OAK HARBOR, Ohio — A local school district that has seen a lot of financial troubles is going back to its voters for assistance.
First approved by voters in 2018, Benton-Carroll-Salem School District's emergency levy generates $1.4 million a year for the district.
Now approaching the final year of its five-year lifespan, the district is asking voters to renew the levy for another 10 years.
With a cap on how much money an emergency levy can collect, the millage of the levy has gone down from 3.9 mills to 3.3 mills.
"It's only collecting an 'X' amount of dollars," B-C-S district treasurer Cajon Keeton said. "So as property values go up and home values go up, the collection rate actually goes down."
"There's a cap on it with an emergency levy so that it ensures that we only collect $1.4 million from this emergency levy," district superintendent Guy Parmigian said.
Along with the millage of this emergency levy technically going down, school officials wanted to make sure voters also knew that this levy has nothing to do with the current construction of the new elementary school building for the district.
Parmigian says his district saw one of the largest funding drops in Ohio history after the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant was devalued five years ago.
But despite that loss in funding, he says B-C-S schools is still in the top 10% of schools in Ohio and the district needs this emergency levy funding to continue that success.
"It helps us with student technology, students support services, academics, electives," Parmigian said. "So this $1.4 million is an essential component to our budget."