After William Ramsey unsuccessfully fought to keep the state from taking some of the front yard of his once-quiet Fairfield Township, Ohio, to widen the adjacent road, state officials said they’d take care of details that would reduce his property taxes proportionately.
Seven years later, Ramsey, 72, discovered he was still begin charged for his property’s original lot size. And although the error has now been corrected, the state refuses to refund the extra property taxes he erroneously was charged.
Ramsey, 72, built his home, in southwest Ohio near Ohio University, in the 1970s. When the state decided to widen the property’s frontage road, the Ohio Department of Transportation took a 310-by-20-foot section for a roadside easement through imminent domain in 2002, the Oxford Press reported. After he lost his legal battle to stop ODOT’s action, Ramsey said officials told him the agency would handle the property issues.
It wasn’t until he took a closer look at his tax bill last year that he realized he was still being taxed on the portion of his lot ODOT had taken seven years earlier. He then took the matter to the Butler County Board of Revision, which subsequently reduced his taxes almost $100 annually.
But when he asked that the excess taxes he had paid in the previously six years also be refunded, the Butler County Board of revision told him that “by statute, the Board of Revision can’t go back on previous years.”
Even Ramsey’s much overdue tax break was short-lived. His 2010 tax bill increased by $115.
