PROPERTY TAXES City admits to $5 million overcharge

An oversight board missed the mistake.
EASTLAKE, Ohio (AP) -- This Northeast Ohio community says it overcharged $5 million in property taxes for 16 years, with part going to a minor-league baseball stadium that the city promised would cost taxpayers nothing.
Voters agreed in 1986 to raise taxes to pay for sewer plant improvements, but the city taxed far more than was approved.
The overcharges were attributed to city documents that overstated how much Eastlake should get from the tax and a county oversight board that failed to catch the mistake.
State law allows the city, with about 20,000 residents, to collect only the amount needed to make payments on the $7.1 million sewer loan, about $740,000 a year. But taxpayers were charged more in every year but one, including an extra $600,000 in 2001.
Paid for stadium
Eastlake used at least $2 million to make loan payments for a municipal complex that opened in 1994. And $1.6 million went to interest on loans for Eastlake Ballpark, home of the Class A farm club of the Cleveland Indians.
Lake County Prosecutor Charles Coulson, a member of the county budget commission that reviews tax rates, suggested reducing future property tax collections to correct the error.
The sewer plant tax cost the owner of a $100,000 house about $77 this year.
County Auditor Edward Zupancic said it was the first such over-collection he was aware of in his 17 years in office.
"In retrospect, it should have been done a little differently," he said.