Our district treasurer, Randy Scherf, and I have just been invited to attend a press conference at the County Treasurer's Office this afternoon at 4 p.m.  The topic of the press conference will be the fact that the county has been in negotiations with Ford Motor Company regarding contested tangible personal property valuations (machinery and equipment) for tax years 2001 - 2004.  Because the Ford Motor Company is a statewide business that operates in multiple counties, this particular tax is paid directly to the State of Ohio.  The State in turn pays the county, which then distributes the money to the appropriate taxing entities, such as our school district.

Until very recently, we were unaware of these negotiations, however we are very appreciative that County Treasurer, Jim Rokakis, has reached a settlement with Ford which, he tells us, will result in an over $12 million, one-time payment to the Berea City School District.  This is good news indeed!  As you are well aware, we in this district have been more familiar with getting "bad" news from the County Treasurer, so this is a very welcome surprise.  However, we must remember that these are taxes that were NOT paid for those tax years, so this represents tax money due, not a new source of revenue. 

I want to assure our taxpayers that we will continue to be conservative in our fiscal approach.  We know, under current Ohio law, that this very tax source is scheduled to be eliminated beginning in Fiscal Year 2010.  So, to put this in perspective, in just three years, we will begin to lose this revenue source, which brings in more than $13 million a year from tangible personal property taxes.  So, while this settlement is very, very good news for the Berea City School District, we realize that our future revenue is still very uncertain.  We know that we must be very conservative in stretching this, and all our resources, as far as possible.

Thank you for your continued support in helping us to help our students achieve dreams they never imagined possible.

Derran Wimer, Superintendent

Forwarded by: