New Richmond Exempted Village Schools — OH

1. Snapshot

Rural-Fringe district in Clermont County along the Ohio River (about 25 mi southeast of Cincinnati). 1,878 students across 4 schools — New Richmond HS, New Richmond MS, Monroe Elementary, Locust Corner Elementary. SAIPE poverty 9.7%. Demographics 91% White / 3.7% Multiracial / 3.1% Hispanic — homogeneous. Per-pupil expenditure $16,003 (FY2020) — high for the cohort.

Already an FMX customer (cohort flag isFmxCustomer: true) — outreach is expansion / campaign-data activation.

The core structural fact: New Richmond’s tax base has been hollowed by the closure of two major power plants — Beckjord (2014) and Zimmer (2022) — both of which previously generated significant local property-tax revenue. The 8-mill levy is the district’s attempt to backfill the lost industrial tax base with residential property tax. The 71.45% No vote is the community’s answer.

2. Community context (ACS)

This is the most economically capable community in the brief set, and it produced the most decisive No vote. $97K income, $262K home value, 87% homeowner-occupied. The 28.55% Yes is not an affordability rejection — it’s a legitimacy rejection. After Beckjord and Zimmer closed, voters in this district have a strong “this is the new normal — manage to it” stance toward the school district’s revenue erosion, and the 8-mill ask reads as “make residential taxpayers pay for the industrial-tax-base loss.” The 71% No is a community-level policy statement, not a campaign-design failure.

3. Gap story — finance / staffing / school climate

• Plant operations spending: $1,319.90 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — statistically AT the national median. New Richmond is not under-investing in plant ops; it’s spending exactly what peer districts spend. The under-investment story doesn’t work here.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $411K — modest but meaningful.
• Per-pupil instruction: $9,079 — highest in the brief set (peer Town-Distant median $7,800-$8,200). Classroom investment is genuinely strong.
• Total revenue $28.8M with 44% local share — post-Beckjord/Zimmer, this is the structural problem: revenue has shrunk to $28.8M while expenses are $31.8M (per cohort expTotal). Operating at a $3M deficit — that’s the operative number, not the plant-ops gap.
• Chronic absenteeism: 27.4% district-wide. New Richmond MS: 35.1% (worst in district). HS 26.7%; Monroe ES 23.8%; Locust Corner ES 23.9%.
• Suspension rate: 9.2% district-wide. Concentrated at MS (23.4%) and HS (10.2%).
• Counselor ratio: 376:1 — slightly better than peer median (419:1).
• Nurse coverage: 1 FTE across 4 schools — minimal; effectively a single shared nurse.
• Total expulsions: 3 — low.
• Security FTE: 3.0 — strong for a 4-school district.

FMX peer operational benchmarks (live)

Two same-state Rural-Fringe peers at 96%+ similarity, both within 125 miles. Lakewood Local (lakewoodlocal.gofmx.com) has a full operational snapshot — 12 buildings, 327K sqft, 46.2-yr portfolio age, 85.5% resolution rate, $0.127/sqft, 1.20 WO/1K sqft, 3.8% HVAC burden. New Lexington (nlpanthers.gofmx.com) has 21 buildings at 75.3% resolution — that’s actually a weaker resolution rate than New Richmond likely has, which means New Richmond’s data, if published, would outperform New Lexington in the peer comparison. Strong leave-behind material.

4. Levy history

• May 5, 2026: 8-mill, 5-year, additional operating levy — failed 840 / 2,102 (28.55% Yes, margin -1,262)
• Per WCPO, following the failure, the school board approved $1.5M in cuts — staff reductions and increased pay-to-play fees
• The 8-mill ask was framed (per Clermont Sun + WCPO + Resolution of Necessity) as the operational response to the Beckjord (2014) and Zimmer (2022) plant closures — the levy was about replacing lost industrial tax base, not adding new burden, but voter narrative didn’t accept that framing

This is the first failure of cycle for New Richmond in available coverage. There’s no multi-attempt pattern yet — but the 71.45% No leaves very little room for the next attempt to climb back to 50%.

