SALEM — Treasurer Mike Douglas Monday night provided the school board with an update on upcoming public funding cuts.

Douglas told the board school districts were still waiting on the Ohio Department of Taxation to finalize its calculations for the value of temporary tax credit provisions implemented in House Bill 186 to get a clearer picture of exactly how much their property tax revenue will be reduced going forward. House Bill 186 set new caps for how much property tax increases after property value re-appraisals based on the Gross Domestic Product Deflation Factor.

Douglas explained that those temporary tax credits or “claw back” provisions will retroactively apply that cap to tax years 2023, 2024 and 2025, and apply credits based on any overage paid to future tax bills, reducing the amount of money collected by school districts in turn.

“Initially we’ll probably see a reduction of $750,000 next year in property tax revenues and about $500,000 going forward. That’s an estimate based on what we saw. As soon as the Ohio Department of Taxation finalizes their numbers, and they’re behind because they’re not really sure what they’re doing yet because the legislation wasn’t very clear … we’ll keep you abreast of what we know. Hopefully in June we’ll have a rundown of how that’s going to affect us going forward,” Douglas said.

Douglas also told the board that the ongoing legal case challenging the constitutionality of Ohio private and school voucher programs, which provide public tuition subsidies for private schools, was currently being heard by the Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals.

“Either way [the ruling] goes, I’m sure it will be appealed and go to the Ohio Supreme Court, but the voucher case is continuing with the unconstitutionality of funding private or parochial schools. The state pushes out close to $2 billion into those programs that has taken away money from the public education side of things,” Douglas said. “If you listened recently to House Bill 186, the whole thought process of reducing some of the property taxes for school districts and saving taxpayers some money, and I’m all for saving taxpayers money, was to save the state $3 billion over two years. We could do that in one year if we look at eliminating some of the institutional things that are wrong with the state already.”

The school board will meet next at 7 p.m. June 29.