Julie Petrowski isn’t moving, but her address is changing.
For more than thirty years, she’s been a resident of Aquilla, a small village in northeast Ohio. She loves its tight-knit community and lakeside properties. But it wasn’t until she joined the village’s council that she understood how difficult it was to keep the small municipality afloat.
They have to pay for street lighting, snow plows and fire service with under 300 people in their tax base.
“Those are all things that cost money,” Petrowski said. “And it just wasn't there. We just did not have it.”
Petrowski said the community was left with a choice: put yet another large levy on the ballot to survive, or dissolve and join Claridon Township – a move that would cut residents’ municipal taxes nearly in half. In November, the majority of the village residents voted for the latter.
It’s a vote that more villages across the state might begin to see on their ballot, thanks to a new law going into effect this year.
Another pathway to dissolution
The state has more than 600 villages which means Ohio has more taxable jurisdictions than most any other state. Only 10 of them have dissolved in the last decade.
But, it could start happening more frequently under a newly passed law, signed Wednesday by Gov. Mike DeWine. State representative Adam Mathews, R-Lebanon, originally proposed it.
“You don’t need an income tax to have a sense of place and community,” Mathews said.
Prior to the law’s passage, 30% of village voters had to sign a petition to get dissolution on their local ballot. Mathews believes that burden shouldn’t fall to residents.
“If we want to make sure that those taxing jurisdictions are serving the benefit of our voters, then we want to give them a very clear checks and balances every ten years,” he said.
Now, villagers will still be able to put dissolution on the ballot themselves. But villages will also be audited after each Census. If a village doesn’t provide five out of 10 base services – like water and sewer, garbage collection or road maintenance – then the municipality’s fate will automatically be put on the ballot at the next election.
“Almost every election we have some village voting to dissolve, and we also want to create some stability where this happens every ten years with an objective process.”
Opposition to the law
But, some Ohio village officials believe the legislation takes too much of a “one size fits all” approach.
Leeman Kessler, mayor of the rural village of Gambier, said the law doesn’t take into account villages like his that pay other public entities for services like policing. Under the new system, those intra-government partnerships wouldn’t count as a village-provided service.
And by forcing dissolution onto the ballot, Kessler worries that residents would incorrectly assume their municipality isn’t putting in the effort.
“Communities could get dissolved without kind of thinking through what those sort of full ramifications of some of that is,” Kessler said. “And I think that the situation really should be done with more nuance and with more care than a sort of a dead man's switch.”
Kessler believes the road to dissolution doesn’t need to change: it already works to hold villages accountable. Votes like Aquilla’s are proof of that, he said.
The impact of dissolution
Petrowski voted in favor of Aquilla’s dissolution. But she still has questions about how the decision will impact services like leaf pickup and snow plow. Plus, she said, local representation will no longer be a couple streets away.
“If you're having a problem with your neighbor, with his cars or with his fence or whatever, you could easily get it resolved,” Petrowski said. “Now we're at the mercy of Claridon, which is a bigger community.”
There may be minor inconveniences, but Petrowski is hopeful what’s important in Aquilla will remain.
“We’ll still have the community feel. That small town feel.”
She believes its stories, traditions and values won’t disappear, just because the village is gone.
