Ballot words

What the ballot's words mean, in plain English.

Ohio tax questions use set phrases. Each one tells you something about the cost.

The kind of question

Additional levy: A new property tax. If it passes, it is added to your bill at the rate on the ballot. New levies do not get the 10% and 2.5% "rollback" credits that older levies get.⁴
Renewal: Asks to keep a tax that is already on the bill for another term. If it passes, your bill does not go up because of it. If it fails, that tax stops when its present term ends.
Renewal and increase: Keeps an existing tax and adds to it. The increase is new money; the renewed part is not. The ballot gives one combined figure.
Renewal and decrease: Keeps an existing tax at a lower rate.
Replacement: On older ballots: replaced an existing levy with one at its full voted rate, so part of it was new money.
Emergency and substitute levies: School levies set to raise a fixed number of dollars a year; the mills are the county's estimate of what that takes. The ballot says whether it is new or a renewal.
Bond issue: The district or city borrows money, usually for buildings, and a property tax repays it. The mills are an average over the life of the bonds; the actual rate is set each year and changes as the debt is paid down and property values move.
Income tax: A school district income tax, paid by residents of the district on their income: either Ohio taxable income ("traditional") or earned income only. Income-tax maths.⁶

Mill: One tenth of a cent: $1 of tax for each $1,000 of taxable value.
Taxable value: 35% of the county's appraised value of the property.¹
"$... for each $100,000 of the county auditor's appraised value": What the levy costs a year for each $100,000 your home is worth on the county's books. Ohio ballots now print it.³ In Cuyahoga County the official is called the County Fiscal Officer.
Effective rate: What an older levy actually collects from homes, as a rate. Ohio's tax-reduction factors stop most levies collecting more just because values rose, so their effective rate falls below the voted rate. Renewals are printed at the effective rate; new levies at the voted rate.³
Estimated annual collections: What the whole levy would raise in a year, worked out by the county from the total taxable value of the district.
Continuing period of time: No end date: the tax runs until it is repealed.
Current expenses: Day-to-day running costs: wages, utilities, supplies.
Permanent improvements: Buildings, land and equipment expected to last five years or more.
Inside and outside the ten-mill limitation: Ohio lets local governments levy up to ten mills in total without a vote ("inside millage"). Anything above that needs the voters ("outside" or "in excess of the ten-mill limitation"), which is why these questions are on the ballot.

Ohio Administrative Code 5703-25-05(B): taxable value is 35% of true value in money. Ohio Revised Code 5715.01(B).
A mill is one-thousandth of a dollar: ballots state levies in "mills for each $1 of taxable value". The $35 per $100,000 follows from source 1.
Ohio Legislative Service Commission, bill analysis of H.B. 140 (134th General Assembly): ballots state the rate per $100,000 of appraised value, at the effective rate for renewals and the voted rate for other levies, with estimated annual collections. Examples: Cuyahoga County Board of Elections notices of election, 7 November 2023.
Ohio Legislative Service Commission, bill analysis of H.B. 61 (136th General Assembly): "new and replacement levies approved by voters at elections held on or after November 2013 are not eligible for either rollback."
Stark County Auditor, "Ohio Property Tax Reform: What Changed, Why It Matters, When You'll See It" (2026): H.B. 186, 335, 309, 129 and 124.
Ohio Department of Taxation, "Individual Income Tax - School District" and the 2025 list of Ohio school districts with income tax rates and bases.