After rescinding its vote to place a 0.75% earned income tax on the November ballot, Cincinnati Public Schools’ Board of Education pivoted at its Aug. 3 regular meeting, voting for a 7-mill property tax levy.
Put in place just days before the county’s Aug. 5 filing deadline for ballot issues, the tax spanning five years would amount to $245 per $100,000 of a home’s assessed value. It would provide over $66 million for the district annually.
Following hours of discussion and what the school board described as disruptive and divisive responses from CPS union members, the board landed at a 5-1 split in support of the property tax. Member Kareem Moncree-Moffett abstained from the vote.
Posters criticizing the board and shouted remarks from audience members calling for member Kendra Mapp to resign stood out in the regular business meeting. Mapp was the sole “no” vote in both the reversal of the income tax and the property tax votes that took place Monday night.
The board’s property tax vote comes one week after its polarizing, 5-2 vote in support of what would have been CPS’s first ever earned income tax in a special meeting on July 27. In what several members described as a week of “chaos” and “confusion,” the income tax reversal comes on the heels of backlash from both of the county’s political parties.
The day after the board’s move toward an income tax, the executive committee of the Hamilton County Democratic Party voted 50-23 to urge the school board to rethink the levy. Hamilton County’s Republican Party also released a statement opposing the income tax.
All seven of the school board members are Democrats, though the position is officially nonpartisan.
Craig said the Aug. 3 motion to rescind the board’s decision was not motivated by the backlash from either political party, since “We understand and understood their principles around where they’re gonna be.”
“It’s about understanding there’s a community of folks who … have raised concerns” about the earned income tax, he said, adding that he thinks more discussion needs to take place surrounding a levy for the November ballot.
The last time CPS passed a new-money levy was in 2016, with the 7.93-mill, five-year property tax that raised about $48 million for the district’s preschool program. New funds for general operating costs were last secured in a 2008, from a 7.89-mill levy that lasted five years.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: After reversing income tax vote, school board supports property tax
Reporting by Grace Tucker, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Grace Tucker, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
