'm good? I'm good.
I know you've got sexy budget meetings to get to and everything else because you're a numbers chick. So God bless you, God speed. You're better than I'm at that stuff. So let's look at and you know, your contemporary a Lisha Reese was on the show last week, and I know we had some things you wanted to get off your chest relative to that conversation without playing all the
highlights of that. But you know, you've been in county government and been around long enough to remember the ninety six stadium campaign and looking back, do you think voters were given an honest picture of what that thirty percent property tax reabit it actually mean?
Or was there some bait and switch happening?
Because I think if you surveyed, most taxpayers who were around them feel that there was a bait and switch and it was intentional.
Was your thoughts, Well, I'll tell you what I did want to come on just to correct some things. I mean, we can all have differences of opinion about what happened and why it happened, but the fact of the facts, and so I didn't want to have your listeners come away with the wrong impression on what has happened in the past. And so, as you say, starting out, when this thing was offered to the taxpayers, there was a sales tax and then this rebate and for the first
fourteen years they did a thirty percent. I mean, they promised it and they did it. But what happened was the sales tax that was collected. It didn't keep up. The revenue did not keep up with making sure that we meet the obligations of the fund, with the debt service and the pilot and all the things, maintenance of the stadiums, all the things, and the PPR. And so back in twenty eleven you saw a significant dip from
thirty down to seven point eight. And so this ebb and flow has been going on for a while, depending on what can be afforded through this fund, right, and so a number of years ago, probably three four years ago, the administrator offered a formula that said we need to keep about eighty five percent in the reserve. Okay, that's responsible, that's what's been advised by our consultants. That's great. So let's create a formula where we keep the eighty five
percent and then do the rebate according to that. And so that's something that would have offered us the ability to give a rebate. Wouldn't have been the thirty, but it would have been a starting point. And then each year try to go up a little bit for the property tax owners or the property deck players. And we haven't stepped to the formula, and so when you do the thirty percent, it blows up the formula and you can't afford to do that year after year.
I guess the other way of looking at this too, then would be, Okay, well we have money for the homeless. We're going to give deputies a five percent increase. There's other things in the budget against not just the one thing, but I guess the taxpa mask Okay, I understand all that. Then why isn't this a bigger priority or based on the Matthew just described, it's impossible.
Well, no, I think the priority is providing relief for property owners, and we are doing that. This isn't the only game in town when it comes to how to provide property tax relief, and so let's not forget about what's going on in the legislature. I did sit on Governor Downe's pass forth with Phil Site trying to come up with some ideas to provide relief. We had twenty suggestions for the legislature and some for ourselves, and so we are starting to implement some of that, not the
least of which its House Phil. Three thirty five, which says that our revenue, the county's revenue will be held our inside millage will be held to the rate of inflation. That is a reduction in revenue for the county and relief to the taxpayers, and so you will not see the spikes that we have seen in the past for property tax bills because we're going to be held to the rate of inflation. We're taking a hit on that. It's probably about fifteen million a year, but we're willing
to do that as part of the solution. So it's not as if the county is not working on property tax relief. We're giving some relief by the way through the PPR. It's just is not as much as the thirty percent. So there are other ways to provide this relief outside the PPR.
So it would be a messaging kind of thing. Is that what you're saying is you're going to get the money back, it just won't be in the thirty percent property tax rebate.
Well, we're always trying to look out for the taxpayers and do as little increase as possible. But as I said, we've got partners in this fight here right in the state. I wish the state we're doing more candidly, but we are doing our part, and we didn't have to support House Built three thirty five. But we did that knowing that we were going to take a cut because we thought it was an important thing to do by way of the county to provide some relief to people that
are struggling. And let me say one other thing, because I heard it said that the tax players got written out of the stadium, fact seal that the opposite is true. The financial plan actually ensured that the PTR remains in the formula in the equation. It's a matter of degree, and that's always what we fight about. But we literally wrote it into the least negotiations with the Bangles in the financial stack, and so we didn't write it out. We literally wrote it in to the financial stack.
Could the thirty percent rebate have been part of the new stadium deal the two hundred and eleven nois which by the way that you're voting.
On today, Well, it is part of it. As I said, it's just a matter of degree the PTR is in there. It's just the thirty percent ebbs and flows given the amount of revenue that's coming into that fun.
Okay, So what would then find in subsequent years at ease three house.
What can people expect as far as they rebate goes.
Well, what I would like to do is again go back to this formula and say we are going to do as much as we can and hopefully increase it year after year so people always see that kind of increase. The other thing it does is structure something where it's more predictable and so that you should see the chart. I don't know if you've seen the chart where it goes up and down and up and down, and they're dramatic shifts, and so I you know, I'm a packed player.
I would rather see something that is something I can count on and that I can budget for. And we're talking about maybe the delta between the four point five that was voted this year in the thirty is about seventy bucks, So we're not talking about hundreds of dollars. I know seventy dollars is a significant amount of money, but when it comes to your household budget, that's what we're talking about.
