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2-mill, 5-year DD levy on ballot
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County voters on Nov. 8 will consider the renewal of a 2-mill, five-year real-estate tax levy for the county Board of Developmental Disabilities.
Designated as County Issue 1, it will be the sole countywide tax issue on the ballot, and it will appear as the last item on the ballot.
The levy is “very important to those people that have developmental disabilities,” said Carol Rimedio-Righetti, chairwoman of the county commissioners.
“Our voters in Mahoning County are sensitive to people that are not the same as they are and understand the need to have help for those individuals,” she said. “I believe our voters will constantly and continuously vote to help them.”
The levy funds services to “a very vulnerable population,” said William Whitacre, DD board superintendent.
The levy, which generates about $5.3 million a year and costs the owner of a $100,000 home $42.43 a year, pays for early childhood, school-age and adult workshop services and client transportation.
It was first enacted in 1992.
The levy money can be used to help residents of the state’s Youngstown Developmental Center, who will be displaced by next year’s closing of YDC, if they remain Mahoning County residents, Whitacre said.
The DD board also has a 3-mill real-estate tax levy that was renewed in November 2015.
Besides the levy money, the board gets state subsidies and funds from Medicaid, which is a joint federal and state program.
The board serves about 1,400 developmentally disabled county residents, and its annual operating budget is about $26 million.
It has 260 full-time, seven part-time and 98 substitute employees.
The levy on the Nov. 8 ballot will remain necessary even as the DD board transitions itself away from being a direct adult-service provider by 2024, because the board will continue to fund the services to clients no matter who provides them or where they are provided, Rimedio-Righetti and Whitacre said.
“Even if they start to move them out of these facilities and workshops that we manage, they will be going to other workshops” where the levy money will help the clients, Rimedio-Righetti said.
“Although we may not be the provider of service, we are still obligated to be the funder of services for individuals with developmental disabilities, no matter where they receive that service,” Whitacre said.
“That money follows them where they receive those services,” he added.
“It’s still the individuals and the families that need help, and that’s why this levy is important,” said Paul Iden, the board’s communications and development coordinator. “We need to really focus on what those families need, not where they go or who provides their direct services,” he added.
“We will continue to hold onto the case management,” Whitacre said, referring to the coordination and monitoring of services being provided. Funds from the Nov. 8 levy would continue to pay for case management, he added.
U.S, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulations say the board will generally be barred from providing both case management and direct services to adult clients by 2024 because regulators view the dual role as a conflict of interest.
The board is already making the transition away from the direct-service provision by not replacing its bus drivers when they retire, Whitacre said.