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RESS September 14, 2015
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Serving More Than h 33 33,000 000 H Homes & B Businesses i iin 4 C Counties ti
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Candidates vow to get after absentee landlords By J. Patrick Eaken Press Staff Writer news@presspublications.com
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In my opinion, this is a smack at the environment. Jim Bedra See page 4
Top photos, left to right, Toledo City Council District 3 candidates Glen Cook, Ernest D. McCarthy, (bottom photos left to right) Peter J. Ujvagi and Robert James Worthington answer questions during a candidate forum at the East Toledo Senior Center. (Press photos by Ken Grosjean)
Brace for “sticker shock,” farmers told By Larry Limpf News Editor news@presspublications.com About 75 persons involved in agriculture were warned Wednesday to brace themselves for their property tax bills in 2016. “You’re getting sticker shock today,” Lucas County Auditor Anita Lopez, told the growers during a town hall meeting held at the Oregon Municipal Complex to explain changes in the Current Agricultural Use Valuation property tax program. “We don’t want you to get it when you get your January bill.” In 2015, five counties, including Sandusky County, are going through a sexennial reappraisal and 19, including Lucas and Ottawa counties, are undergoing a triennial update of their property valuations. Although data used by the Ohio Department of Taxation in the CAUV formula indicate that farmers in the past two years on average have realized lower prices
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We don’t want you to get it when you get your January bill.
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Robert James Worthington, a 20-yearold independent in Tuesday’s District 3 city council primary election, says he doesn’t want to be considered a “politician,” but a “public servant.” His idea caught on. Democratic candidate Peter J. Ujvagi, 66, admitted to about 60 guests at a forum Wednesday night he believes all four candidates have similar intentions. “I really do believe that all four of us would be like to be public servants, not politicians,” Ujvagi said. “A few times I’ve paid the price for this, but it’s why I’ve done this all my life. I believe I can still contribute. I believe I have the energy and the passion. We can do this together. No elected official can say, ‘I can solve that for you on my own.’” Worthington, Ujvagi, Republican Ernest D. McCarthy, 73, and independent Glen Cook, 73, all had an opportunity to respond to questions at the forum, which was hosted by the East Toledo Club and One Voice for East Toledo at the East Toledo Senior Center. Press General Manager John Szozda moderated. The top two vote getters in Tuesday’s primary will advance to the general election on November 3. The winner will take the seat held by Mike Craig, who is term-limited. If there was anything else all four agreed on, it was that they are prepared to hold irresponsible absentee landlords accountable. Most of the first half hour was spent answering questions about housing and property issues, like evicted renters leaving furniture in the yard and nobody bothering to pick it up. “Part of the solution is the neighborhood itself,” McCarthy said. “If the neighbors would call, it would help a lot. Part of the problem is that the landlord says, ‘Nobody told us that was there.’ We want to make it a little more oriented toward those landlords — those landlords who are there to collect the rent and do not do much else.” Cook responded, “This absentee landlord thing definitely has to stop. I know this is a difficult thing to stop, but people pick up 40 to 50 homes and then they let them go. It’s just a lack of administration by the city and we can’t renew our neighborhoods if we allow this.” Ujvagi suggested recognizing the good landlords as well as the bad landlords, saying that will provide encouragement
for corn, wheat and soybeans, property taxes for farmland enrolled in CAUV are expected to rise significantly. CAUV values are based on a formula of five factors applied to those grain types: • Crop prices based on a survey by the National Agriculture Statistics Service of grain elevators in Ohio. • Crop yields based on per-acre yield estimates for each soil type. • Cropping patterns based on acreage of corn, beans and wheat.
• Non-land production costs based on farmer surveys by The Ohio State University. • Capitalization rate based on the interest rate for a 15-year fixed rate mortgage at Farm Credit Services, with a portion attributed each to equity and debt. Rick Hoffman, an attorney with Local Government Services, told the crowd the factors are used in a formula to determine the net profit per acre of soil type. That figure is divided by the capitalization rate to determine the final value. The calculation is performed for each of the 3,514 soil types in Ohio. For the second consecutive year, the prices for corn, beans and wheat used in the formula are lower than the prior year. The price for corn that came into the formula for 2014 is $3.65 a bushel, compared to $4.41 for 2013. Soybeans had a drop from $13 to $10.40 and wheat dropped from $6.54 to $5.55. But because the CAUV formula uses a seven-year rolling average, with the highContinued on page 3