Auburn Trustees, Auditor Plan to Return $700,000 to Taxpayers
Auburn Township will be paying back to property owners about $700,000 to make up for three years the township was collecting on a road levy voters never legally approved.
Auburn Township will be paying back to property owners about $700,000 to make up for three years the township was collecting on a road levy voters never legally approved.
Geauga County Auditor Chuck Walder reviewed with trustees the reasons for the tax refunds and the process through which his office would assist township officials at the trustees’ June 17 meeting.
Auburn Township voters approved a 1-mill, five-year roads and bridges replacement levy in 2005, which was renewed in 2010 and 2015, Walder said.
In 2019, clerical errors were made in the process of placing the levy on the ballot, he said. Township officials and county department personnel did not catch the mistake and the levy was erroneously reported as passing and showed up on property owners’ tax bills. About $200,000 was collected by the county per year and passed on to the township in 2021, 2022 and 2023, Walder said.
Refusing to “throw anyone under the bus,” Walder called the failure of several governmental entities to catch the mistake an anomaly.
“I shoulder one-quarter of the blame,” he said, adding the attorney for the Geauga County Board of Elections reviewed data from the last few years and discovered the problem last year.
It apparently stemmed from the board of trustees’ intent to run the levy a year early, which is an accepted practice, but the actual documentation was wrongly annotated.
“The total magnitude is a little less than $700,000,” Walder said. “We owe the taxpayers back that money, so we have to follow a practice embedded in the Ohio Revised Code (clerical errors and taxes section 319.36). I would like to help you find a path through this. We are in this for the long haul.”
As prescribed by the ORC, Walder told the board of review about the error and has continued to explore the numerous steps needed to set the matter right.
Rather than have the township gut its road budget to pay the money back, he recommended officials seek a loan for about $750,000.
Because of the property re-evaluation last year, the township is getting about $280,000 a year in inside millage, which is enough to pay off the loan, Walder explained.
Taxpayers are owed interest on the monies they paid and the final amounts need to be calculated over the next months, he said.
Crunching the numbers and cutting checks is a time-consuming project, so it is being outsourced, he added.
The $30,000 contract would be covered by the county auditor’s office, which would verify the contractor’s findings, Walder said. The firm would also track down individuals who sold their property during or after that time period and the estates of taxpayers who passed away.
If searches are unsuccessful, the money would go into the unclaimed funds coffers, he said. Anyone who bought a home in 2023 would not be getting a refund because those taxes were paid in prior years.
“How long is this going to take? That’s a lot of records to go through,” said Trustee Mike Troyan.
Walder said he thinks the issue could be wrapped up by the end of 2024.
“We don’t want to hoodwink the taxpayers,” Walder said. “When we make a mistake, we have to fix it.”
