County health levies across Northeast Ohio did well among voters last night, but Medina county residents rejected a sales tax increase.
Levies for health and human services in Cuyahoga County, mental health programs in Lake and Lorain, plus the health district in Portage all received more than 60 percent support from voters. Voters in Canton passed an income-tax increase that will support safety forces and economic and neighborhood development.
And in Lake County, an additional levy to fund the crime lab passed by nearly 66 percent. County Prosecutor Charles Coulson says it was the first such levy since the original funding for the crime lab passed in 1999.
“The opiate epidemic has caused so much crime that we had to hire more scientists, we have to do more tests, and we’ve also developed some new kind of tests, some new science – touch DNA – that cost a lot of money to perform these tests," Coulson said.
In Medina County, a proposal to increase the sales and use tax by 0.2 percent failed. It would have helped expand criminal justice programs.
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