Well, but if you're a senior fixating people on the margins, were plenty of those people that are afraid they can't pay their property taxes because what the state's doing, and of course the reassessments and the like. You had this in there as well, and you know eventually it's going to be a breaking point. I know, it's just seventy dollars. There's some people that seventy dollars there's a lot of money though.
Yeah, I agreed, And so we're trying to provide that release another way. As I said, the PPR is not the only way to get this done, and so we're providing the release through these other mechanisms. And by the way, that there are longer terms right, House three thirty five is ongoing. It's not something that's decided year after year. It's going to be lost, and so we will be held to the rate of inflation, and so that release will be ongoing and so we won't have this debate
every year. That will stay in place.
Commissioner Denise Triethouse, President of commission and talking about the meeting today, the vote today two hundred and eleven for pay Corps. We also had word that it's only a four and a half percent property tax rebate for next year instead of the thirty percent promise when we approved
the ninety six stadium front buildout. So the truth is then going to be somewhere between four and a half and thirty percent with all these ways of finance or getting that money back to taxpayers, Denise, are we ever going to get close to thirty Because while the four and a half percent right now, especially with the new deal, is bad timing on the part Forer, I think for a lot of homeowners and taxpayers.
Do you agree?
Well, you know, Scott, I have voted for thirty in the payout, So when we could afford it, I voted for it, and when I thought it was necessary for the taxpayers, I did it. The fact of the matter, though, is that you can't sustain that. You can do it, but you can't keep doing it because then you bankrupt the fund. So if we were to do a thirty percent this year, the vote we just took, we would have reduced the fund dramatically, and so that that hurts
the fund. By the way we're supposed to keep eighty five percent, we would have been way way down. The other piece of that so is that it impacts next year, and so if you do the thirty percent this year, then you're in trouble next year. And that's what's happened. We did thirty percent last year, and I didn't vote for that because I didn't think it was responsible. And so now we're in a position this year where we can't do it again. So you know, year after year
it all plays upon. This is why I'm in favor of this formula. So we don't have this dynamic where we've got thirty percent and then we got to go to four point five. I mean, yeah, do I wish it was higher, Yes, I do, but you know, we're looking at the finances as fund and not bankrupting the fund. So it is what it is. And I also was listening and heard that this idea that the attack players didn't get anything through the new lease with the Bengals,
and nothing could be further from the truth. Where we got the Bengals to pay one hundred and twenty million dollars into our asset, which is that stadium, we capped our cost of three hundred and fifty million, which has never happened, and we got a long term deal with the Bengals, and we got use of that stadium like in a way that we never do right. And so then we get to have high school football games between
Elder and ex played at the stadium. So let's not forget about the community benefits that came through that lease in addition to the financial benefits that we got as the county.
Well we need to have I mean, that's all nice for Saint exe and Elder, but why aren't we using the stadium more? I thought initially when this happened that we'd see a lot more activity outside the occasional Taylor Swift show, a lot more of what we're talking about with football. Why does it take well twenty eight years into this thing and now we're going, hey, we need to utilize the stadium more for high school athletics. Why haven't we been doing that all along?
Because we didn't have control of the city, because the county didn't have control. And so through this new lease, we now have access to that stadium as we should. It belongs to the tax players, and so we had seen the first model of how that's going to play out in the years to come, where we do have more concerts, we have more events, we have more high school football games. That was the whole point of the community benefit disagreement, and so the Bengals signed off on that,
and so this was our first foray into that. I thought it was a good model. It was beautiful nights, even it was a little rainy, but yeah, and look to that in the future. That's exactly what we're trying to accomplish.
Yeah.
But but one may look at that and go wow, that is to not see the availability, because that was something else was promised people. It was like, hey, yeah, you know the stadium that we're partners in this single
bit to use the stadium. We haven't been able to And I think that's just another And I brought that up to Denise because between that and the thirty percent, I think there's a huge disconnect between elected officials like yourself, certainly the Bengals in the front office, and what the community wants and they you know, I think everyone's looking at all of these deals and going, Okay, I think we're just going to get screwed again because the pattern
is there. How do you how do you change that over the next ten, fifteen, twenty years.
Well, I wasn't there when this promise was made, by the way, for this thirty percent. That happened many years ago, and it wasn't a responsible promise. I mean, they had no idea, by the way, the reason we're having this conversation is because the revenue is a flat Right, if the sales tax revenue was higher, we'd be doing all. We'd be doing the thirty percent. We could afford it, we'd do it. I'd support it. That would be great.
