Next year's Hamilton County Property Tax Rebate will be funded at the full 30%. That means homeowners will see a $106.97 credit per $100,000 of home value on next year's tax bills.
That's up from 12.4% of collections in 2024.
When voters approved the half-cent sales tax in 1996 to build and maintain Great American Ball Park and what is now Paycor Stadium, officials promised to give 30% of the revenue back to homeowners as tax rebates. That hasn't happened consistently since 2011 because of budget problems.
FROM 2023: Hamilton County homeowners will get a higher stadium tax rebate next year
Last year, commissions adopted a formula to help determine how much the property tax rebate — or PTR — should be each year to keep the fund solvent. Using that formula, county administrators recommended the PTR be funded at 18.8% for 2025, which would have been $67.50 per $100,000 of property value.
The board voted 2-1 in favor of the full PTR.
Commission President Alicia Reece has said she'll only approve the full 30%. She was the lone vote last year against following the administration's funding formula.
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This year, Reece was joined in setting the PTR at 30% by Commissioner Stephanie Summerow Dumas, who noted her decision was based on this year's large tax increases from property value appraisals.
"The bottom line for me is that people are not only stressed, they're suffering," Summerow Dumas said, indicating that her decision to go against the formula was a policy exception people shouldn't expect to see from her again.
"I want to make it very, very clear, though, that this is not a commitment to the following years. If we keep down this road, as was said earlier, of 30%, the fund will be insolvent by 2028."
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While she said it would be nice to fully fund the 30% PTR, Commission Vice President Denise Driehaus supported the administrator's recommendation, noting it was more fiscally responsible. She says the county will now have to borrow from the General Fund in order to fulfill the 30% rebate.
"We're in a tight budget this year. When we talk about the General Fund, we're talking about 911 operators. We're talking about sheriff deputies, we're talking about the court systems. We're talking about some of the programming that we've been able to do in partnership with some of our community partners. All of that would be at risk if we start dipping into the General Fund to pay these obligations that currently we're paying for through the stadium fund," Driehaus said.
