Auditor to change farm tax valuation

WELLINGTON — Lorain County Auditor Craig Snodgrass and a group of representatives from his office announced some major changes and held an open dialogue with many of Lorain County’s farmers during a joint meeting with the Lorain County Farm Bureau.

More than 50 farmers and representatives from the Farm Bureau arrived at a meeting Tuesday night prepared to argue that the auditor had been improperly applying Ohio’s Current Agricultural Use Value (CAUV) program.

But the auditor’s office beat them to the punch, when Marty Rowe, chief deputy of real estate, said during a presentation that the county would change how it draws CAUV maps.

“When I started digging into land uses I said, let’s look at land use and everything else,” Rowe said. “Because we saw a lot of things with the way we administered CAUV that probably could use a little work.”

CAUV is a program that provides a property tax break on some commercial farmland.

Members of the auditor’s office dug into past years, compared its program to other counties and spoke with CAUV experts.

Farm Bureau leaders and members, as well as some nonmember farmers, were concerned that the county was overusing a “residual” designation, which refers to any uncultivated land that could be cultivated and is taxed at a higher rate than other CAUV designations.

The auditor’s office agreed, and starting in the fiscal year 2023, CAUV crop designations will apply to areas like fence lines, waterways, structures and other areas that previously would have been classified as residual.

“We found that our delineation … for land uses has been very conservative,” Rowe said. “And as a result of all the reviews that we did, we decided it needs to be a lot more liberal.”

For most farmers, that change will mean that much more of their land will fall under a use category such as crop, pasture or woodland. All have lower tax rates than the residual designation.

JVS bests marketing

OBERLIN – Lorain County JVS students in the Business and Marketing Academy competed in the Business Professional of America regional competition.

Students who have qualified to compete at the state level are listed below:

Amherst: Yennessa

Otero, Digital Media Arts senior, placed first in the Podcast Production Team event; Valyn Survance, Web and Graphic Design junior, placed first in the Visual Design Team event.

Avon: Peyton Stefanich, Web and Graphic Design senior, placed first in the Broadcast News Production Team event.

Avon Lake: Ambriea Bristow, Marketing and Entrepreneurship junior, placed first in the Human Resource Management event; Jeremy Lee, Marketing and Entrepreneurship senior, placed first in the Broadcast News Production Team event; Robert Simms, Web and Graphic Design senior, placed first in the Extemporaneous Speech event and second in the Advanced Desktop Publishing event.

Clearview: Siddalee Tindale, Web and Graphic Design junior, placed first in the Visual Design Team event; Jason Thomas, Web and Graphic Design senior, placed first in the Advanced Interview Skills event.

Columbia: Calder Jessen, Digital Media Arts junior, placed first in the Digital Media Production event; Gabrielle Kalin, Web and Graphic Design senior, placed first in the Graphic Design Promotion event.

Firelands: Logan Bober, Web and Graphic Design senior, placed first in the Broadcast News Production Team event and second in the Fundamentals of Web Design event.

The auditor’s presentation was given during a meeting hosted by the Farm Bureau. It is the third year such a meeting had been held.

“There was a lot of good feedback and a good back-and-forth discussion,” Snodgrass said. “Every year (these meetings) have gotten bigger and every year they have helped make life better for the farmers and better for us.”

Robert Beekman, president of the Lorain County Farm Bureau, was impressed by the willingness of the auditor to accept feedback from the public and act on it.

“Honestly I thought there was a lot of progress compared to the last couple years,” Beekman said.

“Last year they took some small steps in the right direction, and this year they took a bigger step. It isn’t perfect, but I’m happy with the progress and the direction they’re headed.”

Adele Flynn, of Wellington, is a trustee with the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation and owns a beef company.

She had had issues with the residual designation, which had been applied to a number of structures she used for agricultural production.

Flynn doesn’t think the auditor’s plan is perfect. She argues the “residual” classification should not be used at all and doesn’t appear in the CAUV law, but she was happy with the conversation and that farmers would receive more accurate property designa- tion.

“It went really well,” she said. “We (the Farm Bureau) thought they did a really good job of explaining everything, and really that is what we wanted.”

The auditor’s office was represented by a team of six employees, several of whom said they were thrilled with how the meeting went.

“It was great,” said Paul Nishanian, chief deputy of real estate. “It was a really good conversation, and I think we made it clear we are working towards the same goal.”

The conversation did not end with the mapping change, as several farmers criticized what they saw as a lack of communication from the auditor’s office.

Farmers provide information and maps on the makeup of their farms, which county appraisers use to guide the maps they draw.

But sometimes, the appraisers disagree with what designations farmers think a specific parcel of land should have.

Brent Ziegler, a farmer with properties in a number of Lorain County townships, said that the county should be required to inform the farmer when there is such a disagreement.

He was echoed by several others present, and the auditor’s office employees seemed to take his criticisms seriously.

Snodgrass said he would explore a notification system, along with ongoing plans that would update the county’s online maps to make them more accessible.

“These meetings are important because it gets (the auditor’s office) to understand where we are at, and it helps us to understand where they are,” Beekman said.

While not every concern was met with an immediate solution, farmers who had arrived expecting something more adversarial found themselves pleasantly surprised with the dialogue and direction things were moving.

“I was apprehensive about coming here and talking to them,” said Char lie Hook, a retired Wellington farmer. “Somebody said earlier that it seemed like a ‘money grab.’ I don’t feel that way now. They seemed really happy to be working on this.”

Keystone: Gaige Agurkis, Cybersecurity and Networking senior, placed first in the Broadcast News Production Team event; Pietra Parensa, Marketing and Entrepreneurship senior, placed first in the Ethics and Professionalism event; Olivia Rounds, Web competition and Graphic Design junior, placed first in the Visual Design Team event.

Midview: Aniya Qualls, Cybersecurity and Networking senior, placed first in the Prepared Speech event and second in the Network Administration Using Cisco event; Lucas Schupp, Marketing and Entrepreneurship junior, placed first in the Small Business Management Team event; Anthony Worthing, Web and Graphic Design senior, placed first in the Fundamental Desktop Publishing event.

North Ridgeville: James Clarke, Digital Media Arts senior, placed first in the Video Production Team event; Anthony March, Cybersecurity and Networking senior, placed first in the Network Administration Using Cisco event; Jack Harrington, Web and Graphic Design senior, placed first in the Fundamentals of Web Design event; Kylie Horne, Marketing and Entrepreneurship junior, placed first in the Small Business Management Team event; Eric Jurina, Cybersecurity and Networking senior placed first in the Linux Operating System Fundamentals event and first in the Python Programming event; Olivia Medina, Marketing and Entrepreneurship junior, placed first in the Small Business Management Team event; Aidan Shumay, Cybersecurity and Networking junior, placed first in the Device Configuration and Troubleshooting event and first in the Small Business Management Team event.

Wellington: Joseph Danesi, Cybersecurity and Networking senior, placed second in the Device Configuration and Troubleshooting event and second in the Computer Security event; Cooper McConnell, Cybersecurity and Networking senior placed first in the Computer Security event; Quintin McKenna, Web and Graphic Design senior, placed first in the Podcast Production Team event; Sadie Willis, Web and Graphic Design senior, placed first in the Advanced Desktop Publishing event.