Miami Township Trustees spoke at their Monday, Nov. 17, meeting about statewide efforts to quell rising property taxes — including a citizen-led effort to abolish property taxes entirely.
Trustee Chair Chris Mucher and Trustee Marilan Moir, as well as other area trustees and residents, attended a Thursday, Nov. 6, information session with state Sen. Kyle Koehler (Springfield), state Rep. Levi Dean (Xenia) and Ohio Township Association Representative Kyle Brooks about current bills before the Ohio Senate that would, in part, limit the ways in which public school districts collect property tax.
The effort, state lawmakers say, is in service of putting a cap on rising property taxes; see the Nov. 14 YS News story “Bills stymie schools, leaders say” for more information on those bills.
Moir and Mucher said the group also discussed the effort from citizen-led group Citizens for Property Tax Reform, which began working this year to put a constitutional amendment before voters that would abolish all property taxes in the state. The group will need more than 413,000 petition signatures from voters in at least 44 counties to place the amendment on the ballot; News5Cleveland reported last month that the group has said it has collected more than 100,000 signatures.
According to the Ohio Township Association website’s section on “Township Laws,” the “principal source of local revenue [for Ohio townships] is property tax.” At this week’s trustees meeting Moir said Miami Township’s operations, including Miami Township Fire-Rescue, are funded by “probably 90% real estate tax.”
Statewide, property taxes generate around $20 billion in revenue for local municipalities, accounting for about 70% of all local tax revenue, according to the nonprofit research group Tax Foundation.
“We could, as citizens, vote to eliminate real estate tax, which boggles my mind, but the same citizens are not required to put something else in its place,” Moir said.
She added that, according to representatives at the Nov. 6 info session, should the proposed ballot initiative to abolish property tax in the state pass, state legislators would have “six weeks to throw something together to fill the gap, which would mostly include sales tax and income tax.”
Mucher said that if the state were to increase sales and income tax rates in the absence of property tax, both rates would need to increase significantly. The Tax Foundation estimates that, in order to make up the difference, Ohio’s state income tax — set to decline to a flat 2.75% next year — would need to increase to a statewide 12.59% flat tax, inclusive of existing state and municipal income taxes.
“All the representatives said [sales tax and income tax] are just a nonstarter,” Mucher said. “There really were no workable ideas.”
He added that he believes an increased sales tax would drive Ohioans to make large purchases out of state, partially nullifying the intended effect of a sales tax increase.
“They’ve got a real conundrum ahead,” he said.
In other Township business—
• The trustees voted to officially update the Township’s public records policy to reflect that the fiscal officer is the designated custodian of records, as established in a September meeting. The policy notes that no specific language is required to make a request for public records, but that requesters must “at least identify the records requested with sufficient clarity to allow the office to identify, retrieve and review the records.” The policy also notes that the Township may charge public records requestors for the actual cost of making physical copies, in accordance with Ohio law; the cost for paper copies is $0.15 per page.
• The trustees approved an official cybersecurity policy, as required by a new state law; that policy is confidential — also a requirement of Ohio law.
• Trustees approved the resignation of Miami Township Fire-Rescue’s medical director, Dr. Lynn Bailey; they also approved Dr. Alyssa Gans to serve as Bailey’s replacement in the position. Medical directors, who are required to be contracted by EMS departments in the state of Ohio, are physicians who serve as “critical liaison[s] between the local EMS agency, hospital administrators and medical staff, local public health and public safety agencies, and the layperson members of the community,” according to the Ohio Emergency Medical Services website.
• Zoning Administrator Bryan Lucas updated the trustees on the continuing work of the Zoning Commission on the Township’s Zoning Resolution. He presented a draft of a new section on public cemeteries, noting that the resolution did not previously contain such a section; he also presented a draft of an amendment on off-street parking, loading and driveways. Lucas said final drafts will likely be presented in public hearings early next year. To view the text amendments currently in the drafting process, go to miamitownship.net/zoning-resolution. For more information on the Zoning Resolution update, see the Nov. 14 YS News story “Zoning changes ahead.”
