Holmes County auditor paints gloomy picture of property tax

With skyrocketing home prices and ever-increasing property taxes being placed on homeowners for many years, the County Auditors’ Association of Ohio has banned together to make a case for homeowners and agricultural farmland owners who are struggling with the rising cost of property taxes.

On Oct. 7 Holmes County Auditor Jackie McKee addressed a contingent of people during the Holmes State of the County meeting at Harvest Ridge to discuss her thoughts on where the state is headed with property taxation.

“We’ve got a storm coming,” McKee said, referring to the triannual tax update that comes around every three years to provide updated evaluations on homeowners’ properties. “Every three years the state mandates auditor values to increase to market values. What real estate is selling for on the open market is what the state wants the evaluations to be close to.”

She said the state looks at the previous three years to do its evaluations, and had it just looked at the past year, the increases would have been even higher.

Those mandates included a 35% increase on agriculture and 28% on residential properties.

“We submitted lower values several times, and we were denied each time,” McKee said.

The increases are on average across the county, so there will be some fluctuation by district, township and village.

McKee said she and others even took a trip to meet officials in Columbus to talk about how unique Holmes County is from other counties with the Amish community, but all efforts fell on deaf ears.

She said the state officials were kind and felt the struggles but were unable to yield any support from lowering the rising costs.

“They said we have people willing to spend this kind of money on land and houses, so this is what it is,” McKee said. “We tried to build a relationship with them to let them better understand how unique Holmes County is.”

The second storm she said is brewing is for CAUV values.

The Commercial Agricultural User Value is important to valuing soil type compared to typical market values.

Holmes County has a large amount of CAUV-valued land within its borders.

McKee said the soil increase value could increase drastically.

She then got around to the nuts and bolts of the discussion.

“What does this mean for taxes next year? A change in property value does not mean your taxes will increase by the same percentage,” McKee said. “But they will be going up. We will not know tax rates for certain until the middle of December.”

McKee said while concerns over property taxes have always existed, complaints have skyrocketed in recent months because of the huge increases.

She said the state demands auditors remain within 90-100% of market value.

“We try our best to keep it at 90%,” McKee said, noting they tried hard to budge that percentage a tick lower but were unable to get that from the state.

She said many county officials believe tax relief should come from the state and not from cutting local services.

The auditors’ association believes it is time to address these concerns, with several different ideas that could alleviate some of the burden from taxpayers.

The first is the Homestead Exemption, which would provide relief for seniors and disabled homeowners by exempting part of their property value from taxation.

The second is limiting school levy growth from inflation. According to the association, on most levies, the tax rate decreases as property taxes increase, protecting taxpayers from larger tax hikes.

One exception to that protection is an Ohio law guaranteeing school districts a minimum of 20 mills of tax relief. Once a district reaches 20 mills of taxes, when values increase, the tax rate would not increase.

Another option is expanding the Owner Occupancy Credit, which would provide Ohioans who own and live in their home with a 2.5% discount on most tax levies.

McKee proposes increasing this credit to bring immediate relief to most homeowners.

Finally, the fourth idea is creating targeted tax relief programs aimed at creating relief programs for low-income and moderate-income families in Ohio.

The push is being made by a grassroots group in Ohio to do away with property tax altogether, something many officials believe has a good chance at being on the ballot in 2026.

McKee said there are pitfalls to that idea, mainly because many of the local services in the county are supported by property taxes such as townships, the Holmes County Park District, the school districts, the Holmes County Home, Holmes County Board of Developmental Disabilities, fire and EMS departments, public libraries, and the Wayne Holmes Mental Health Board, among others.

“We’re in a difficult spot right now, and we are working hard to find the most equitable way to keep these rising taxes down,” McKee said. “But because they are mandated by the state, much of it is out of the hands of local auditors.”

The County Auditors’ Association of Ohio has put together a brochure encouraging people to contact local legislators to ask them to “follow the auditors” and support the proposals.

McKee encourages anyone interested in learning more to visit the Holmes County auditor’s website, where a host of information is available.