By Cindi Andrews
The Cincinnati Enquirer

For 8 cents a day, the owner of a $100,000 home helps keep Hamilton County's parks open. For another 8 cents, he provides bathing and housekeeping help to keep senior citizens independent.

For 18 cents a day, he enables the poor to get medical care.

Hamilton County property owners have said "yes" to 10 levies that cost just pennies a day each. All those pennies add up to a fraction more than 117 cents a day for the owner of that $100,000 home, or $428.44 this year.

The county's collection of special tax levies is one of the most extensive in Ohio. Of Ohio's 88 counties, only Lucas County has as many levies as Hamilton County. Several counties, including Montgomery, have combined social services in one "super-levy."

Revenue from the levies has jumped almost 80 percent in nine years, from $117 million in 1991 to $210.2 million in 2000. The levies may be for good causes, critics say, but the cost is just getting too high.

"We're being nibbled to death by ducks," County Auditor Dusty Rhodes said.

One of the 10 Hamilton County levies - the one that helps feed the critters at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden - passed the first hurdle toward renewal Tuesday when the county tax levy review committee recommended putting it on the November ballot.

The five-year levy, which still must clear the county commissioners and voters, actually would drop from 0.42 mills to 0.40 mills - a savings of 68 cents a year per $100,000 of property value.

"I'm excited that we're going to end up putting it on at a lower amount than last time," County Commissioner Phil Heimlich said. "That's a pretty good start."

Next year, the 1.59-mill levy for the Drake Center, a long-term hospital in Hartwell, is up for renewal.

The Cincinnati Museum Center has also signaled its intention to ask county taxpayers for help in 2004. The planned 0.2-mill levy would raise $3.7 million a year for the struggling museum complex in Queensgate and cost the owner of a $100,000 home less than 2 cents a day.

But new groups could have a hard time even getting a levy on the ballot.

"My suggestion is, 'You better find another source of funds,' " Heimlich said. "I'm very hesitant to approve any new tax levies."

The question is how much decision-making the commissioners should take out of voters' hands. The commissioners don't actually decide whether to raise taxes, they only decide whether to let the voters decide.

"These levies are very genuinely contested," said lawyer David M. Cook of College Hill, the newest member of the county tax levy review committee. "The voters have an opportunity to become informed."

Hamilton County voters rarely turn down a levy.

"You have special interests working hard to pass every one of these," Rhodes said. "What you're doing is, you're unleashing a public relations campaign on the voters."

Sycamore Township resident Joe Truesdell voted for the Hamilton County Park District's levy and he voted for mental health services.

"I think that's a necessity - mental health," he said.

Still, when he adds it all up - and throws in the local school levy and a property-value increase every three years - the bill gets pretty steep for the 73-year-old retired police officer.

"It's just getting ludicrous," Truesdell said.

Maybe it would help if all the levies were on the ballot at the same time, instead of just one or two per election, Rhodes said.

"People could prioritize them," he said.

Heimlich and Democratic Commissioner Todd Portune have united to find other ways to control levies.

This spring they led an initiative to require outside reviews of all agencies seeking commissioners' approval for levies. New Jersey-based A.T. Hudson & Co. recommended the zoo consider $585,000 worth of cost-cutting and money-making ideas but was generally complimentary of zoo leadership.

Portune and Heimlich also have teamed up to delay the 2004 tax budget - usually a little more than a technicality - until the county administration investigates several possible tax-reduction strategies.

The county could save millions of dollars, Portune said, by putting some services now funded by special levies back under the general fund. The hospital levy, for instance, includes $6 million for county inmates' medical care - a cost the county used to pay out of its own budget, according to Portune.

E-mail candrews@enquirer.com