Butler County voters approved a 2-mills levy to support the county's developmental disabilities services Tuesday.
About 52.5% of county voters approved the additional levy, which will cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $70 a year.
"We're excited about the ability to keep providing services," Butler County Board of Developmental Disabilities Superintendent Lee Ann Emmons tells WVXU. "That was what the whole purpose of our levy was, to be able to protect our core services. We are thrilled that we're going to be able to do that, and that children from birth to age three aren't going to be lost without services for a period of time and we'll be able to continue the good work we're doing in Butler County."
The Butler County Board of Developmental Disabilities serves about 3,400 people in the county. About half of those are infants and young children.
The Board has been in fiscal emergency since Sept. 2025, when it projected a more than $13 million deficit for 2026.
The two levies that have supported developmental disabilities services, passed in 2000 and 2004, generate the same funding they did more than two decades ago and haven't increased with the rise in home values or inflation.
Meanwhile, Emmons says demand for the services the Board is federally mandated to provide have increased by 380% since 2004. Those include in-home care and transportation for people with developmental disabilities. The Board also has struggled with a 38% increase in Medicaid service rates.
The Board made about $7.2 million in cuts in 2020 and 2021, when the Butler County Commission approved rollbacks for taxpayers as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Board has laid off 31 positions — about a quarter of its staff — and reduced the amount of space it uses in a facility it once ran but has relinquished to the Butler County Commission. The Board also has reduced wages, operating hours and services. All of those cuts saved roughly $8.4 million.
The reductions will remain in effect despite the levy's passage.
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