After a bumpy year including some cuts to the operation, Union County Board of Developmental Disabilities officials said they are fiscally stable through 2031.
Kara Brown and Cayla Warnock, both with the DD board, told the county commissioners Wednesday that finances are in a good place now, assuming nothing catastrophic happens with expenses.
“We were able to do that with minimal cuts to services. Obviously the big reduction there was working with the (school) districts to transition preschool back to them,” Brown said. “That was about a $3 million in savings for us, the other $1 million that we were able to reduce – we did everything we could to minimize reductions in services to people – we have looked at our policies and maybe tightened our guidance for how we spend our funds locally for families, but a minimal reduction to services.”
The board went to the voters last year to pass a 3.8-mill renewal levy, a necessary action after a 34% rate increase for Medicaid waivers were not factored into the first levy ask in 2024. The mistake created a shortfall that eventually resulted in the need to go back on the ballot. That measure passed but still led to a need to cut back, which included the preschool classes – something districts are fiscally responsible to provide.
“The last year has been bumpy, but we made it,” Brown said.
Initially, the 2024 levy request was done in part to help with the increased demand for services. Over the last 10 years, the board has seen an 87% increase in the number of people served, bringing the total to around 1,130. Once the levies were in place, funding leveled out, which Brown said has been a positive, but that’s not the case for other DD boards around the state.
“In 2025, there were five counties that asked the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities for fiscal assistance because they were upside down and out of cash balance. In 2026, the projection is there will be another seven counties in that same boat. And then in 2027, almost half of them will be in that boat,” Brown said. “So I share that with you because even though the last year has been bumpy, we look good until 2031. So we’ve kind of come through that and are stable at this point.”
Though the picture looks good moving forward, that doesn’t mean the board doesn’t have its concerns. Many entities, from schools to county governments, are watching what may or may not happen with property taxes at the state level. With home owners experiencing jumps in property values, there is a widespread push to do away with property taxes altogether – something that could significantly impact groups like the DD board.
UCBDD receives 93% of its funds from local dollars through the levies, Warnock said. If that wasn’t available, they would have to cut all the programs required by the state and still provide services to the community, something that would be essentially impossible without those funds.
Brown said that makes the property tax discussion extremely important.
“So unlike some other taxing entities, property tax is our only avenue in law. We don’t have the option of asking for a sales tax or an income tax, those aren’t options for us. It’s only property tax levies at this point,” Brown said. “So to eliminate that, would be to eliminate 90-some percent of our funding.”
Looking at the budget for the year, Warnock said expenses for the board will be about $12.6 million and revenue is about $12.5-14.4 million, when those cuts are factored in.
“We’ve been very fiscally responsible, I believe, in what we’ve done and how we managed it. We just had a reset last year, obviously, but again, we brought ourselves into a place where we can ride out the storm statewide because we’re good until 2031,” Brown said. “That’s a good place to be as opposed to some of the other county boards that are scrambling to try to figure out where there funding is going to be next year. We can ride out the worst of the storm right now as the state figures out what we need to do.”
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