This story is part of Worthington Pulse's coverage of the October 20 Worthington Libraries Board of Trustees meeting. Start with the October 20 meeting recap.
The Worthington Libraries Board of Trustees accepted the property-tax rates Franklin County certified for 2027 at its Oct. 20 meeting: about $8.7 million for the general fund at 4.8 mills, all of it from levies voters approved. The vote is routine, but the discussion around it was not. A trustee walked through why the library's levy income has stayed essentially flat for more than a decade while residents' tax bills have climbed, a distinction she said the public will need to understand before the library asks for a levy, which the library's own forecast points to in November 2027.
The library's finances through September 2026, as reported to trustees on Oct. 20. Source: Oct. 20 board meeting recording.
Inside millage, outside millage, and why the difference matters
After Board President Abigail Poklar read the county's required resolution language aloud Trustee Emma Mulvaney offered the plain-language version. Ohio lets local governments collect up to 10 mills of property tax without a vote, known as inside millage. School districts and other governments get a share of it, and because it is a rate, the dollars it produces rise when the county reappraises homes at higher values. "Those 10 mill limitations increase, and so then the corresponding amount that they derive from inside of that also increases", she said. However, libraries get none of it.
All of the library's property tax is outside millage approved by voters, and the amount that kind of levy collects is set when voters approve it. Mulvaney said she believed the library's current levy amount dates to 2013, with part of it continuing from an earlier levy around 2003. She said:
"Now we're dealing with the 8.6 that's been the same since 2013, subject to increased costs, inflation. And I don't think people see that, because they say, I pay more in taxes, and we're like, but we're not seeing any of it".
It is a point, she said, "that I don't think people understand and will trip us up on our levy process".
Chief Financial Officer Jeremie Stevens added that inside millage is unvoted and all of the library's millage is voted, and said the wording was the county's: "This unfortunate language is verbatim what the county asks us to approve". The resolution sets $8,686,163.75 for the general fund for tax year 2026, collected in 2027, with the full 4.80 mills outside the 10-mill limit (Resolution 10-06-26). It passed by roll call with all six trustees present voting yes. The library's 2027 tax budget request, filed in April, assumed the same roughly $8.7 million from property taxes.
The 2027 property-tax estimate came in flat
Stevens reported that the county's 2027 property-tax estimates, delayed a month, had arrived: about 0.6% less than this year, "pretty much flat". One decrease the library had planned for did not happen. Staff had expected the state's homestead and rollback reimbursement, money the state pays in place of taxes that some homeowners no longer owe, to begin phasing out, but it has not, so the net drop for next year is under $40,000. The figures go into the 2027 budget package trustees will see in November.
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Where the money stands through September
Through the third quarter the library had received 87% of the year's expected revenue. The last large property-tax payment from the county, roughly $1 million, is expected Oct. 23, and it arrives in a heavy month. October has three paydays plus two health-insurance payments because of invoice timing, so Stevens plans to draw on investments during the fourth quarter. The state's Public Library Fund, which now arrives as a fixed allocation rather than a share of state revenue, is coming in as expected and makes up about 23% of the library's revenue. Investment interest has already reached 98% of the full-year estimate.
Spending looks low on paper, about 54% of the budget, but Stevens cautioned that the architect contract of just under $1 million for the facilities plan has not been billed yet. Payments for work that began in September start in October. The library's reserve stood at 21.8% of operating expenses at the end of September, and she expects expenses to overtake revenue on the financial dashboard next month.
Asked when cash runs tightest, Stevens said the start of the year, since county property-tax advances normally do not arrive until late January or early February, plus the summer gap from May through July. This year was different: the Franklin County auditor changed its accounting system and took longer to verify amounts, which is why a large catch-up payment is coming in October, something she had not seen in her three years.
A clearer reserve policy
Trustees adopted a revised fund balance reserve policy. The 2022 original required a two-month reserve, 16.67% of operating expenses, but was vague about when. Mulvaney had raised the risk that an auditor could read "at all times" literally and find the library out of compliance in months when property-tax timing pushes the balance below the line. The revision makes the two-month reserve a requirement at the end of each fiscal year and a goal in between, and defines what counts as the cash balance so a future fiscal officer measures it the same way.
Stevens said the change codifies what she already does. She does not want to cash out investments early, some of which run five years, "to get cash to just sit there, especially if I know there's a million dollar check sitting there waiting to go on the books the very next month". Nor does she want the opposite, half the budget idle in cash earning little interest. The policy passed by roll call (Resolution 10-02-26).
Laying groundwork for 2027
Several smaller items point the same way. At the library's Oct. 7 staff day, Stevens gave every employee a "Library Funding 101" session and opened the full board financial packet to staff on the library's intranet, so that "if they understand our budget, then they can also explain and be an ally in this whole process for the levies". She is also sitting in on a weekly Government Finance Officers Association webinar about its budget-document award, whose scoring now leans heavily on how well a government explains its spending to the public.
When trustees set the 2027 meeting calendar, Director Lauren Robinson noted that the one meeting the board traditionally reserves the option to cancel has moved from July to August, but said she plans to hold the August meeting anyway "with the possibility of having a levy in the fall of '27". All 2027 meetings start at 6 p.m. (Resolution 10-03-26). Robinson also said 16 public-library levies are on ballots across Ohio on Nov. 3 and she will report next month on how they fared. The library's own levy question, if it comes, would be in 2027.
Separately, Stevens told trustees that a Huntington Bank system problem this fall caused staff paychecks to post hours late on one payday. Huntington provided a letter stating the library was not at fault, and no employee has reported a problem. Her main concern was that the bank did not alert the library before the library found the issue itself. She meets with Huntington later this month about its depository agreement, which is up for renewal at the end of the year.
This story comes from the October 20 meeting recap.