CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — Chillicothe voters rejected two income tax proposals on Tuesday, Nov. 3 — one for the city school district and one for city street repairs — according to unofficial results from the Ross County Board of Elections reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian and the Chillicothe Gazette.
The Chillicothe City School District income tax failed with 56.3 percent voting against and 43.7 percent in favor, with all 24 precincts in the district reporting — 4,178 votes against and 3,244 for — according to the Ross County Board of Elections results reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian.
The city’s separate municipal income tax also failed, 57.2 percent to 42.8 percent, with 4,258 votes against and 3,191 in favor across all 22 city precincts, the Scioto Valley Guardian reported, citing the Ross County Board of Elections. The Chillicothe Gazette reported the city proposal was a 0.2 percent income tax levy to be used for street paving, repairs and improvements.
The two rejections leave both the school district and the city without the new revenue they had asked voters to approve. The street levy in particular was tied to a visible, everyday need — paving and repairs — and its failure means the city must fund that work from existing resources or return to voters with a different proposal.
Across Ross County, 24,858 ballots were cast out of 45,266 registered voters, a turnout of 54.9 percent, according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s reporting cited by the Scioto Valley Guardian. County voters favored Republicans in the statewide races even as Democrats won them across Ohio, the Guardian reported.
School and city officials had placed both taxes before voters in the same election, which meant Chillicothe households were asked twice on one ballot to raise their own income taxes — once for classrooms and once for streets. Voters answered both questions the same way, and by similar margins, even though the two proposals came from different governments with different budgets. That pairing is part of the story the numbers tell: this was not a verdict on one project, but on new income taxes generally, in a year when household costs were the dominant theme of campaigns up and down the ballot.
All results are unofficial until certified. What happens next is the Ross County canvass, after which the school district and the city will have to decide how to budget without the rejected taxes — and whether either proposal returns to a future ballot in a different form.