5. What voters / opposition said

Hoodline framed the pre-vote campaign as a “bitter tax fight” — strongest opposition framing in the brief set. Local12 ran “taxpayers divided.” This is the one district in the set with visible opposition energy ahead of the vote. WCPO post-vote coverage confirms the $1.5M cuts decision was already approved.

The community-level dynamic: two power-plant closures hollowed the tax base, and the levy asks residential homeowners to backfill the industrial loss. 87% homeowner-occupied + $262K median home + $97K income = voters who can pay but feel the burden-shift is illegitimate. The 71% No vote is a policy statement: “make the district structurally fit the new tax base, not vice versa.”

6. What we could have told them — and why this is the strategic-framing case in the set

The standard FMX pitch (plant-ops-vs-$1,324) doesn’t work here — New Richmond is at the national median. The strategic frame is different:

1. “Our 8-mill ask was implicitly ‘make residential homeowners replace the Beckjord and Zimmer tax base.’ Voters said no — by 71%. The next ask cannot have the same implicit frame. It has to be: ‘here’s what the district looks like managed to the new tax base, with state-aid normalization as the supplement and operating discipline as the core.’ FMX is the data layer that proves operating discipline.” Strategic, not tactical.
2. “$9,079 per student on instruction — highest in the brief set. Plant ops $1,320 — at the national median. The district is not spending wastefully. The revenue shortfall is structural (Beckjord + Zimmer = $3M annual deficit), not operational. The next campaign has to make voters understand that distinction.”
3. “Lakewood Local — 96% similarity, same locale, 118 miles away — runs 12 buildings at 85.5% work-order resolution and $0.127/sqft inside FMX. New Lexington runs 21 buildings at 75% resolution. We don’t publish equivalent data. We’re already an FMX customer — the data exists in our system. The next campaign must publish ours alongside Lakewood’s and New Lexington’s, so voters can verify operational discipline rather than take it on faith.”
4. “New Richmond MS chronic absenteeism: 35%. That’s the building-condition-to-attendance throughline. Levy cuts hit the MS hardest because the MS is already the climate-fragile building. Voters need to see that specific MS gym roof, that specific HVAC unit, those specific 35% absentee students connected before voting again.”
5. “Reframe the next ask from ‘restore the budget’ to ‘protect what’s already lean.’ Voters in 87%-homeowner, $97K-income districts don’t accept restoration framing after industrial loss; they accept protection framing. The data has to be ‘here’s the lean operations, and here’s what gets cut without the levy.’ Specific. Per-building. Verified.”

7. FMX outreach hook

New Richmond is the strategic-framing outreach in the brief set. The data play is not “we are starved” (they’re not — they’re at the national median). The data play is “we are operationally efficient despite industrial-tax-base collapse, and FMX is the verification layer that proves it.”

Lead with the FMX-customer status as an underused asset. District is already on platform. Outreach team should pull the New Richmond fmxFacilities snapshot pre-call and prepare a New-Richmond-vs-Lakewood-Local-vs-New-Lexington three-way comparison. The narrative target: New Richmond outperforms both same-state peers on resolution rate (likely — based on Lakewood’s 85% and New Lexington’s 75% baselines, New Richmond at any rate above 86% wins both comparisons).

Contact unit: Not published in OSBA — outreach team has account-team relationship on file. Lead with whoever owns the New Richmond FMX account; Treasurer/CFO and Director of Operations are the campaign-narrative collaborators.

Opener: “You lost 28.55-to-71.45. That’s not a campaign problem — that’s the community telling you they don’t accept residential property tax replacing the Beckjord and Zimmer tax base. The next attempt cannot use the same implicit frame; it has to lead with operational discipline as verified evidence. You’re already on FMX. Your same-state, 96%-similarity peers — Lakewood Local and New Lexington — both publish work-order data in our system, at 85% and 75% resolution respectively. Your $9,079-per-student instructional spend is the highest in the May 2026 brief set; your plant ops sits at the national median. You’re not wasteful — you just haven’t proven it in a format voters can verify. The November/2027 campaign frame has to be ‘protect the lean operations the district has already built’ — and the per-building, peer-comparable data layer in FMX is the verification artifact. Let’s pull your snapshot and have the Lakewood + New Lexington side-by-side ready inside 30 days.”