• Trustees approved a resolution authorizing Lucas to assist with administrative tasks and enforcement associated with junk vehicles, as defined by ORC 505.871, within the unincorporated areas of Miami Township; earlier this month, the trustees approved Lucas to act in the same capacity with regard to vegetation, refuse and debris abatement.
At the group’s most recent meeting, Tuesday, Nov. 11, Planning Commission approved a preliminary plat application for a sizable addition to the Spring Meadows subdivision in the northwestern reaches of Yellow Springs.
Miamisburg-based development company DDC Management LLC aims to build 190 dwelling units on approximately 28 acres.
That land was recently annexed into Yellow Springs municipal limits following Village Council’s unanimous approval at an Oct. 6 meeting; the 28 acres are presently owned by CF Land Holdings, a farming operation run by local resident Jim Clem.
According to DDC’s preliminary plat application, 120 of the units will be attached single-family units — 12 condos with 10 dwelling units in each — and the remaining 70 units will be detached single-family homes.
Upon completion, the 190-unit subdivision — dubbed for now as “Spring Meadows Extension” — would be continuous with the 90-unit single-family Spring Meadows subdivision, which has been under development since 2023. Like the initial Spring Meadows subdivision, this extension would be built over several phases of construction.
DDC Principal Jonathan Bills told Planning Commissioners on Tuesday that while DDC is the land developer, Fischer Homes is slated to build the single-family homes and condos; Fischer is the same company that has been building the Spring Meadows homes.
A memo from Village Planning and Economic Director Meg Leatherman notes that the addition would yield an overall density of 6.7 dwelling units per acre, consistent with the Village’s R-C, or high-density, residential standards.
Leatherman’s memo also states that the proposed Spring Meadows Extension “directly advances” various goals outlined in the Yellow Springs Comprehensive Land Use Plan — a living document last updated in 2020 that aims to guide public and private development in the village.
She writes that the project abides by the CLUP by “increasing the diversity and supply of housing, supporting growth within walkable areas, strengthening multimodal connectivity and improving access to public green spaces and recreation amenities.”
In accordance with the Village code, DDC is required to dedicate park land — a kind of green space — of five acres per 1,000 residents. Assuming there will be an average of three individuals in each of the 190 units, that means DDC is required to build out just short of three acres of green space. Their preliminary plat application indicates the development company aims to provide just over five acres — thus exceeding the minimum requirement.
Preliminary plans show that four open space areas are being proposed by DDC — including centralized green spaces, a pocket park along Iris Drive and a community park reserve amenity.
“These areas will support active and passive recreation, enhance community character and contribute to stormwater and environmental sustainability,” the memo stated.
A traffic study completed by CESO, Inc. on behalf of DDC concludes that the subdivision, upon completion, will create a “minimal impact” on nearby intersections. The study estimates that the project will generate over 1,600 daily trips in and out of the neighborhood, with 139 “peak hour trips” during the morning and 166 “peak hour trips” in the evening.
By a unanimous vote of 5–0, Planning Commissioners accepted the Village’s recommendation to approve the preliminary plat plan — albeit with some conditions built into the approval.
Present for Tuesday’s vote were Commissioners Scott Osterholm, Stephen Green, Susan Stiles, Gary Zaremsky and Village Council liaison Gavin DeVore Leonard.
The conditions that DDC must incorporate in its final plat plan — which will again be presented to Planning Commission for approval before any construction can begin — include:
• Prior to approval of the first building permit, DDC must obtain approval from the Village of a landscape plan that includes screening and landscaping for the garbage enclosure, mail kiosk areas, bicycle racks and open space lots;
• 60 bicycle parking spaces within the multifamily area;
• A 10-foot-wide sidewalk along the entirety of the development frontage on East Enon Road;
• A 10-foot-wide sidewalk in the southwest corner of the proposed development;
• Approval from the Village for the location of a temporary dumpster for phase one;
• Parking lot construction to be approved by the Village before a certificate of occupancy is issued;
• Final approval from Village Public Works and contracted engineers on the stormwater management plan, traffic impact study and construction plans prior to commencing construction;
• Signage that restricts on-street parking beyond designated areas;
• A subdividers agreement with the Village regarding the installation of the public infrastructure, to be eventually transferred for municipal ownership;
• A survey with Spring Meadows residents regarding a potential joint homeowners association between the existing subdivision and the newly constructed one — specifically, whether or not to have them abide by combined or distinct regulations; and
• Two-hundred-forty parking spaces, or an approximating number, to provide future occupants with more spaces than the built-in garages on some of the homes.
