Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,
At a petition table inside a Cleveland area gun show on a drizzly Saturday afternoon,citizens talk of an American Dream derailed.
There’s the elderly couple who paid off their mortgage decades ago butcan’t afford the property taxeson their home. Their local government, theoretically, can seize the property and auction it off to someone else if the annual bills remain unpaid.
Then there’s the recent retiree whotook a part-time job at Lowe’s to pay property taxeson his rental property and avoid raising his tenants’ rent.
Addempty nesters who can’t downsizeto smaller houses because interest rates are too high, farmers describing an impossible situation, and recent college graduates groaning about moving further away from home to an affordable place.
Show goers, guns and ammo in hand, pause at Beth Blackmarr’s table on their way out and share with her those concerns.
If 413,000 residents throughout the Buckeye State sign a petition before July 1, a public vote to eliminate local property taxes will appear on the November ballot.
If the signature count falls short, whatever is collected can be applied the following year, or however long it takes, said Blackmarr, media coordinator and a main volunteer for the 3,000-plus member Citizens for Property Tax Reform group.
“We are really hurting in Ohio,” she told The Epoch Times. “People never thought they’d be in this situation.”
Beth Blackmarr, a volunteer with Ohio-based Citizens for Property Tax Reform, organizes forms during a petition drive at a gun show near Cleveland on April 25, 2026. The group is seeking enough signatures to place a measure eliminating local property taxes on the November ballot. Aaron Gifford/The Epoch Times
Source: ZeroHedge News
