As a resident of the Mentor School District, I urge you to rescind your resolution from October to approve both the "piggyback" homestead exemption and the owner-occupancy tax credit. Lake County is one of only ten out of the 88 counties in Ohio that adopted the homestead exemption, and only four that adopted the owner-occupancy tax credit. It is hard to understand why you decided to take that approach, when the net result of this resolution is a loss of $9 million to Lake County districts, including $2.2 million a year in tax revenue to the Mentor schools, while offering the average eligible homeowner a savings of only $150 annually. This recurring loss comes in addition to the district having to make over $2 million in cuts every year to address ongoing budget challenges and uncertainty around state and federal funding.

Rather than providing real property tax relief to homeowners, what this decision will actually do is force school districts and other entities that rely on property tax revenue to go to voters with larger levy requests to offset these losses. That seems to be in opposition to what you are trying to achieve with this resolution.

Please support the local school districts that serve more than 85% of the students in our communities and rescind this resolution. Thank you.