Some local residents present for Tuesday’s meeting vocalized concerns with DDC’s plans to build 190 more homes — concerns ranging from the Village’s capacity to supply infrastructure to that many homes, to concerns over affordability, traffic and pedestrian accommodations.
Villager Eric Clark — the very first resident of the Spring Meadows neighborhood — asked DDC to consider adding a second entrance to the new subdivision; present plans show one egress onto East Enon Road, and another through the existing neighborhood that funnels onto Kenneth Hamilton Way and Wright Street.
Guy Glass, another Spring Meadows resident, requested due consideration for stormwater mitigation, and noted that his backyard tends to pool with water during storms.
“In terms of traffic, I’d encourage people to consider the speed limit,” Mattie Fitch, an East Enon Road resident, said. “If we’re going to have more families and children … let’s consider their safety.”
Currently, the speed limit on East Enon Road, where the proposed neighborhood would abut and adjoin, is 55 miles per hour.
Commissioner Stiles beseeched DDC’s Bills to consider adding an affordable housing component to their proposed subdivision extension.
“In this community, any time there’s new development done, we would like to see 10 to 15% of the units to be affordable,” Stiles said.
Bills responded and said that the homes will be market-rate, and that the density of the condos is DDC’s attempt to satisfy the housing needs. When nudged by Stiles to estimate the eventual home costs of what Fischer builds in the new subdivision, Bills guessed they would start in the $300,000 range.
The News will provide additional coverage of DDC’s “Spring Meadows Extension” plans in future issues.
During an Oct. 31 school board work session following the annual State of the Schools address, district leaders called on residents to speak up as state lawmakers advance a slate of bills that will likely restrict local funding for Ohio’s public schools.
In October, the Ohio House approved House Bills 186, 335, 129 and 309. The measures, if passed by the Senate, will affect the calculation of the 20-mill property tax floor and inside millage increases, and give county budget commissions authority to reduce or override voter-approved school levies. All four bills are now before the Ohio Senate’s Local Government Committee.
During the work session, District Treasurer Jacob McGrath said state funding for public schools has repeatedly fallen short in keeping pace with operating costs. He pointed specifically to the biennial budget bill, passed earlier this year, which legislators lauded as having increased public school funding by $226 million over the previous budget; that increase, many school districts have said, is not enough.
“Ten dollars today is not the same as $10 five years ago,” McGrath said. “I think everybody knows that purchasing power goes down every year, so … if you adjust for inflation, state support [for public schools] has only grown by 1% for the last 22 years. Dollars have grown, but percentage-wise, [state funding] has gone down.”
The state shortfall traces back decades: In 1997, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the state was failing its constitutional obligation to provide a “thorough and efficient system of common schools” because it relied too heavily on local property taxes. The ruling pushed lawmakers to create the Fair School Funding Plan. Its goal is to better share public education costs between state and local municipalities, and direct more state dollars to communities with lower property tax capacity; however, the plan remains only partially funded.
This year’s budget bill relied on data from 2022 to fund the Fair School Funding Plan, which school districts across the state say has played a part in the bill’s shortfall with regard to funding public schools. At the same time, the state’s share of education funding has shrunk: In 1999, Ohio covered an average of nearly half of the statewide cost to educate students. Today, that average has fallen to 35%. In Yellow Springs, the state shoulders less than the statewide average, and the gap is filled by local dollars.
“Our state share is 23.5%, which means that local taxpayers provide approximately 76.5% percent of our [school district] funding,” McGrath said.
Since 1993, Yellow Springs voters have approved 20 school levies; most were renewal levies, with only eight raising new operating funds. The most recent operating levy passed in 2012. In 2023, voters approved a combination bond issue and new income tax to fund the facilities project, as well as the renewal of a permanent improvement levy. In 2024, voters passed a 10-year substitute levy that combined and continued two previously passed emergency levies.
