Solon School Levy: Town Hall Meeting On Thursday

SOLON, OH — A Community Town Hall Meeting will be held Thursday night at Solon High School to discuss the need for the upcoming school levy. Superintendent Joe Regano and District Treasurer Tim Pickana will both be on-hand to take questions and explain the structure of the levy.

The event will start at 7 p.m. and will be held inside the Solon High School Lecture Hall. The public is invited to attend the free event.

Unlike other school districts in Northeast Ohio, Solon has managed to go nearly eight years without asking for a school levy. The new, 8.5 mill levy would add no additional costs to residents in 2019, but would cause a spike in taxes in 2020. This would be the district's first levy since 2010.

According to a presentation from Superintendent Joe Regano, the two-year levy phase-in would work like this: in 2019, there would be a 1.6 mill replacement that would not add any taxes to a resident's bill; but in 2020, the district would have a new 6.9 mill levy that would increase taxes by $241.50 per $100,000 home.

"I hope residents view the levy positively," Regano told Patch in December 2017, when news of the levy first broke. "We're the highest performing district in the state, and in one publication we're the highest in the nation. It's really tough to go eight or nine years without an operating levy."

One of the key reasons the district is now being forced to ask the public for an operating levy is the steady loss of something called TPP, or Tangible Personal Property tax revenue. Since 2011, the district has lost 8.49 percent of its operating revenue, Pickana told Patch. From 2017 to 2018, the cliff will be dramatic. Revenues from TPP fell from $8.3 million annually to $4.8 million annually. And TPP revenues are continuing to drop as the state phases out the tax.

To learn more about the reasons behind the levy, click here.

Voters will head to the polls on May 8 to vote on the levy.

Photo from Google Earth