Four years after majority floor leader matt Huffman introduced legislation to help with the cost of schools looking to construct new buildings he introduced house bill 504 that could save schools millions of dollars. Back in the mid 90's, the State of Ohio and the school facilities commission started ranking districts for new building construction based on their needs. This list was based on local revenue so the poorer the school district the higher up the list a school district would find themselves. In 2005, school districts no longer received personal property tax revenue. So, this latest bill would eliminate that as part of the calculation for school districts. A move that could help school districts that had high property tax, but were lower on the list for construction and would have to pay a larger percentage of the building project.
"The net result of that would be those school districts, like Bath and Shawnee that haven't had building projects yet, will pay a much less local share in their building project. Probably save Bath township eight to ten percent in what they would pay. In other words the state would pay more." said Huffman.
If this piece of legislation passes, schools would need fewer dollars from local taxpayer levies, and more money would come from the state. There are over 250 school districts on the list right now.
