The county commissioners are the executive board for the seventh largest county in the state — home to 388,420 residents — with 1,678 full-time employees and a total budget of $511.5 million. They hold the purse strings for 14 departments under their direct control, 13 other elected offices/courts and seven independent boards.
County government provides a wide range of services namely police protection by the sheriff, a wide array of social services, road construction and maintenance, tax collection and a host of others. The commissioners will earn $102,043 next year by statute but are not required to work full-time.
Dixon, 75, was a commissioner for one term in 1982 and ran unopposed and won in November 2007 and has served ever since. He has never been opposed until now. Raghu, 39, is in her second term on the Oxford City Council and serves as vice-mayor.
Dixon owns and operates numerous healthcare, retirement and other companies. Raghu is a veterinarian and runs the Oxford Veterinary Hospital with her husband Dr. Chris Reagh.
Dixon told the Journal-News he is seeking a fifth term because he has the experience and the track record in making the county a strong, vibrant place to live, “It all comes down to experience, this is not a job that you can step into and do on-the-job training.”
He said the county has zero general fund debt — the debt ledger rolled to zero in 2020 according to plan — and $175 million in unincumbered cash because of the county’s conservative budgeting practices. When he took office in 2008 the county was on the brink of financial ruin, he said.
“I came in back in ‘08 when things were really bad and I had enough experience with county government that I knew where we had to go and what we had to do,” Dixon said. “The whole key to that is having the people you deal with believe and trust in you, what you say you’ll do you’ll do and I think my track record shows that. That was one of the reasons I was able to pull the county office holders together and straighten out the huge deficit we had and get ourselves prepared for the future with substantial funding to be able to do the developments we needed to do.”
In 2009, Dixon and now Supreme Court Justice Sharon Kennedy, who was the domestic relations judge then, convened a summit of office holders, department heads and business leaders, to deal with what was dubbed a “perfect storm.” He said they have continued on that course by knowing how to say no to unaffordable spending and investing in strategic economic development.
Raghu said her interest in running for the office was piqued last year when there were some issues over a county donation of American Rescue Plan Act funds for a “one-stop-shop for social services.” She said she felt the county commissioners were not really engaged with local entities, and added “we could be operating better together.”
“That’s something I’ve learned from other city council members and township trustees that they don’t really have a strong relationship or feel that the county is a strong ally,” she said. “It just feels like such a shame that we have this ability to work together that could reduce costs, reduce redundancies, have better outcomes. That interaction with the county opened up my eyes a lot of where we have some deficiencies there where we could be operating better together.”
When the county was awarded nearly $75 million in federal COVID relief funds they decided to share it with other jurisdictions and entities countywide and invited them to pitch ideas. There was a bit of a snafu with Oxford’s $1.5 million ARPA grant. The city originally asked the commissioners to fund a one-stop social services center and then swapped projects mid-stream, prioritizing a project that would facilitate the new Amtrak station.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
After a loud public outcry the city switched back to the social services center. The commissioners ultimately left it up to the city council to decide.
Dixon said he and his fellow commissioners have always been engaged with local officials, without those relationships he said the county couldn’t be as successful as it is.
“We have Ohio’s lowest sales tax, and the general fund debt has been reduced to zero. That doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t happen without working together with our townships, villages and cities,” he said. “We have built incredible relationships like the recent partnership between the county commissioners, Miami University and Butler Tech. This partnership re-imagines the Vora Technology Park, and positions Butler County’s expanding workforce for success in coming decades. We have a great track record of working with our local governments and supporting their projects. Such projects include Oxford’s Land Bank, Oxford’s College@Elm, Hamilton’s Spooky Nook, and so many other successful efforts in which teamwork made it happen.”
Raghu agrees the commissioners should be supporting economic development ventures — she mentioned Liberty Center particularly —but she also has three main priorities if she is elected: address the lack of available and affordable housing; increase access to daycare so parents can come to the county and work and enhance mental health and substance abuse services.