That's just not the reality. And so to promise this so many years ago, for twenty five years is not responsible. You shouldn't do that. You can't budget like that because you don't know what the economic reality is going to be. You don't know what the economy is going to be. So I try not to make unrealistic promises to people. I try to honor what I had said I could do and try to do as much as possible, whether it's thirty percent or something less than that, we're trying
to do as much as possible. And I know something else that was raised in your conversation was MFD, which is another challenge for us because we're under the federal and you know, it's a mandate from the federal government, the Consent Decree, but it's not funded. It's an unfunded mandate, and so we're under that. We've got a very old system,
over one hundred years old. You know, with the pipes in the ground, and so we're trying to hold those rates as tight as possible, knowing that our counterparts in other counties are raising rates higher than what's been suggested for us. So Franklin County is up eight percent next year, Akron's going up five percent, Tyahoga is going up fourteen or four point two percent. So it's not like we're alone in this. But what we're trying to do is say, how can we keep these rates as low as possible
and again make it predictable. And so next year you're going to see because we got rid of the bulk discount. And I know it's kind of in the weeds, but anyway, we got rid of the bulk discount. So next year people will not see residents will not see higher MSc race and so that's good news, and you don't hear anybody talking about that, but they were about to pass that budget too. In years after that, we're hoping to have a fairly low predictable rate so that people don't
see spikes in those bills either. So you know, it's not only this one issue. We're trying to play this out across the board and provide as much relief as we can, knowing that we're under some of these man date and we have to respond to those.
Commissioner Denise's treehouse last week, Alicia Reese. Commissioner Reese said that the county's rolling in money. She told me, we're rolling the mud. We got money all over the place with the banks and stadium revenues. You're saying we can't fund a full rebate and thirty percent is it can't be done, It's impossible.
Are we really rolling in money?
No, we are not rolling in money. I mean, we have our budget here, and we have a budget here in tonight as a matter of fact, and the revenues are relatively flack. We're doing what we can. But no, I mean it is it's very tight. Ask the sheriff, ask the prosecutor, ask the judges. The budget is very tight this year. I don't know what that refers to, but it is certainly not reality.
So not rolling in money. Maybe a little bit of money.
I thought, I'm wondering what we're talking about now.
I don't know.
I don't know what that was the reality is this? What give me a reason? What can you expect you? What can you tell taxpayers. Now in handling count it's it can't be four and a half percent. You're saying it can't be thirty percent. What's the target?
The target is keeping eighty five percent in the fun and making sure we meet our dead ol. We have dead obligations, we have obligations through a pilot payment, we have construction, we have all these obligations. So meet the obligations, and then we have built into that formula this PTR. So we will have a PTR every year and knowing it depends on the sales tax revenue and what's coming in, and that will define what we can do by way of the relief. We can't spend money we don't have.
Is it is it closer to thirty percent or closer to four and a half.
For when next time?
Oh yeah, next next cycle, and then it's going to be changed. But you said you want to get to a steady number and the number will be everyone will be happy with.
Would be what I guess to the question, or you just.
Simply don't know, Well, how would I know? I mean, I don't know what is going to come in by way to sales tax.
Well, I mean you have targets obviously, otherwise we've been doing this, so there's got to be a number in your mind.
Yeah, well sure, And what I'm hoping for is an increase every year. So as we look at the four point five, we go up next year, and then we go up the year after that and go after the year after that. So it's predictable and we're doing and I and I anticipate and I hate the prediction because you know, we just came out of a pandemic not too long ago, and I get an impact here right you it's very hard and we had a recession and that's where you saw another dip, so it's really hard
for me to predict. But the model is set so that we start out low and we continue to grow year up to year. So that is certainly my hope. But to make a prediction gets a little dicey.
Yeah, fair enough. We'll just say twenty five eight percent.
How's that?
Say what you'd like, and we'll try to hit that mark.
Because I got to have your record, everything's recorded. I want to bring this back later and then you know, rub your nose in it to know that's like, please, well, we will do that.
I would not do the MC let's get back to MSc, because that's another one that I hear quite a bit about. And so that rate, we're trying to do a predictable rate across the board for the next ten years. We're trying to hit four point five, which is a pretty modest increase. Before I got to the Commission, by the way, those rates were quite a bit higher year after year.
And when I got there, we were able to hold that flat for a number of years because we had a reserve, and so we spent down some of that reserved to keep for US rates flat. But now we're back to a reserve that's reasonable that we need to increase the rate modestly year after years. So that is what I'm shooting for. Right If I can do a four point five increase for MSc for the next ten years, I think that's what people are asking me to do. Give us something predictable, make it as low as you
possibly can, and that's what we're going to do. So that's what that's what I'm trying to do with the end next week. Not to be confused with the four point five PCR. And now I'm just realizing that those numbers are the same and the increase this year.
PREMI, I guess, I.
Guess I've got to get going. We could probably talk about this for a long time, but you got to go. You got votes, you got work to do. To d Streetouse Hamlet County Commission President, setting the record straight from her perspective, I always enjoy having you back, and thanks for taking time out to explain. Thanks, got all the best to you. And we've got a news update happening now here on seven hundred WLW