TOLEDO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Toledo school district to place levy renewal on November ballot

Voters will face 6.5-mill issue

3/28/2017
BY VANESSA McCRAY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
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    Marlon Lakeith Johnson, Jr., left, accepts his diploma during Bowsher High School commencement last year. The Toledo Board of Education will consider giving its support to a levy renewal request that would go before voters in November at a meeting today.

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    • The Toledo Board of Education will consider giving its support to a levy renewal request that would go before voters in November.

    Board members are expected to vote at a meeting today on a resolution that expresses their support of placing a five-year, 6.5-mill tax renewal on the Nov. 7 ballot. The levy generates about $13 million a year for the district’s general operating expenses.

    The district’s overall operating budget is about $370 million.

    The renewed levy would continue to cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $178 a year, district officials said.

    The levy was first approved in 2000 as a three-year measure and last renewed in 2013, when 63.6 percent of voters supported it.

    Ryan Stechschulte, district treasurer, said the board’s support would kick off the levy effort and let the public know about the upcoming request. The official process of putting the renewal on the ballot would require additional resolutions, he said.

    If voters reject the levy, the district would have three more opportunities to get the levy renewed in 2018 without losing funding.

    TPS officials said Frank Bloomquist of Medical Mutual of Ohio will serve as the chairman of the levy committee.

    District officials also laid out a timeline to ask voters in November of 2018 to extend two other existing levies — a long-running emergency levy that generates about $14.5 million annually and a levy first approved in 2014 that generates $9.2 million yearly for operating expenses and $3.2 million for permanent expenses.

    The school board will hear a presentation about the levy renewal attempt during its 5:30 p.m. meeting today at 1609 N. Summit Street.

    Contact Vanessa McCray at: vmccray@theblade.com or 419-724-6065, or on Twitter @vanmccray.