“Housing is critically important and it’s fueling the homelessness crisis as well. We have an opportunity to do something about that, whether it is protecting the housing stock, building new homes, making sure we have crisis housing, the housing is the number one thing,” she said.
“All this leads into you having a strong economy. As a small business owner you know how hard it is to grow your business if you can’t find workers who can’t find a place to live, who don’t have childcare, so we need to focus on the infrastructure that supports that economy with housing being number one on the list.”
The commissioners convened a “Summit on Housing Insecurity and Advocacy” at Dixon’s urging in August — there have been previous gatherings — with elected officials and staff from the cities, townships and villages and other agencies, to tackle the homeless problem and ancillary issues like mental health and addiction. A small independent homeless work group lead by Commissioner Cindy Carpenter and others, has been meeting for years on the issue. They recently issued a report that recommends forming a Butler County Housing Solutions Board and it appears that is the next step.
Low income residents — income that falls below 130% of the federal poverty level — can get help with child care costs through Butler County Job and Family Services, but Raghu said she has been told there is a “big black hole” in terms of help with start-up costs for daycares. She said she pushed for Oxford to help and they now have a forgivable loan program to help residents start or expand daycare services.
Dixon says “the number one thing is keeping our fiscal plan in place” and plans they are working on now in the area of the proposed Millikin Road interchange in Liberty Twp. are going to be “pretty substantial.”
“I think it’s a pivotal time where the county is going to move forward in a way that creates jobs and keeps taxes low and puts us up in the top five counties as far as development and growth,” Dixon said. “I’ve worked real hard to make sure when the time would come that Butler County had the opportunity to do some of things we’re working on right now, that if we need to build an interchange we don’t have to go to the Ohio Department of Transportation and say please give us the money to build this. We’re prepared to step up and build it, we can reach in our pocket pull out the check, write it and go on. That separates us from the other 87 counties.”
As far as low taxes go, the commissioners have rolled back nearly $25 million in property taxes since 2022. There hasn’t been any discussion yet — those conversations come at budget time — on whether the trend will continue into next year. Dixon said he is considering a number of ways to give taxpayers relief.
When asked if she’d consider a tax rollback Raghu said to make an informed decision she needs more financial data, but she thinks it is curious that the tax breaks seem to coincide with elections, “this isn’t a game, this isn’t a political chess match, these are real people’s lives that are just trying to provide for their family.”
“I find it really interesting what they’ve been doing, what the current commission has been doing with property taxes. It seems like every election year (breaks are given) and then the next year it goes back up, I need a lot more information on how they are handling the property taxes,” she said and later added. “I need a little bit more information about why there’s been so many peaks and valleys that seem to coordinate with election years.”
Dixon proposed the $18.5 million — they rolled back the county portion of inside millage — tax cut for 2022 in December 2021. Carpenter, who was up for re-election the next fall balked at the idea initially because she said it benefited rich people more than poor, but ended up agreeing.
When historic property value hikes hit last year County Auditor Nancy Nix asked all taxing bodies to consider not collecting the tax windfall that would result from the value explosion. Only the commissioners and officials in Middletown and Seven Mile and Fairfield, Liberty and West Chester townships accepted the challenge. The county tax break totaled $5.8 million.
Raghu said they not could afford to reduce revenue without hurting services to their residents.
“We are focused on funding our firefighters. They are currently very underfunded and understaffed which is making a very dangerous situation,” she said. “We are making sure our fire fighters and essential services are covered.”
Butler County is a Republican stronghold and the last known Democrat to win a partisan countywide office was John Holcomb, who was elected prosecutor in 1998.
Raghu isn’t concerned about political leanings of most voters here.
“The county commissioner role really should not be partisan, these are essential services we’re talking about foster care, we’re talking about the jail, we’re talking about clean water, we’re talking about housing, those are not partisan issues, those are everybody issues,” she said. “When you meet someone where they are and talk to them they know you and they like you and they’ve worked with you before, they don’t care what party you’re with.”
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