Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Stay tu bottom of the hour everyWednesday, Judge Ennen of Paulitano his column
titled what if It's dangerous to beright when the government is wrong? I'll
be on the bottom of the hourthe meantime. I am pleased to welcome
to the fifty five KRSA Morning Show. A real exciting build up for Adam
Kellerbone both on and off air,Sarah Wolf, who represents a group of
Hamilton County homeowners who are seeking toget rid of these outrageous property taxes we're
(00:23):
all dealing with. Sarah Wolf,Welcome to the fifty five KRCA Morning Show.
A real pleasure to have you ontoday. Thank you so much,
thank you for having me. Yeah, Adam Spipp very highly of you and
your advocacy, because, let's faceit, we all are struggling with these
crazy property taxes. Housing values increaseCOVID nineteen hun profound impact on it.
They did what is a triennial reassessmentright at the peak of housing values.
(00:45):
We've got some senior folks living onfixed incomes who can barely afford to stay
in their own homes, which isa frightening proposition. This is a solution
that Columbus is going to have todeal with, isn't it. Well,
they have the most important thing rightnow is they have the House Joint Resolution
six. It's authored by Representatives BethLeer and Scott Wigham, and this is
(01:07):
what we need to fix this propertytax mess. And it's how several other
states do their property taxes. It'sactually very similar to the proposal that our
homeowners group, Hamilton County, OhioHomeowners on Facebook came up with. It's
limited, predictable across the that acrossthe board property tax increases based on your
previous tax going back to twenty twentytwo, and no more of these wild
(01:30):
guest assessments that don't make any senseare distributed equally from neighborhood to neighborhood.
A report just came out from HousingOpportunities made it equal in confirming what we're
seeing that the working class and themoderate to low income neighborhoods saw the most
egregious increases sixty up to four hundredpercent increases. And I don't know how
you can do that to people.I don't either, And this is one
(01:53):
of those things that really just knockpeople over when they go when they open
their tax bill. It's like,whoa, how can that possibly be?
I mean, in some times youtalk about four hundred percent, that's just
unconscionable. Yes, and people havenow more in their escro accounts than the
amount of their mortgage payment. It'sinsane. And they didn't have to do
(02:15):
it that way the law, thelaw as it is now, there's nothing
wrong with it. It just saysthey have to do an assessment, and
they weren't betting on horses, andthey weren't playing the price is right.
I mean, they could have doneit a different way, but you know,
it just seems like this was ahuge tax grab. And then you've
got all the factors such as peopleare fleeing the coast, they come to
(02:36):
the Midwest, they see a housefor one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and
that's nothing to them for a house, and suddenly they're in a bidding war
and that house is now five hundredthousand dollars. They could have taken those
outliers into consideration, but they didn't, and the VOR hearing so then they
tell us, go to your BorderRevision Sharing file a complaint and you know,
we'll fix it. There well,those aren't going well, let's just
(02:58):
se I mean, that's what wasgoing to be my next question to you.
I don't know that anyone is reallysuggesting that the price of that home
didn't actually go up, or thatthe increase is not reflective of the market.
Market conditions changed dramatically. Neighborhoods thatused to have affordable housing, as
you pointed out, become magnets forpeople who maybe want to flip them,
(03:19):
or maybe just see it as anopportunity to finally own a home they can
afford it. Bidding wars come up, and next thing you know, one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars house isnow selling for two hunred and fifty.
That's reality. So you go toyour board and you say, wait a
second, I'm contesting your evaluation ofmy home. And then you find out
that all the comps in the neighborhoodconfirm what the auditors said, which is
no, your house is now worthtwo hundred and fifty bucks. You're done
(03:42):
well. I mean, the reasonthat the auditor is an elected position is
because they're supposed to fight for us, so law or no law. They
should have looked at this thing andsaid no, we can't do this to
our people. You know, wegot this ninety four year old widow just
down the street from me, propertytaxes doubled. What is she supposed to
do. She can't pull one hundreddollars, let alone thousands of dollars out
(04:08):
of thin air while already struggling thiseconomy. I would I mean, I
just wish they would have looked atthe whole assessment and said, we can't
do this to our people, youknow, and got got in front of
it, rather than having a reactivebeing proactive. Wow, we've had these
discussions a lot and a whole varietyof different topics of lead. Sarah.