“So when we talk about voter fatigue, this is one of the things that we’re talking about,” McGrath said. “More than half the time that the school district has been on the ballot has simply been to maintain the funding that we have.”
The bills currently before the Senate, if passed, will affect the way local property taxes are tabulated. The 20-mill floor is the minimum effective school property tax rate a district must collect. Normally, when property values rise, tax rates are reduced to keep revenue steady. But if that reduction would take a district below 20 mills, the 20-mill floor kicks in, requiring the tax rate to rise to 20 mills so revenues keep pace with costs. HB 186 would cap 20-mill floor growth at inflation rather than allowing it to rise commensurate with property values. Another bill, HB 129, would include emergency, substitute and other kinds of levies not currently factored into the 20-mill floor calculation.
The latter bill, if passed, would lift some school districts, including Yellow Springs, off the 20-mill floor, preventing tax rates from increasing as property values rise.
Another focus is inside millage — up to 10 mills that municipalities may levy without voter approval, the revenue from which rises with property values. HB 335 would limit revenue increases to inside millage. At the same time, HB 309 would give county budget commissions authority to reduce collections on previously voter-approved levies after five years.
Though some of the above bills would affect entities other than school districts — Miami Township and the Village of Yellow Springs, for example, split inside millage with the school district and could be subject to levy collection reductions — all four would have the greatest impact on school districts.
The immediate effect of the bills, lawmakers say, will be to ease the burden of rising property taxes for residents. The long-term effect for schools, districts around the state say, will be a quandary: With the state still contributing less than half of most school districts’ costs, those districts will still heavily rely on local property taxes, but with increased restrictions. District leaders said public schools will essentially be caught between a rock and a hard place: Ask voters to return to the polls more often to approve more revenue, or cut costs and, thus, services to students?
McGrath said that, though most folks agree there is a need to cap growth on property taxes, the state’s pending bills threaten the stability of public school districts.
“We knew this was coming,” McGrath said. “The state reducing the amount of money that they are giving the schools is a tax increase for local residents across the state; everybody is going to have to pay more to keep their schools.”
Superintendent Terri Holden said the district is also concerned about legislative discussions around eliminating property taxes entirely through a constitutional amendment — a change Holden said would be “catastrophic” for school districts.
“We need property tax relief,” Holden said, “but thoughtful property tax relief and not property tax relief on the backs of our students and on the backs of our communities who value their public schools.”
McGrath added that the district needs help making sure lawmakers hear local concerns.
“This is where we’re going to ask you for your help,” McGrath said. “If you’re concerned about these things, what you can do is talk to your legislators.”
Contact: chuck@ysnews.com
The upcoming Foundry Theater performance “NO VISAS בלי רשות بدون جواز” arrives this weekend under a moniker that describes, in brief, the experience of putting the show together: The two headlining artists, Neta Weiner and Samira Saraya of System Ali, had planned to perform in Yellow Springs and elsewhere in the state this summer, but were not issued visas to enter the United States. Their statewide tour was, it seemed, stopped at the border.
Rather than concede, Saraya, Weiner and Ohio collaborators — who had already committed months of work — instead joined forces across three countries and three time zones to put together a show that both acknowledges and defies the attempted barrier.
The performance, “NO VISAS: A Hip-Hop Journey from Jaffa to Jerusalem to Yellow Springs,” will take place Saturday, Nov. 22, at 7 p.m., at the Foundry Theater. The hybrid production will blend film, narration, remote performance and live sets by Ohio hip-hop artists JaySwifa, Tronee Threat and ArtGod; Weiner and Saraya will join the event virtually for a post-show Q&A.
System Ali’s story begins in Jaffa, once a major Palestinian cultural center until many of its residents were displaced in the late 1940s. Now part of Tel Aviv, Jaffa is home to both Palestinians and Israelis, and it was against this cultural backdrop that System Ali formed in the mid-aughts in a bomb shelter. The space belonged to the Sadaka-Reut organization, a partnership of Palestinian and Jewish activists; several of the young adults who would become part of the original 10-member System Ali line-up had worked to establish a youth cultural center in Jaffa through Sadaka-Reut.
