Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,
At a petition table inside a Cleveland area gun show on a drizzly Saturday afternoon, citizens talk of an American Dream derailed.
There’s the elderly couple who paid off their mortgage decades ago but can’t afford the property taxes on their home. Their local government, theoretically, can seize the property and auction it off to someone else if the annual bills remain unpaid.
Then there’s the recent retiree who took a part-time job at Lowe’s to pay property taxes on his rental property and avoid raising his tenants’ rent.
Add empty nesters who can’t downsize to smaller houses because interest rates are too high, farmers describing an impossible situation, and recent college graduates groaning about moving further away from home to an affordable place.
Show goers, guns and ammo in hand, pause at Beth Blackmarr’s table on their way out and share with her those concerns.
If 413,000 residents throughout the Buckeye State sign a petition before July 1, a public vote to eliminate local property taxes will appear on the November ballot.
If the signature count falls short, whatever is collected can be applied the following year, or however long it takes, said Blackmarr, media coordinator and a main volunteer for the 3,000-plus member Citizens for Property Tax Reform group.
“We are really hurting in Ohio,” she told The Epoch Times. “People never thought they’d be in this situation.”
Beth Blackmarr, a volunteer with Ohio-based Citizens for Property Tax Reform, organizes forms during a petition drive at a gun show near Cleveland on April 25, 2026. The group is seeking enough signatures to place a measure eliminating local property taxes on the November ballot. Aaron Gifford/The Epoch Times
Ohio isn’t alone. Forty-six states and the District of Columbia already have limits on annual local property tax levy increases, and leaders in Florida and Texas are pursuing additional legislation to limit government “flexibility” in how it raises revenues, according to a September report from McKinsey and Co., a global management consulting firm whose clients include state and local governments.
Schools, already strapped for cash, hang in the balance. School districts struggle with declining student enrollment, unfunded mandates, state and federal aid loss largely due to skyrocketing Medicaid costs, and spiking employee health insurance costs.
On the local level, mayors and town boards face similar challenges as they try to continue providing public safety, utilities, and infrastructure services.
Fed-up homeowners say it’s high time to try another way to pay their community’s civil servants, perhaps through higher sales tax or state income tax rates, along with slashing administrative bloat in schools and city halls.
“Let the state find a way where 100 percent of the population pays for education,” Ron Shumate, one of Blackmarr’s volunteers from suburban Cincinnati, told The Epoch Times. “They give profit-making businesses a break, but not us.”
Ron Shumate, 83, a resident and homeowner of Springfield Township in Hamilton County, Ohio, on April 21, 2026. Shumate, a volunteer with Blackmarr’s group, helps to collect signatures to place a measure abolishing property taxes on the ballot. Glenn Hartong for The Epoch Times
Across States and Communities
In Massachusetts, a citizens group in Great Barrington, near Springfield, wants to shift more of the costs for schools and local infrastructure to part-time residents who own vacation homes. If All Band Together gets its way, the current annual property tax on a full-time residence assessed at $200,000, for example, would decrease by $1,293, while the amount for a seasonal home with the same assessment would increase by $356, according to the group’s website.
In Minnesota and North Dakota, Republican lawmakers have proposed a cap on property tax increases based on the rate of inflation and population growth. If the rate of inflation is 3 percent and the population of a community grows by 1 percent, for example, then the increase cap for the taxing entity would be 3.5 percent. Overriding the cap would require voter approval.
John Phelan, an economist for Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, which wrote the model legislation for both states, said the proposal was prompted by property tax hikes last year of between 8 percent and 9.5 percent in some counties. School boards decide on annual district operating budgets and subsequent tax levies; voters only have a say on major expenditures beyond personnel and fixed costs, such as the creation of a multimillion-dollar technology fund.
“The burden shouldn’t be driven by asset values,” Phelan told The Epoch Times. “If [school districts] want to spend more money, they should get permission from the population.”
In Montana, Republican state lawmakers are pursuing a 2 percent cap on property tax hikes for local government funding, but not for schools, which consume about 55 percent of property tax revenues.
Kendall Cotton, president and CEO of the Frontier Institute research and policy center, called the legislation a good start, but said more relief is needed, as home appraisals in growing communities increased by 60 percent this year, resulting in double-digit property tax hikes.
“These big jumps put a lot of pressure on the system, but governments have not been responding in kind,” Cotton told The Epoch Times.
He cited an example of a school district near the state capital, where taxpayers were asked on short notice to cover expensive boiler replacements ahead of Montana’s frigid winter. That project should have been paid in full with the federal COVID-19 relief aid years earlier, considering the heating equipment was approaching the end of its life cycle. Instead, school leaders used the grants to hire more administrators and mental health counselors.
“Misplaced priorities,” he said. “People are really being taxed out of their homes. We are just renting from the government.”
Members of Nebraska’s Epic Option citizen group, like their peers in Ohio, are collecting signatures for a ballot initiative to eliminate property taxes. They paused their efforts to obtain the required 160,000 signatures this year and instead will focus on 2028, according to the group’s website.
A pen and petition at Ron Shumate’s home in Springfield Township, Ohio, on April 21, 2026. Shumate said the state should find alternative revenue sources to fund schools and local government. Glenn Hartong for The Epoch Times
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott suggested eliminating school property taxes, and Florida state lawmakers have proposed ending local government property taxes but not school taxes.
A bill in the Georgia state legislature calls for phasing out property taxes and increasing the sales tax. A similar bill was introduced in Pennsylvania. Various property tax reform measures have been proposed in Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming, according to their respective state legislature websites.