(04:28):
Okay, so this joint resolution,Now, let take any given situation and
apply how this would work. Sayto the woman down the street from you
who've got whacked with the bill thatshe can't afford, Well, they're gonna
take the assessment part out of it. This is how Michigan does it,
This is how Florida does it,a couple other states. So now your
tax increases will be based on theprevious tax, not the valuation. You
(04:53):
know, the auditor can still value, you know, take take praise of
their housing stock at they want whateverthey want to do, but the assessment
will no longer have anything to dowith it. So you're going by your
previous tax. It'll be you cannotgo up more than four percent a year
or the rate of inflation, whicheveris lower. And then this resolution because
(05:16):
we did propose something very similar fromour our group. We do have a
lawyer in our group who wrote ussomething very similar. But they, somehow,
I think, have also fixed thelevee issue in this in that your
levee amounts, even if they allpass, can't go up more than four
percent. The whole total increase can'tbe more. Yeah, I don't know
(05:40):
how they fixed that. We couldn'tfigure out how to do that. Levees
are a problem, and I'm sorryif anybody bristles it not voting for the
levees. Just listen to this.The county budget is one point thirty two
billion dollars. When we extrapolated allthe data from this assessment, we added
up all the columns. The receiptsfrom residential taxes alone are two point h
(06:06):
four billion dollars. So this islike seven hundred million dollars that they're swimming
in. Are we getting any newservices for that, I don't think so
that they could return that back tothe homeowners in these you know. Yeah,
and you hear the retort or thereason they always demand these tax of
the increases. Well, the costsof everything has gone up, Inflation has
gone up. Well, you've addressedthat. You have this capped at four
(06:28):
percent, which I think is areasonable cap, but it would go at
the rate of inflation. So thosearguments go out the window when you say,
if something is going to be cappedat the rate of inflation, so
the cost of acquiring X is nowtwo percent higher, Well, okay,
there you go. You've got thetwo percent covered. You're not going to
get any more out of us.Well, and also from from just new
(06:48):
construction and new sales alone, taxesdo go up. They get about seven
percent more per year in property taxes. The county does just naturally from sales
and new construction. Yeah, soit's not like they're not going to get
their money. Well, and theywould argue though, but that's more people
(07:09):
that we need to provide services for, So it's a zero sum game.
I can hear that argument being made. Yeah, Well, I don't know.
I just don't know how they cando this to people. Well neither
do I, and the people whoare feeling it are across all political line.
That's one of the things that makesthis nice, which is why I'm
asking, oh, yeah, thisjoint resolution. Is it a bipartisan solution.
I know we're dominated by Republicans.You know, they own Columbus,
(07:32):
which is fine in some respects,but apparently they're rather dysfunctional group. There
is everyone behind this conceptually, Idon't know. It just came out last
week. The cost sponsors and sponsors. I believe they're all Republicans. But
Cecil Thomas, We've talked to everybody. We will talk to anybody who will
talk to us. And Cecil Thomashas been an ally on this. We
(07:55):
had sent him our joint proposal,and so I just say call him all
call him all up. The committeechair is Bill Romer, and we have
all this information on our Facebook pageHamilton County, Ohio Homeowners, and we
have all the contact information there.And if people would just call and support
(08:18):
of this, it's just sort ofan all hands on deck thing. This
is just so important. And thenalso if you want to before I forget,
if you want to meet me inperson, and I will have this
information in person as well. I'mspeaking at the farm in Dell High on
Anderson Ferry Road. That's a weekfrom tonight, June twenty sixth, six
pm. Tom Brinkman, candidate forAuditor, will also be speaking. He's
(08:41):
been a great help to our group, although we are a nonpartisan, He's
given us a lot of things tolook at and ask for. You know,
we really don't care which party orelected official gives a darn and helps
us, But so far the incumbentsin the county are not really using the
home team advantage, if you knowwhat I mean. So more information about
the farm is at restore Liberty dotus. And if you're not on Facebook,
(09:03):
our email is Hcchunite at gmail dotcom and we can get all that
information to you about the resolution oryou can look it up. Just make
sure you have the right Congress.It's one hundred and thirty fifth Congress Joint
House Joint Resolution sixth Ohio. Allright, now, real quick and before
we part company, Sarah Wolf andI appreciate you being all over this and
(09:24):
to the advantage of literally every propertyowner in the state, let alone,
Hamilton County. I don't want tothrow a curb on if you're not familiar,
that's fine, But I just mentionedAdam Kaylor was on the program in
the last hour talking about the countycommissioner race he's running. The funding of
schools. The current funding mechanism thestate of Ohio based on property taxes was
(09:45):
rendered unconstitutional about two decades ago bythe Ohio Supreme Court, and yet nothing
has changed. Do you know ofanything connected with legislative solution or problem relating
to funding of schools and how itis currently pegged and considering it's been told
deemed unconstitutional. Well, I actuallyread the Darrol cases. They seem to
(10:07):
have a lot to do with therural rural funding of rural schools. But
see Cincinnati Public. I don't.I just don't know how that decision helps
us. I mean I don't.I really don't know. If somebody knows,
please tell me, because Cincinnati Publicat least spends almost twenty thousand dollars
per student. Yeah, and thenand and then Alicia Rees says she's sitting
(10:31):
on a children's bill for a onehundred million dollars or something like that.
