T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Shadyside village solicitor Kelly Kotur tries to inform residents about a 1.35 mills levy that will be on the ballot on May 5.

SHADYSIDE — Shadyside village Solicitor Kelly Kotur is working to inform residents about a 1.35-mill levy that will be on the ballot May 5.

If passed, the levy will be used for the village’s general fund. It will cost property owners $47 for each $100,000 of the county auditor’s assessed value for five years.

Kotur said the general fund is crucial to the village because it supports all of its functions.

“Basically, it’s there to help fund the operations of the village. It can be used for purchasing equipment, hiring people, payroll, paying for benefits and can fund all of the other funds,” Kotur said. “If the village has money allocated to the water and sewer department, it can’t take money out of water and sewer and put it into something else. You can always take money from the general fund and put it in any of the other funds.”

Kotur said it is important for the village to have a healthy general fund in case of a major expense, such as a disaster.

The levy was on the November 2025 ballot and failed. It was the only one of three issues on that ballot that did not pass.

A 1.9-mill levy, which amounts to $9 for each $100,000 of the county auditor’s assessed value for five years, and a 2.5-mill levy, amounting to $12 for each $100,000 of the county auditor’s assessed value for five years, were both approved in November.

Kotur said she believes the measure may not have passed because residents were unaware it is technically a replacement levy.

“This was an old levy that had been on the tax rolls for years and years and years, and this was before I was solicitor. I’m not trying to throw anyone under the bus here. I don’t know how or when it expired, I think at the end of tax year ’23, and it was missed to be renewed. I don’t know whose responsibility that was, but it was not put on the ballot for renewal. So there has been at least one or two tax years where the residents haven’t been paying this,” Kotur said. “So even though it was put on the ballot last year, it was basically an old levy, but because it hadn’t been on the tax roll, it was stylized as a new levy. And I think that’s why people were kind of gun shy about supporting it. The other two levies were straight-up renewals.”

She added that since the levy wasn’t renewed, the village has lost roughly $94,000 per year in revenue for the general fund.

“We didn’t have to make any cuts yet, but we won’t be able to have as much of a carryover next year. So when our fiscal officer [Jerry Elliott] budgets, he always likes to make sure that we have a carryover, essentially an emergency fund. If you think about your own household, you have an emergency fund. So if something happens, you have something that you can dip into,” Kotur said.

“We will have less of a carryover, and eventually the loss of the levy will impact the budget. So right now we didn’t have to make any cuts, and we didn’t have to lay anyone off, but eventually it could get to that point. I want to emphasize that nothing has happened yet, but that’s projecting long term.”

She added that the village has an annual budget of roughly $2 million.

“People may look at that like, wow that’s a lot of money. But I mean that money is all allocated for things like the police force, the water department and the street department,” Kotur said. “I mean, there’s all kinds of services that people expect when living in a community, and of course we’re gonna have x, y or z. But I think sometimes when people hear the budget, like, oh man, they have so much money and can spend it on whatever. But the majority of that is allocated to expenses just to operate.”