School Budget Woes
More than one-third of U.S. public school funding comes from local property taxes, while the remainder is provided by state and federal aid, as well as municipal and state sales taxes, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Some states also apply lottery and gambling revenues.
All told, K–12 spending across the country now exceeds $1 trillion, the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University reported on April 23.
It also said public per-student spending ranges from about $11,000 in Idaho to more than $31,887 in the District of Columbia. Staffing and school tax rates continue to increase in most districts, while student enrollment decreases.
Typical state and federal aid formulas are based on enrollment, so districts must either cut costs or raise local taxes to offset the decreasing amount of per-student aid. The dependence on $189 billion in federal COVID-19 pandemic relief money, which prompted massive hiring sprees but is now exhausted, has exacerbated the financial crisis in many districts that serve low-income communities with large populations of special needs students.
Morse High School students in Bath, Maine, on Dec. 4, 2025. More than a third of U.S. public school funding comes from local property taxes, while the remainder is provided by state and federal aid, as well as municipal and state sales taxes, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times
The Buffalo, New York, city school district, for example, added 900 workers between 2018 and 2025—including a 569 percent increase in administrative and central office employees—even though enrollment decreased by 11 percent, or 3,679 students, according to the Edunomics Lab.
Buffalo City School District officials previously told The Epoch Times that they implemented a four-year plan to eliminate more than 400 positions, mostly through attrition, and close two school buildings after 2026.
Nationally, public K–12 enrollment decreased by about 900,500 students in the past decade, while staffing during the same time period increased by about 700,000, or 11.9 percent, according to the Edunomics Lab. The organization also reported planned school layoffs or staff reductions this year in Boston; Cleveland; Milwaukee; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; San Diego; San Francisco; Fresno, California; Richmond, Virginia; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Toledo, Ohio; Anchorage, Alaska; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and “countless small and mid-sized districts.”
“This isn’t temporary,” the Edunomics Lab said in an email to The Epoch Times. “It’s a reset.”
Rising Property Values, Higher Taxes
Local property taxes for funding schools and municipal governments are typically based on a $1,000 rate of a home’s assessed value. It’s expected that assessed values in most places are below what a property would sell for, though town, city, and county assessors are tasked with revaluing homes on a regular basis based on changing market values. Higher assessments equal more money for taxing entities.
In addition to school tax increase caps and percentage limits on the taxable values levied on a property, many states, including Ohio, offer slight discounts to low-income households, particularly those owned by seniors who rely on Social Security.
Still, opponents say, stagnant wage growth isn’t keeping up with inflation plus annual property tax increases.
Blackmarr said the monthly property taxes on her home in Lakewood, Ohio, total $383, or $31 more than the principal and interest payments on her mortgage. In 2007, her property taxes on the same house accounted for only 15 percent of the monthly payment, compared to nearly 50 percent today.
She knows of a 58-year-old property owner who extended his mortgage for at least another 30 years because increased property tax and home insurance rates recently pushed his monthly payments, which he began in 2001, out of reach.
Shumate, 83, is bracing for a big bill: A neighbor just sold a much smaller home for $348,000— more than twice as much as Shumate paid for his house seven years ago; the last municipal appraisal in the neighborhood took place in 2021. He believes he can afford higher taxes but worries about his neighbors. The system also discourages homeowners from improving their properties with additions, renovations, or swimming pools.
“The American dream is to own a home, work for at least 30 years, pay it off, retire 10 years later, and be comfortable,” he said. “If you’re relying on Social Security, that won’t happen.”
Taxpayers Want Their Say
The process for authorizing school district budgets varies across the country, with many states requiring voter approval for tax increases related to operational costs and major purchases, but not labor contracts.
Some allow residents to decide on local school board candidates, but not district spending plans, unless the proposal exceeds the state cap for property tax increases.
Either way, massive expenditures for things such as bus fleets, new athletic facilities, technology investments, or the creation of a new dedicated fund often require a public referendum.
In Western Massachusetts, voters in the South Hadley school district on April 14 rejected an override proposition that would raise property taxes by up to 50 percent to maintain all current staffing and programs. Now, school leaders there are poised to cut several administrator and teaching jobs, Advanced Placement courses, music classes, and all sports and extracurricular activities, according to documents on the district website.
Members of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance citizens’ group celebrated the outcome.
“People are tired of being taxed to death and seeing the money stolen,” a supporter posted on the group’s Facebook page.
In Minnesota, lawmakers approved enhanced summer unemployment benefits for school bus drivers and then eliminated them a year later because of the growing state budget deficit. Voters in most districts, Phelan said, probably wouldn’t have approved it in the first place; nor would they approve the progressive curricula mandates or taxpayer contributions to the teacher retirement fund.
In Ohio, the passage rate in public votes to override property tax hikes above the state cap reached a low of 19 percent in 2024, compared to a historical passing rate of 37 percent, according to the McKinsey report.
Ohioan Gene Wodzisz purchased his home, a bungalow in the town of Parma, 53 years ago for $42,000. The improvements and additions made to the property have significantly increased its taxable value in recent years.
Wodzisz told The Epoch Times that he can cover the taxes but disagrees in principle: He paid for his own children’s private school tuition while also contributing to local public schools for more than half a century now.
“I understand when it’s for families that don’t have much money, but if you’re making $100,000? Let’s be reasonable. Parents need to pay closer attention to their school boards,” he said.