“There was this initiative of creating a space … dedicated to artistic creation that is born out of a discussion or a clash between different narratives, ideas, languages — which is something that is a bit unheard of in our reality, unfortunately,” said Neta Weiner, a co-founder of System Ali, in an interview this week. “This work gave birth to an ensemble, a band.”
The nascent System Ali met each week to jam and collaborate on a sound that would eventually fuse hip-hop with musical elements that reflect the diversity of its members; the group’s most recent album, “Maharajan,” samples Russian songs, army band chansons, classical Arab music, jazz and klezmer.
When a wave of eviction and demolition orders hit Jaffa in 2006, the group climbed onto the roof of the shelter for their first performance during a housing rights demonstration.
“In the heart of it was a group of five rappers singing about their lives in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English, Yiddish and Amharic — the sum of all our mother tongues,” Wiener said.
Ultimately, the bomb shelter/cultural center was taken away from the group — but System Ali had emerged, and found a new place to gather and work in Holon, which the group named Beit System Ali, or System Ali House. Two years later, Beit System Ali grew into a larger collective that develops political campaigns alongside educational programming.
“And it’s always on the triangle between artistic creation, education and activism, which are the same thing for us,” Weiner said.
It was within this ecosystem that local resident Angie Hsu first encountered the ensemble as a young grant writer in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. She told the News she was writing grants for Sadaka-Reut in 2011, and though she didn’t know the group personally, she was familiar with System Ali’s story, which she said bolstered her perspective on the work she, in turn, was doing.
“I was 23 years old and entering this world of social justice and human rights activism and … System Ali really represented this positive energy and passion,” Hsu said. “I was very young and learning a lot about this very complex, heartbreaking, nuanced, difficult geopolitical situation, and it was overwhelming and sad and hard — yet I was also learning about the lightness and the joy and the humor and the art. … In America, we often don’t see that angle of the work that’s happening there.”
Making that angle visible in the United States through the work of System Ali, Hsu said, became something of a “personal obsession” for her; over the course of about seven years, she would periodically reach out to the group to test the waters on a possible collaboration or performance. In 2024, when Weiner and Samira Saraya were in the United States, that possibility lined up: Hsu contacted local resident Kevin Lydy, chair of the Dayton Sister City Committee, whose partnership with the city of Holon offered a formal channel for a visit. Lydy said he remembers the initial pitch arriving with an urgency to move before the artists left the country again.
“We didn’t really know what it was going to look like, or what we were planning to do,” Lydy said. “We said, ‘OK, let’s try to jump on this now.’”
It took about a month or so of planning, but Saraya and Weiner came to the Miami Valley for a just-shy-of-two-days whirlwind of meetings and introductions.
“And in those less than 48 hours, they shared so much about themselves, and we all became excited about what was possible,” Hsu said.
Weiner added that the short trip “felt like a lot more” than two days, as those involved felt the “connection and the solidarity” of learning that there were pockets of potential collaboration in a place they “didn’t even know existed before.”
“It really changed things for us,” Weiner said.
He and Saraya left Ohio with intentions to return this August for a wider tour. Hsu and Lydy began lining up hosts, workshops, concerts and community partnerships. Local organizers in Yellow Springs, Dayton and beyond prepared for a rare cultural exchange.
But the visas never came. The denial, delivered late in the process, was crushing, Weiner said.
“Within one Zoom call, which was hard, it broke our hearts,” Weiner said. “We’d been building on this, spending all this time preparing it, preparing our families, preparing our band members.”
But no one walked away. The organizers said quitting felt like conceding to the very forces that had kept the artists out. As Hsu put it: “That’s what they want. They want to break us. They want to make us stop collaborating.”
“It’s a war on the ability to speak, the ability to be together, the ability to bring different ideas,” Weiner added. “The borders are closing. This project is called ‘No Visas’ for a reason.”
