Tom’s Blog

In response to resident concerns about the high price of Lakewood housing compared to seven years ago (after the 2018 full reappraisal), Lakewood City Council will consider legislation I proposed regarding potential State of Ohio property tax changes and the lack of local government tools to allow targeted property tax adjustments.

Lakewood property values rose an estimated 45% to 60% from 2018 to 2024, with the median home price rising from a range of $180,000 to $200,000 up to $250,000 to $325,000. Strong property value growth has positive aspects—e.g. evidence of Lakewood’s desirability and more home equity for property owners to invest maintenance, renovation, or other needs—but it also results in increased costs that are passed on as higher rent payments (as landlords amortize higher initial purchase prices) and higher property tax payments, even for long-time residents who have paid off their mortgages and own their homes.

And these increased costs are straining family budgets since Ohio incomes haven’t kept pace with inflation —a modest 5.5% over five years compared a 21% to 23% rise in prices—much less this large property value increase.

More and more financial pressure has been put upon local property taxes thanks to long-term State of Ohio policy to shift government revenues away from income taxes and to cut nearly in half the share of state revenues allocated to local governments via the Local Government Fund. The effect is that local property taxes have taken on a disproportionately increased role in funding essential services from cities, libraries, school districts, park districts, and more.

Ohio is the 8^th-highest property tax rate state nationally, compared to 45th in the nation for state share of K-12 education funding and 42nd in per capita state taxation. These are related: the State of Ohio has pushed more of the share of property taxes onto residential and agricultural taxpayers, rising from 46% in the 1970s to nearly 70% today.

Notably, the most recent (June 2025) state budget delivered to high-net-worth individuals nearly a billion dollars in tax breaks while delivering zero to working class homeowners. And it drops Ohio’s average state share for K-12 education to 32% by next year, meaning local communities are forced to carry the remaining 68% costs to educate our kids.

It is a false choice for state government to, in effect, tell property owners to choose between straining their family finances to the point of breaking or, alternatively, to harm their quality of life by closing or greatly reducing community services from police, fire, libraries, parks, and schools—the loss of which would harm properties values as well. Both are unacceptable.

State government needs to reform its approach to taxes and public revenue to rebalance cost sharing and to remove the distortionary effects on our communities of high reliance on property taxes. (An example is Ohio’s public school funding system, which relies greatly on local property taxes; the Ohio Supreme Court found this system of financing public education to be unconstitutional in the 1997 landmark case DeRolph v. State.) The Governor and General Assembly have many proposals before them.

Local government powers do not traditionally provide tools to address these matters. More targeted and effective solutions could be created by state government.

One example is Senate Bill 42, a bipartisan proposal by Senators Michelle Reynolds and Hershel Craig to authorize residential stability zones in which homeowners may qualify for partial property tax exemption. This would create new tools for a local government to, optionally, implement targeted adjustment of property taxes by criteria that it would define. The legislation would:

·        authorize limited home rule townships, counties, and municipalities to establish temporary zones where certain homeowners may apply for a partial property tax exemption equal to a percentage of the increase in assessed valuation of their homes;

·        require receipt of an exemption to be limited based on household income, asset ownership, and length of ownership and occupancy;

·        limit the authorization of such zones to periods of no more than ten years, subject to renewal;

·        authorize exemptions to be for an indefinite period for homeowners aged 60 and over or for six years for all other homeowners; and

·        authorize a recoupment charge for any exemptions claimed while the homestead or owner did not qualify for the exemption.

The merits of this proposal are that it equips local government to set the terms of any adjustment, selecting them in a manner appropriate to local community conditions. This would also allow municipalities to make policy choices such as (for example) targeted adjustments for low- and intermediate- income property owners.

A second example would be a something currently lacking in Ohio, but included in recently-released recommendations by Governor DeWine’s Property Tax Working Group (viewable here): a Property Tax Circuit Breaker, in which the State of Ohio would pay property taxes beyond a defined threshold, protecting homeowners—especially those with lower or fixed incomes—after it is “tripped” by tax costs exceeding a certain percentage of a household’s income.

Without such new tools, it is difficult for the City of Lakewood or any other local government to provide effective targeted adjustments to property taxes.

In the meantime, the Ohio General Assembly last week overrode a property tax veto by Governor DeWine’s, thereby prohibiting school districts and political subdivisions from placing certain levies on the ballot. As one Ohio Senator observed, the effect is to take away home rule without providing property tax reduction.

Members of the public interested in this topic or who have information to share can participate in the public meeting, expected this fall, or contact me at tom.bullock@lakewoodoh.gov.

Date: Thursday, October 23, 2025

This article first ran in the Lakewood Observer – read it here.

Last week, after a month of electricity failures, FirstEnergy rented out the entirety of Lakewood Civic Auditorium, a storied venue for the performing arts in our community, and delivered a performance on stage of contrition, pledged grid changes, and promises to do better. Company leaders were greeted by well above one hundred Lakewood residents who’d experience repeated lengthy outages this summer—chronic blackouts suffered despite the lack of tornadoes and severe weather that wreaked havoc on the power grid in 2024.

