BEAVERCREEK SCHOOL LEVY LIKELY ON NOVEMBER BALLOT

Board takes first step toward placing issue on ballot in November.

Beavercreek City Schools board on Thursday night took the first step to placing a substitute emergency levy on the November ballot. The board’s move is part of a promise Superintendent Paul Otten made publicly after voters rejected the district’s proposed 6-mill substitute levy, 50.4 to 49.6 percent, in May.

Thursday night’s vote was about “a substitute of that emergency levy. It allows us to get growth on our money,” Otten said.

Beavercreek is experiencing significant growth in the township area, he said, and the substitute levy would be a “great step forward for our community. It protects taxpayers,” he told News Center 7’s James Buechele after the meeting.

The substitute levy means

no new taxes and no tax increase. New residents coming in will pay the same rate everybody is already paying, he said.

If the ballot measure passes in November, it would bring in $10.4 million a year, Otten said.

“We cannot function without this money,” he said. “To cut 10 percent of the budget in this district would truly dismantle our district.”

What will change this time in the run-up to Election Day this fall?

Otten said the district will do a better job of explaining what the substitute emergency levy does and what it means to the community.

Bonnie McGriff, who teaches Spanish at Beavercreek High School, said the odds for passage will be better in November because people are used to voting in the fall.

Many people didn’t realize the levy was on the spring ballot, she said, and many people who did know about it assumed it would pass.