Saraya, who is Palestinian-Israeli, nodded wryly to the slogan of Theodor Herzl — the founder of modern political Zionism: “There is a sentence in Hebrew based on the establishment of the Zionist country — ‘Tirtzu, Ein zo Agadah’ — and people who understand it will laugh, but it’s a true sentence: If you want something, it’s not a fantasy. You can achieve it. … As long as we are in a movement and we refuse whatever they want us to be, whatever they want us to do, we will find our way — and here we are. We found our way.”
Turning what would have been a tour into a remote collaboration required improvisation and patience, the group said. But over months of late-night messages, shared beats and Zoom calls, Saraya, Weiner, village artists Tronee Threat (Tron Banks) and ArtGod (Joshua Whitaker) and Columbus-based artist JaySwifa built two original tracks and a hybrid performance that reflects their varied backgrounds.
Those backgrounds were central to the process — especially the political and social differences each artist brought into the room, which Weiner said sometimes surfaced in the creative process in ways that surprised everyone. He recalled a long discussion about the word “peace,” which the Ohio artists had initially proposed as a grounding theme for the performance. For him and Saraya, Weiner said, the term carries a history of political misuse.
“It’s a word that was abused and misused and manipulated to cover up for war crimes and supremacy; we can’t even use the word ‘peace,’” he said. “But the three amazing rappers from Ohio said, ‘This is a real thing, peace is a value, something to put out there.’ It’s a different reality, but we also understand each other, so it was beautiful to realize that.”
“For me, we are not so different,” Saraya said. “We are people that suffer from the system — and it doesn’t matter the name of the system, whether it’s based on our color of skin or our DNA, our identity, our sexual orientation. The difference between us is smaller than the similarity.”
While the collaboration unfolded across screens, the final work is meant to immerse the audience fully; Hsu said the artists aim for audiences to “be engulfed” in the performance. She noted that ArtGod asked Foundry Theater organizers for a proper hip-hop sound check: “He said, ‘I want the music to be played like hip-hop should be played — you feel it through your body.”
Saraya said the audience should indeed be ready for an embodied experience: “They should be prepared for a hell of a good music that will make them dance and move their asses,” she said. “It’s art that moves not just your body, but also your heart and your brain.”
Weiner said he hopes the audience will take courage from the work the five artists have put together, noting that fear is often used to silence voices in times of political and social turbulence.
“You know, in Hebrew, the words for ‘community’ and ‘audience’ are almost the same word — kehila ( קְהִלָּה) and kahal (קָהָל). It’s one letter that separates the two,” he said. “Obviously, reality is very frightening and everyone’s afraid of the price they might pay, but the price you pay for keeping silent is much, much higher. … So if there’s one thing I hope we can give, it’s courage.”
“NO VISAS בלי רשות بدون جواز” begins at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 22. The event will feature performances from the individual artists, as well as narration and film segments documenting the process of making music together. The show will end with a live-filmed performance of the two tracks created by all five artists. A Q&A session, featuring Samira Saraya and Neta Weiner via video call, will follow the performance. Tickets are $20 for general admission and $5 for students, and are available online at http://www.bit.ly/NoVisasFoundry.
The performance is produced by Mad River Theater Works, with support from the Ohio Arts Council, the YS Community Foundation, the Dayton Sister City Committee and the Iddings Foundation.
Yellow Springs Theater Company is accepting submissions and actors for its annual Ten-Minute Play Festival, projected to be presented Feb. 13 and 14, 2026.
Though the festival has been held outdoors in early summer since 2021, the move to an indoor venue in late winter returns the festival to its pre-pandemic tradition.
Plays must be 10 minutes or less, and the submission deadline is Dec. 1. Playwrights should email their submissions to ystheatercompany@gmail.com, and include a statement about who they are, how they developed the idea for their play, and if they are able to be involved in casting and/or directing your work.
YS Theater Company’s goal is to help writers bring their work to an audience. At this time, the group is focusing on regionally based writers, who live within a three-hour drive of Yellow Springs.
The company is also looking for a variety of volunteer actors to cast in the upcoming festival. Those interested in performing are asked to email a picture of themselves, as well as a brief list of experience, or why you are interested in acting in Yellow Springs.
Contact ystheatercompany@gmail.com for more information on acting opportunities.
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