Lakewood residents were vocal and animated. With good reason.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), which oversees FirstEnergy’s license to operate as a monopoly and authorizes the charges that appear on our monthly electric bills, issued a “probable non-compliance” letter to the utility for a string of outages this summer affecting Lakewood and Cleveland’s west side. The outages were great in number, long in duration, and extensive in reach: at least nine outages, many lasting between 5.9 hours and 17 hours long, and two affecting thousands (9,411 customers in one instance and 3,500 customers in another). These generated 828 complaint calls to PUCO. (“Probable non-compliance” means, in plain English, that staff investigators found evidence of utility failure to meet its legal obligations and are pursuing further enforcement action.)

PUCO shared this choice gem in its letter: “Many of the circuits that serve the city of Lakewood also experienced outages this past November, December and January. In addition, several Lakewood circuits have been listed on CEI’s annual worst performing circuits report.” (“CEI” is Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, the local FirstEnergy-owned utility that serves Lakewood.)

The day after PUCO issued its letter, Lakewood suffered another blackout.

PUCO staff flagged two areas of utility shortcoming: “Failure to invest in necessary improvements” and “Failure to…ensure that accurate and timely information is getting to the customers who need it.”

FirstEnergy’s town hall meeting in Lakewood was a step towards meeting their customer communication obligations which PUCO criticized—in writing—as insufficient. (Would the town hall meeting have taken place without this written criticism from its state government overseer?)

I spoke up on behalf of residents at the FirstEnergy’s August 11 town hall meeting. Seven minutes before the meeting began, I received an email from a Lakewood resident: the power had just gone out again for his neighborhood. During the town hall meeting, other speakers reported two more outages that happened during the meeting.

I shared with FirstEnergy executives what Lakewood residents reports about at least four transformer fires, one family without power for six days, multiple health emergencies and near misses, losses of groceries (half the monthly food budget for some families), business and job disruption, inefficient and difficult-to-use customer service hotlines, expenses incurred to buy personal power backup systems, and the mental health and emotional strain of the disturbance, discomfort, and uncertainty.

They listened politely and respectfully and said their grid changes should help.

I also pointed out that CEI has the worst (longest) outages among all of FirstEnergy’s service area and that FirstEnergy has a legal filing pending right now before PUCO requesting permission to make its outages even longer: whereas outages should last no longer than two hours on average, CEI’s is already 15 minutes longer on average and they are proposing to add an additional 15 minutes beyond that, from 135 to 150.49 minutes (Case 24-1112).

FirstEnergy confirmed this was accurate: they are indeed requesting permission for longer outage times—despite the theme of their Lakewood town hall being their plans to address outages. This sends the wrong message to Lakewood residents, to put it mildly, who came to the meeting expecting their service to get better, not worse.

So which is it? Does FirstEnergy have one foot on the accelerator and the other foot on the brake? And now what, for Lakewood residents?

Challenge everything: pursue your rights at PUCO, not corporate customer service:

My invitation to Lakewood residents: don’t accept what we heard at the FirstEnergy town hall as the final word, but instead challenge the utility’s performance where it matters most—by making a formal complaint (public comment) in the FirstEnergy legal case in which they are asking approval to make our outage times worse. You can click here to file a public comment directly: dis.puc.state.oh.us/PublicCommentEfiling.aspx?CaseNo=24-1112. Share the details of what you experienced, describe losses you incurred, and state what level of service you expect for the price you pay.

Challenge these outages and pursue your rights at the PUCO, which is what utility companies respond to because that’s the state government agency that can hold them accountable with financial penalties or worse.

Asserting your rights in this manner is the most effective option: it’s the difference between filing a complaint in writing to a judge rather than commenting to the bailiff while walking past or chatting with the defendant in the lobby. Which of those three options do you think will be most effective?

There’s plenty of evidence of inadequate FirstEnergy grid reliability: to get that evidence seen, heard, and recognized, we’ve got to report it in the right place: public comment in the legal docket.

I’ll be making my own public comment—to report the harms that Lakewood residents experienced and shared with me. We have the full right to pursue relief at the PUCO. It is a privilege for the utility to be able to serve our community. They should have to earn that privilege and defend it: it shouldn’t be we who have to chase them.

We don’t have to accept power outages: we can challenge them. Who will join me?

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Some facts and questions you might include in your public comment:

What reliability performance metrics does the utility use to assess reliability upgrades that have already been made? Have they worked? What was their impact? Rather than dollars spent, customers want to know if our service has improved.

Reliability is worsening despite past grid investments: since 2019, reliability across CEI’s system has declined, with outages attributed to both trees in the right-of-way (ROW) and equipment/line failures (PUCO Cases 23-993, 24-993). Why should Lakewood electricity customers accept longer outages when CEI already has the worst performance among the three FirstEnergy utilities?

FirstEnergy consumers have already paid $456 million for grid modernization from 2017 to 2019, but no systemwide reliability improvement was observed. What did consumers get for that money if it didn’t prevent the current power outages and losses we are experiencing?

Date: Wednesday August 20, 2025

This article first ran in the Lakewood Observer – read it here.