Two School Levies Rejected By Voters In Special Election

Voters in two northern Ohio school districts rejected school levies in their Aug. 6 special elections.

More than 78 percent of those who voted Tuesday in the Willoughby-Eastlake City School District opposed a levy that would have raised more than $8 million to cover state-level cuts that have put the district in the red. The measure failed with only 1,925 votes in favor of the levy and 6,988 against. 

Of the more than 44,000 registered voters, less than 9,000 cast a ballot in the special election. 

Superintendent Steve Thompson expressed his disappointment in a written statement, saying “it is just not possible for the district to maintain our current level of programming without replacing that revenue source.”

The district plans to put the levy on the ballot again in November, Thompson says.

An emergency levy to generate $1.5 million for the Benton-Carroll-Salem Local School District also failed — by just 55 votes.

That district was hit hard when the Department of Taxation devalued the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant in 2017, cutting school tax reciepts in half.

Benton-Carroll-Salem officials said the new law that bails out the FirstEnergy nuclear power plant also stopped the district from losing even more funding, but without the levy, more cuts may come after all.