TONTOGANY – Otsego Local Schools will ask voters in May to support an income tax to keep the district
operating in the black.
At a special meeting Monday, the board of education unanimously voted to proceed with the levy. The
deadline to place it on the ballot is Feb. 6.
“We think now is the time to ask for additional funding sources from our community to maintain the level
of academics we have here,” said Superintendent Adam Koch.
The traditional income tax will tax wages, tips, interest and capital gains, plus more, and will collect
an estimate $2.2 million for current expenses.
The five-year levy would start Jan. 1, 2020, if passed.
Monday’s resolution will be forwarded to the Ohio Tax Commissioner to estimate the percentage needed to
raise $2.2 million.
Koch said it will be 0.75 percent.
The district already is collecting a 1-percent income tax, which passed in 2002.
Koch updated the board on the many accomplishments since the district was last on the ballot for an
operating levy in May 2002.
“A lot has changed since then,” he said.
Since that time, the district chose not to renew a 12-mill emergency levy and a 1.6-mill operating levy.

The district also has consolidated onto a centralized campus. It has been eight years since the
elementary opened and seven years for the renovated junior high.
“We have a lot to be proud of and how much we’ve grown and how much we’ve changed in those eight years
since we opened the elementary,” Koch said.
When he joined Otsego in 2010 as treasurer, the goal was to have the district live within its means.
“Since 2002, not having a levy, I think we have done a really good job at that, of living within our
means and producing a product this community deserves.”
Accomplishments have included adding more than 10 course offerings at the junior high and high school,
keeping class sizes down, keeping the cost to live in Otsego in the lower third of local districts,
keeping costs per pupil low and reducing bus routes.
“It is relatively inexpensive to live here but we’re also not spending a high amount per pupil,” Koch
said.
The board’s approval rating is high, and the public is not upset, he continued.
“We’ve gone out and talked to our public and we are very transparent in what we do.”
Board member Elizabeth Gorski also praised the look of the campus.
“It is an asset to the community,” she said, adding that the community has a lot of access to the
buildings.
“If it wasn’t for the community support, we wouldn’t have this,” Koch said.
Board member Mark Tolles also introduced two resolutions.
He wants to hold Columbus responsible to follow the DeRolph court cases that says the legislature must
provide sufficient funding to schools based on the Ohio Constitution of 1851.
“It’s been 22 years since a decision has come down and they’ve done nothing,” he said about the state
legislature.
DeRolph vs. State of Ohio was a suit filed against the state for failing to provide adequate funding to
educate the state’s students.
The Ohio Supreme Court in 1997 ruled that Ohio’s current method of funding schools violated the Ohio
Constitution. The justices ordered that the state government “enact a constitutional school-funding
system.”
The court, however, gave no guidance on how to do so.
“We need to take action to encourage this,” Tolles said, and that includes inviting local representatives
in for a public meeting to give progress reports.
The board can apply pressure and circulate petitions, he said.
“We are paying you to do a job,” he said. “Do the job. You said you would agree to the Constitution and
follow it, now follow it.”
Once the state provides the sufficient funds and pays for the unfunded mandates, that would take the
pressure off the local taxpayer, Tolles said.
One resolution encourages the General Assembly to comply with the provisions of the Ohio Constitution,
which says the state will make such provisions by taxation or otherwise … will secure a thorough and
efficient system of common schools throughout the state.
The second resolution states once the General Assembly complies with the DeRolph ruling, locally-raised
tax revenue will be evaluated and reduced.
Otsego, with students in Wood, Lucas and Henry counties, is represented by six legislators.
“They should listen,” Tolles said. “This is the only provision in the Constitution that requires the
legislature to provide any money for anything.”
Tolles said any action would not happen next year or in the next three years, but the pressure needs to
remain, he said.
He was particularly concerned about unfunded mandates.
If Otsego is required to have one foreign language for graduation, the state should fund that, Tolles
said.
“To have that language in there is fine,” said Gorski about the resolutions, “but what is it really
accomplishing?”
“What it accomplishes is it tells our people that we’re out here, we’re trying to get these people to
comply with their oaths that they have taken,” Tolles said.
Both resolutions passed unanimously.
At its organizational meeting preceding the special meeting, the board selected Brad Anderson to serve as
president and Judy Snyder to serve as vice president.
Gorski was assigned Penta Career Center; Tolles was assigned legislative liaison; Anderson and James
Harter were assigned to the strategic plan committee; and Snyder was assigned to the Otsego Endowment
Foundation.
Meetings will be held on the third Thursday at 6 p.m. in the high school media center; however, this
month’s meeting was moved to Jan. 24.