So there's got to be some overlapthere. You know, why are you
spending that on the school on thekids? And then and then but then
the private schools and there you know, suburban schools only spend about half that
per student, and and it's arguablethat they turn out a better student too.
(10:54):
I think the statistic they don't thinkyou have to say it's arguable.
Statistics demonstrate that. Yes, yes, exactly. So why are we throwing
all this money at the schools?Why is it double? I just want
to know why it's double? Howcome the kids can be educated for half
that in the suburbs? And then, you know, I don't know,
(11:16):
food for thought, And certainly howabout they live within their meanings like the
rest of them. Hey, hey, there's an idea, an interesting concept.
Just think about return on investment.What are you getting out of the
Cincinni public schools for the twenty thousanddollars per pupil? And oh, what
an amazing situation will be to beable to take that money and give it
(11:39):
to the family and let the familychoose where that money was going to go.
M m oh yeah. Competition awonderful concept. Sarah Wilson, thank
you on behalf of all of thereal estate tax players out there appreciate that
Joint Resolution HJR. Number six.Go over to Facebook Hamilton County, Ohio
(12:00):
Homeowners. You'll find Sarah and hergroup there with all the information. Or
show up at the farm again.That's next week. What day in time?
It's June twenty sixth, Wednesday,at six o'clock at the farm in
Dell High All right, my anniversaryday, thirty two years of blissful marriage
though anyway, head to throw thatout there.
Stay tu bottom of the hour everyWednesday, Judge Ennen of Paulitano his column
titled what if It's dangerous to beright when the government is wrong? I'll
be on the bottom of the hourthe meantime. I am pleased to welcome
to the fifty five KRSA Morning Show. A real exciting build up for Adam
Kellerbone both on and off air,Sarah Wolf, who represents a group of
Hamilton County homeowners who are seeking toget rid of these outrageous property taxes we're
(00:23):
all dealing with. Sarah Wolf,Welcome to the fifty five KRCA Morning Show.
A real pleasure to have you ontoday. Thank you so much,
thank you for having me. Yeah, Adam Spipp very highly of you and
your advocacy, because, let's faceit, we all are struggling with these
crazy property taxes. Housing values increaseCOVID nineteen hun profound impact on it.
They did what is a triennial reassessmentright at the peak of housing values.
(00:45):
We've got some senior folks living onfixed incomes who can barely afford to stay
in their own homes, which isa frightening proposition. This is a solution
that Columbus is going to have todeal with, isn't it. Well,
they have the most important thing rightnow is they have the House Joint Resolution
six. It's authored by Representatives BethLeer and Scott Wigham, and this is
(01:07):
what we need to fix this propertytax mess. And it's how several other
states do their property taxes. It'sactually very similar to the proposal that our
homeowners group, Hamilton County, OhioHomeowners on Facebook came up with. It's
limited, predictable across the that acrossthe board property tax increases based on your
previous tax going back to twenty twentytwo, and no more of these wild
(01:30):
guest assessments that don't make any senseare distributed equally from neighborhood to neighborhood.
A report just came out from HousingOpportunities made it equal in confirming what we're
seeing that the working class and themoderate to low income neighborhoods saw the most
egregious increases sixty up to four hundredpercent increases. And I don't know how
you can do that to people.I don't either, And this is one
(01:53):
of those things that really just knockpeople over when they go when they open
their tax bill. It's like,whoa, how can that possibly be?
I mean, in some times youtalk about four hundred percent, that's just
unconscionable. Yes, and people havenow more in their escro accounts than the
amount of their mortgage payment. It'sinsane. And they didn't have to do
(02:15):
it that way the law, thelaw as it is now, there's nothing
wrong with it. It just saysthey have to do an assessment, and
they weren't betting on horses, andthey weren't playing the price is right.
