Canfield tax levy defeat could signal fall trouble

The crushing defeat of a 0.5 percent income tax increase in a special election this week in Canfield serves notice on city leaders there that the majority of the upscale community’s electorate has had it up to here with increased taxation.

It also should serve notice on communities and school districts that winning passage of any of the 47 tax issues on ballots in Mahoning and Trumbull counties this fall won’t come easily or effortlessly.

In Canfield’s special summer election Tuesday, city voters literally clobbered the additional income tax issue. The final unofficial returns showed that 489 voters endorsed the tax while 1,350 others rejected it, for a margin of defeat of nearly 3-to-1.

Canfield leaders now are forced to regroup and begin the painful but necessary strategic planning to downsize city services to minimize any adverse impact on the health and security of the historic city that once served as the seat of Mahoning County government.

ANTI-TAX SENTIMENT GROWS

On a broader plane, the defeat reinforces the growing anti-tax sentiment sweeping our region, state and nation. In last year’s general election, for example, 75 percent of all additional school levies in the Valley fell to defeat. Those trends should serve as a stark reality-check reminder that passage of any of the four dozen new or renewal property taxes, income taxes or bond issue on the ballot Nov. 3 likely will be an uphill battle.

To an extent, such enormously high rejection rates to appeals for public funds are disturbing. After all, there is only so much penny pinching that communities and school districts can accomplish without seriously endangering the quality of public services and severely eroding fiscal integrity.

With so much at stake, it would behoove county, municipal, township and school district leaders to begin work now to reach out to those who control the purse strings – the electorate – with clear, detailed, honest and transparent reasons why ongoing or additional tax revenue is necessary. Long gone are the days when residents would intuitively and instinctively shell out more of their hard-earned dollars to assist their towns and schools based on the good will and trust invested in their elected leaders.

Much of such good will and trust has been corroded over the years in the wake of reports of extravagant spending, subpar delivery of services and employee compensation levels that far outdistance those of their peers in the private sector.

Nonetheless, all hope should not be lost. If the need indeed is genuine, many fair-minded voters will oblige with “yes’’ votes to levy requests. It is therefore incumbent upon fund seekers to detail those needs as thoroughly, concretely, openly and loudly as possible.

For example, school and community leaders should not merely say that additional local tax dollars are needed to compensate for ongoing declines in state financial aid. They instead must be specific as to precisely how much state funding has been lost and into what services that lost funding was targeted. They also must be ready to outline the impact of such losses without resorting to apocalyptic scare tactics that tend only to further alienate voters.

In several communities this fall, the task should not be too difficult. In Mahoning and Trumbull counties, for example, leaders of campaigns for passage of five-year property-tax renewal levies for each county’s Board of Developmental Disabilities should stress the continued positive services they offer and the strong impact they make on the lives of some of the region’s most- challenged population.

Uphill climb

In other communities, the task admittedly will be an uphill climb. Organizers of the campaign to renew a 10.7-mill property-tax levy for the Youngstown City Schools will be forced to counter an avalanche of adverse publicity in recent years ranging from the district’s academic failures to it monumental fiscal struggles. In Niles, fiscal mismanagement up to and including theft that contributed to its landing in state-declared fiscal emergency will weigh heavily on the minds of voters considering the city’s issue to increase the municipal income tax by 0.25 percent.

To be sure, officials driving levy campaigns throughout the Valley must demonstrate to their constituencies that they are and have been fiscally responsible overseers of the public purse.