Voters shoot down new money for Elyria Schools

ELYRIA — For the second time in six months, voters shot down new money for Elyria Schools on Tuesday as they soundly defeated an additional emergency levy. Issue 17 was a 10-year, 4.9-mill levy that would have raised $6.38 million per year for the district and was identical to a previous levy in May that was defeated in a much narrower race. According to complete but unofficial results from the Lorain County Board of Elections, the issue was defeated by more than 900 votes, falling 4,552 to 3,631, or 56 percent against to 44 percent in favor of the levy. Superintendent Ann Schloss said that without the new money, the district will have to consider deeper cuts to things like staffing and programming. "In the coming months we have a lot of really tough decisions to make," Schloss said. "We are constantly streamlining our finances, and we try to do a lot of our cutting (of staff) through attrition, but we are going to have to start really looking at making some tough decisions." Prior to the May election, Elyria Schools had not asked voters for new operating money in more than 15 years. "That is really unheard of, and it tells you how much streamlining we are already doing all the time," Schloss said. "The normal cycle for a district to ask for new money is three to five years." In September, district Treasurer Colleen Aholt presented the Elyria Board of Education with a financial forecast projecting deficit spending by the district would increase by $4 million each of the next three years, leading Elyria Schools to expend almost its entire $32 million cash balance by 2029. While the district is set to collect roughly $960,000 more in property taxes after recent property revaluations, the schools will lose $2 million in state funding a year under the latest state budget. Schloss did not commit to a new levy request in the immediate future, but said that the district would have to have discussions about it because there was no other mechanism for the district to create new revenue under current state laws. "At the end of the day, there needs to be tax reform," Schloss said. "We have to think of other ways to fund schools. I mean, just in the last four to six months, we have lost funds that we were supposed to get (from the state). It is very difficult to live that way and be able to project things financially." If it had passed, the levy would have cost homeowners $172 dollars per year for every $100,000 of their home's value. Schloss said she understood what voters who felt they could not pay for a tax increase were going through, and thanked the team which worked to try and drum up support. "I'm just proud of the effort, Elyria's community has always been supportive of education," she said. "We understand what people are going through, because we are in the same boat, we are all taxpayers. But at the same time, our children are our future, and they deserve what we have. It breaks my heart to think that we'll have to make some tough decisions." Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.