Hamilton County Job and Family Services has seen a 92% uptick in its out-of-home care costs since its last levy was passed in 2021.
This levy’s tax rate currently costs taxpayers $81.15 per $100k home. The levy was last increased in 2018, and prior to that had not been increased since 1996.
At a meeting held on March 2, it was noted that these costs are over half the budget for the 2026 budgetary plan.
To preserve money for the following year, county commissioners agreed to allow JFS to reduce roughly $36 million of child services from their 2026 budget.
This move is meant to preserve funds for next January, according to Jim Tinker, assistant director in the JFS office of media and engagement.
The JFS tax levy review committee is a nine-member, volunteer board appointed by the commissioners to assist and advise on whether a levy should appear on the ballot, the appropriate level of revenue to be generated by taxation, the appropriate duration of each levy, and terms and conditions for levy contracts.
JFS Interim Director, John Nelson said the group is still in the data collection phase of this review. The review committee is finding that this is not routine levy maintenance, this is about sustainability, safety and timing.
The rising costs are, in part, due to an increased complexity of cases, Tinker said.
“Because the placement costs have just gone crazy and in a short period of time around the country, not just for us, it’s a matter of the levy not covering what it used to cover, so we would need more to cover the increase in expenses for placement,” he said.
The January presentation shared annual budgets for the past five years and compared them to actual spending. The 2025 plan for out-of-home care was expected to exceed $69.6 million. The actual spend was more than $93 million.
As of August 2025, JFS spent $40 million annually on sending 45% of the children in its custody to foster homes. They spent $6 million sending 36% of children in their custody to kinship care, which is when a family member can house the child. Foster care is when child care support is provided by a JFS-approved foster parent.
Tinker said foster parents often house children with significant behavioral needs.
“I heard a story yesterday about self-harm type issues and things that a person may not be able to handle in their home, and the kid might need to be in a facility where they can provide 24-hour supervision on the [child],” Tinker said. “Those are really expensive costs.”
The child advocacy agency is now reducing services significantly in order to keep future operations afloat. According to the meeting held on March 2, part of the $1 million dollars has been reduced from Kinship Care, and $300,000 was reduced from vouchers for Children’s Services families.
“It’s never easy to remove a really great program that might be providing some kind of upstream relief to our system,” Nelson said. “Because anytime we’re able to provide a service to children before they get into contact with the agency, that’s actually better for the family and the children. A lot of the items we looked at in terms of reductions, where those upstream preventions, like diversion and domestic violence training,” Nelson said.
“It was really heart wrenching to look at all of these items as just dollar amounts and line items, knowing that there’s actual lives that will be impacted by these reductions. So it was not an easy decision at all.”
The lower budget also takes some abilities away from the agency.
“Really, the challenge came down to whether I’m able to keep kids fed, clothed, and have a safe place for them to go,” he said.
Nelson said they’ve had to reduce preventive and upstream services like domestic violence training, general prevention programs, youth employment dollars and focus on current issues.
These are programs that aim to keep families stable before they show up in the child‑welfare system. Without them, problems are likely to get worse until they become abuse or neglect cases, high‑acuity mental health situations or emergency placements.
Workers may end up handling more intense crises, instead of doing earlier, less costly, more humane interventions, according to Nelson. That makes the job harder, more reactive, and less effective long‑term, he added.
To keep services at their current level, the county needs an extra $123,417,635 per year from a new five-year levy. This assumes there will be no money left over when the new levy starts in 2027. If there happens to be $15 million left over, that number drops to $120,417,635 per year.
The $74 million option assumes continuing the $36 million in reductions to services continuing into the next levy cycle. The required levy drops to $74,044,169 per year. Those cuts would reduce services to children and families, but would leave roughly $15,000,000 in reserve heading into 2027.
A $65,000,000 per year levy is also possible, but would require deep cuts across the board, including slower hiring, less support for relatives caring for children, reduced services and partially eliminating placements for youth 18 and older. Like the previous option, this also assumes about $15,000,000 in reserve at the start of 2027.
Nelson said he did not want to speak about which levy amount he prefers, but did say his agency would make the most out of whatever money the levy can bring.
“Whatever is given to us, we’ll do our absolute best to make sure our community is served,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a challenge. I think we’d have to pretty much run a plan year by year. Depending on the scale of the funding, we may have to look at programs on an annual basis, whether we can do it, or whether we can’t do it, and a lot of that is going to depend on if the cost of care go up, and kind of follow the current trend.”
A decision about the levy will be made by the end of July.