I mean, they could have doneit a different way, but you know,
it just seems like this was ahuge tax grab. And then you've
got all the factors such as peopleare fleeing the coast, they come to
(02:36):
the Midwest, they see a housefor one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and
that's nothing to them for a house, and suddenly they're in a bidding war
and that house is now five hundredthousand dollars. They could have taken those
outliers into consideration, but they didn't, and the VOR hearing so then they
tell us, go to your BorderRevision Sharing file a complaint and you know,
we'll fix it. There well,those aren't going well, let's just
(02:58):
se I mean, that's what wasgoing to be my next question to you.
I don't know that anyone is reallysuggesting that the price of that home
didn't actually go up, or thatthe increase is not reflective of the market.
Market conditions changed dramatically. Neighborhoods thatused to have affordable housing, as
you pointed out, become magnets forpeople who maybe want to flip them,
(03:19):
or maybe just see it as anopportunity to finally own a home they can
afford it. Bidding wars come up, and next thing you know, one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars house isnow selling for two hunred and fifty.
That's reality. So you go toyour board and you say, wait a
second, I'm contesting your evaluation ofmy home. And then you find out
that all the comps in the neighborhoodconfirm what the auditors said, which is
no, your house is now worthtwo hundred and fifty bucks. You're done
(03:42):
well. I mean, the reasonthat the auditor is an elected position is
because they're supposed to fight for us, so law or no law. They
should have looked at this thing andsaid no, we can't do this to
our people. You know, wegot this ninety four year old widow just
down the street from me, propertytaxes doubled. What is she supposed to
do. She can't pull one hundreddollars, let alone thousands of dollars out
(04:08):
of thin air while already struggling thiseconomy. I would I mean, I
just wish they would have looked atthe whole assessment and said, we can't
do this to our people, youknow, and got got in front of
it, rather than having a reactivebeing proactive. Wow, we've had these
discussions a lot and a whole varietyof different topics of lead. Sarah.
(04:28):
Okay, so this joint resolution,Now, let take any given situation and
apply how this would work. Sayto the woman down the street from you
who've got whacked with the bill thatshe can't afford, Well, they're gonna
take the assessment part out of it. This is how Michigan does it,
This is how Florida does it,a couple other states. So now your
tax increases will be based on theprevious tax, not the valuation. You
(04:53):
know, the auditor can still value, you know, take take praise of
their housing stock at they want whateverthey want to do, but the assessment
will no longer have anything to dowith it. So you're going by your
previous tax. It'll be you cannotgo up more than four percent a year
or the rate of inflation, whicheveris lower. And then this resolution because
(05:16):
we did propose something very similar fromour our group. We do have a
lawyer in our group who wrote ussomething very similar. But they, somehow,
I think, have also fixed thelevee issue in this in that your
levee amounts, even if they allpass, can't go up more than four
percent. The whole total increase can'tbe more. Yeah, I don't know
(05:40):
how they fixed that. We couldn'tfigure out how to do that. Levees
are a problem, and I'm sorryif anybody bristles it not voting for the
levees. Just listen to this.The county budget is one point thirty two
billion dollars. When we extrapolated allthe data from this assessment, we added
up all the columns. The receiptsfrom residential taxes alone are two point h
(06:06):
four billion dollars. So this islike seven hundred million dollars that they're swimming
in. Are we getting any newservices for that, I don't think so
that they could return that back tothe homeowners in these you know. Yeah,
and you hear the retort or thereason they always demand these tax of
the increases. Well, the costsof everything has gone up, Inflation has
gone up. Well, you've addressedthat. You have this capped at four
(06:28):
percent, which I think is areasonable cap, but it would go at
the rate of inflation. So thosearguments go out the window when you say,
if something is going to be cappedat the rate of inflation, so
the cost of acquiring X is nowtwo percent higher, Well, okay,
there you go. You've got thetwo percent covered. You're not going to
get any more out of us.Well, and also from from just new
(06:48):
construction and new sales alone, taxesdo go up. They get about seven
percent more per year in property taxes. The county does just naturally from sales
and new construction. Yeah, soit's not like they're not going to get
their money. Well, and theywould argue though, but that's more people
(07:09):
that we need to provide services for, So it's a zero sum game.
I can hear that argument being made. Yeah, Well, I don't know.
