ATHENS, Ohio — Athens City School District voters renewed the district’s 1% income tax on Tuesday, voting 5,675 to 4,034 to keep the levy in place indefinitely rather than letting it expire at the end of 2028, according to unofficial election night results from the Athens County Board of Elections reported by the Athens County Independent.
The margin was more than 1,600 votes, or about 58.5 percent in favor — a figure that matches the 58.45 percent passage rate the Athens Messenger reported from the same board of elections results. The renewal means a revenue stream the district counts on will now continue without a scheduled end date.
That stream is not a small one. Jared Bunting, the district’s treasurer and chief financial officer, told the Independent in September that the levy makes up nearly 14 percent of the district budget. Both Bunting and Superintendent Chad Springer told the Independent the district faces declining enrollment and slowing revenue growth, and the district has projected it could run through its cash reserves by 2030.
Springer told the Independent that renewing the levy would help keep the district “more stable” for a few years, but that schools “are facing financial hardship no matter what.” Those comments, made to the Independent in September as the district made its case to voters, framed Tuesday’s question as a stability measure rather than a cure for the district’s longer-term finances.
Athens voters have backed this tax before. In November 2017, the 1% levy was renewed for a decade by nearly two-thirds of voters, the Independent reported. This time the district asked voters to remove the expiration altogether, and a smaller but still comfortable majority agreed.
The result also stands in contrast to a neighboring Athens County outcome the same night, where the Alexander Local Schools income tax proposal failed by just 21 votes across three counties — a reminder that school money questions in the county were decided very differently district by district.
All results are unofficial until the Athens County Board of Elections certifies them in the coming weeks. What happens next for the district is budget planning with one major uncertainty removed: administrators can build future spending plans knowing the levy’s roughly one-seventh share of the budget is no longer counting down to a 2028 expiration.
Photo: Jez955, CC BY-SA 3.0