2024: A Year of Exploding Tax Pressure in Butler County
To understand why Butler County’s recently passed tax relief is so critical, all you need to do is reference 2024 property tax burden that many Butler County homeowners endured:
- In 2024 (based on the 2023 tax year valuations), Butler County billed property owners roughly $645 million, an increase of $45 million over the prior year.
- Of that $45 million increase, approximately $33 million (about 73%) was attributable to the state’s 20-mill floor on school funding, meaning many school districts could not lower their tax rates even as property values rose.
- The median property value increase ordered by the state tax commissioner was 37%, translating to tax impacts ranging from 4.6% to 5.6% in some districts (Lakota, Fairfield) all the way to 24%–28% increases in others.
- While some local governments did roll back inside millage—including Butler County itself and several townships—that relief totaled only ~$8 million in forgone tax collections, a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the increases.
Put simply: many homeowners were facing a perfect storm of surging valuations, constrained tax rate flexibility, and few tools available to push back.
That’s why REALTORS® across Ohio have long advocated for state-level reform, not just piecemeal local rollbacks, but structural changes to how property taxes are assessed, capped, and adjusted. The volatility and inequity in tax burdens cannot be resolved entirely at the county level, but local action like what we’re seeing now sets a powerful precedent.