I just don't know how they cando this to people. Well neither
do I, and the people whoare feeling it are across all political line.
That's one of the things that makesthis nice, which is why I'm
asking, oh, yeah, thisjoint resolution. Is it a bipartisan solution.
I know we're dominated by Republicans.You know, they own Columbus,
(07:32):
which is fine in some respects,but apparently they're rather dysfunctional group. There
is everyone behind this conceptually, Idon't know. It just came out last
week. The cost sponsors and sponsors. I believe they're all Republicans. But
Cecil Thomas, We've talked to everybody. We will talk to anybody who will
talk to us. And Cecil Thomashas been an ally on this. We
(07:55):
had sent him our joint proposal,and so I just say call him all
call him all up. The committeechair is Bill Romer, and we have
all this information on our Facebook pageHamilton County, Ohio Homeowners, and we
have all the contact information there.And if people would just call and support
(08:18):
of this, it's just sort ofan all hands on deck thing. This
is just so important. And thenalso if you want to before I forget,
if you want to meet me inperson, and I will have this
information in person as well. I'mspeaking at the farm in Dell High on
Anderson Ferry Road. That's a weekfrom tonight, June twenty sixth, six
pm. Tom Brinkman, candidate forAuditor, will also be speaking. He's
(08:41):
been a great help to our group, although we are a nonpartisan, He's
given us a lot of things tolook at and ask for. You know,
we really don't care which party orelected official gives a darn and helps
us, But so far the incumbentsin the county are not really using the
home team advantage, if you knowwhat I mean. So more information about
the farm is at restore Liberty dotus. And if you're not on Facebook,
(09:03):
our email is Hcchunite at gmail dotcom and we can get all that
information to you about the resolution oryou can look it up. Just make
sure you have the right Congress.It's one hundred and thirty fifth Congress Joint
House Joint Resolution sixth Ohio. Allright, now, real quick and before
we part company, Sarah Wolf andI appreciate you being all over this and
(09:24):
to the advantage of literally every propertyowner in the state, let alone,
Hamilton County. I don't want tothrow a curb on if you're not familiar,
that's fine, But I just mentionedAdam Kaylor was on the program in
the last hour talking about the countycommissioner race he's running. The funding of
schools. The current funding mechanism thestate of Ohio based on property taxes was
(09:45):
rendered unconstitutional about two decades ago bythe Ohio Supreme Court, and yet nothing
has changed. Do you know ofanything connected with legislative solution or problem relating
to funding of schools and how itis currently pegged and considering it's been told
deemed unconstitutional. Well, I actuallyread the Darrol cases. They seem to
(10:07):
have a lot to do with therural rural funding of rural schools. But
see Cincinnati Public. I don't.I just don't know how that decision helps
us. I mean I don't.I really don't know. If somebody knows,
please tell me, because Cincinnati Publicat least spends almost twenty thousand dollars
per student. Yeah, and thenand and then Alicia Rees says she's sitting
(10:31):
on a children's bill for a onehundred million dollars or something like that.
So there's got to be some overlapthere. You know, why are you
spending that on the school on thekids? And then and then but then
the private schools and there you know, suburban schools only spend about half that
per student, and and it's arguablethat they turn out a better student too.
(10:54):
I think the statistic they don't thinkyou have to say it's arguable.
Statistics demonstrate that. Yes, yes, exactly. So why are we throwing
all this money at the schools?Why is it double? I just want
to know why it's double? Howcome the kids can be educated for half
that in the suburbs? And then, you know, I don't know,
(11:16):
food for thought, And certainly howabout they live within their meanings like the
rest of them. Hey, hey, there's an idea, an interesting concept.
Just think about return on investment.What are you getting out of the
Cincinni public schools for the twenty thousanddollars per pupil? And oh, what
an amazing situation will be to beable to take that money and give it
(11:39):
to the family and let the familychoose where that money was going to go.
M m oh yeah. Competition awonderful concept. Sarah Wilson, thank
you on behalf of all of thereal estate tax players out there appreciate that
Joint Resolution HJR. Number six.Go over to Facebook Hamilton County, Ohio
(12:00):
Homeowners. You'll find Sarah and hergroup there with all the information. Or
show up at the farm again.That's next week. What day in time?
It's June twenty sixth, Wednesday,at six o'clock at the farm in
Dell High All right, my anniversaryday, thirty two years of blissful marriage
though anyway, head to throw thatout there.
Brian Thomas News
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