The housing boom has left the sprawling school district based in this former rail town on the Little Miami River with gleaming new buildings and a dilemma over how to keep them funded.
Three times in the past 15 months, voters have rejected levies that would have kept the Little Miami School District in the black. Each time, the district fell further behind and had to ask for more. On Tuesday, voters will face the biggest request yet--a new real-estate tax that amounts to $519 per $100,000 of assessed value, nearly twice the rate rejected in November.
Backers say the levy, combined with already deep cuts, is the only way to prevent a fiscal emergency that would force a state takeover of the schools. "It's the downturn of an entire community. People are going to start looking at moving and your property value is going to go through the floor," said Julie Salmons Perelman, a 44-year-old part-time veterinary technician with three children in the schools, who sat stuffing bags filled with campaign literature one morning last week.
Bill Nicholson, 54, a longtime opponent of the levies, calls the rising requests in the face of repeated rejections "insanity." In the past, he has argued on behalf of people with fixed incomes, but he recently lost his own job as a consultant in the perfume industry. "How can I cut a budget of zero" to pay more taxes, he asked.
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