County health tax up this year for townships, villages

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

Craw­ford County’s town­ships are pay­ing more for their health ser­vices this year, and town­ship offi­cials are not happy about it.

The Craw­ford County Gen­eral Health Dis­trict assumed respon­si­bil­ity for pro­vid­ing health ser­vices to Crest­line at the start of 2012, and with that came a bud­get increase of about $43,000 to pay for the addi­tional ser­vices ren­dered, accord­ing to health com­mis­sioner Scott Kib­bler. How­ever, the state-ordered for­mula for cal­cu­lat­ing each town­ship and village’s con­tri­bu­tion to the health district’s 2012 bud­geted income required Crest­line to pay $21,276 for its services.

That’s because the health district’s fund­ing comes from county prop­erty taxes and the state for­mula, set out in Ohio Revised Code chap­ter 3709.28, charges town­ships and munic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions (vil­lages) on the basis of their prop­erty val­u­a­tions, not per capita, accord­ing to county audi­tor Robin Hildebrand.

Her office received calls from town­ship offi­cials about the assess­ment increases early this past sum­mer, when town­ships were first noti­fied of the impend­ing increases, and dur­ing the last few days.

Once the health department’s bud­get was approved, she said, it fell to her office to run the cal­cu­la­tions to fig­ure out what each town­ship and village’s assess­ment would be. All of them saw increases. The health board assess­ment sched­ule pro­vided by Hildebrand’s office shows that Polk Town­ship, with the second-largest prop­erty val­u­a­tion in the county, will be charged $15,189, or $2,186 more. Jef­fer­son Township’s assess­ment went up $1,824 to $11,677 and Jack­son Township’s increased $464 to $3,020.

“It’s really get­ting stiff,” said Polk Town­ship fis­cal offi­cer Pat Ron­don. “It’s not going to bank­rupt us, but every lit­tle bit of this hurts.” She thought the county health depart­ment could look into putting a levy on the bal­lot like Rich­land County’s health depart­ment does in order to alle­vi­ate the bur­den on the town­ships and villages.

Richland’s health depart­ment is funded by two levies, a .5 mill and a .9 mill, and does not col­lect the usual assess­ments from the town­ships and vil­lages, accord­ing to Rich­land health com­mis­sioner Stan Saalman.

Hilde­brand said she sug­gested to con­cerned town­ship offi­cials, when they called her office, that they con­tact the state town­ships asso­ci­a­tion if they thought the for­mula wasn’t equi­table. Since it’s a state-mandated issue with Ohio Revised Code, she said, it would have to be addressed at that level.

“We’re the safety net for health care ser­vices in the county,” Kib­bler said in a phone inter­view this week. “Is it everybody’s oblig­a­tion to help pay for it? Yes.” He com­pared the health district’s ser­vices to those pro­vided by area fire and police depart­ments. “It’s just one more pub­lic ser­vice that tax­pay­ers pay for.”

When town­ship offi­cials brought up their con­cerns to Kib­bler at the Jan. 25 meet­ing of the Regional Plan­ning Com­mis­sion, he said that though he knew the $43,000 bud­get increase was because of adding Crest­line to the district’s respon­si­bil­i­ties, he didn’t under­stand why half the bur­den of that cost fell to the town­ships and other villages.

“I don’t assess taxes,” Kib­bler reit­er­ated later. “The whole thing comes from the fact that Crest­line defaulted to a vil­lage. I don’t know how the auditor’s office works as far as mak­ing the assess­ments.” When town­ship offi­cials asked him about the assess­ments at the RPC meet­ing, he hadn’t looked at the num­bers in about a year and thought the auditor’s office had fig­ured the assess­ments accord­ing to population.

Town­ship offi­cials were also sur­prised to see the num­bers chang­ing so much, though they had received the health board assess­ment chart, show­ing the dol­lar amount change, with a let­ter dated March 30, 2011.

Hildebrand’s office had orig­i­nally noti­fied the health dis­trict and the town­ships of the assess­ments in April and May of 2011, Kib­bler noted. “They should have known about it last year. I think what hap­pened was it kind of went by every­body,” he said.

The City of Bucyrus’ con­tract amount with the health dis­trict remained unchanged this year.

The health dis­trict will mon­i­tor costs this year and reeval­u­ate its bud­get at the end of the year. At that time, health board mem­bers should have a more con­crete idea of how much it costs to cover Crest­line as well as the town­ships, Kib­bler said.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all Craw­ford County town­ships and vil­lages will be required to attend the annual meet­ing of the county’s health dis­trict advi­sory coun­cil on March 5. Town­ship offi­cials at the RPC meet­ing had requested that the health assess­ment increases be explained to them at the dis­trict advi­sory coun­cil meeting.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Jan 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.