Save our Public Utilities!

Here in Akron, our mayor wants us to lease the public sewer system to some un-named corporate entity in order to fund scholarships so that Akron students may attend the University of Akron or trade schools located in Akron. The goal is to provide a free education so that more young people will decide to work and live in Akron after they graduate.

While I have no problem with promoting further education and encouraging young people to settle in this fair city, I cannot support the plan to sell or lease any of our public utilities to a for-profit company. Public utilities are those that are essential to the health and well-being of our community. We need to be in control of our own destinies, not at the mercy of some multi-national group that could care less whether we have filthy sewer water running into the Cuyahoga River.

To me, this plan comes across as a con game. A noble purpose is put forth to mask a giveaway of a public asset to a private corporation. If the citizens of Akron feel it is important to fund college scholarships, then put a tax levy on the ballot for that purpose. Do not attempt to disguise what the real goal of this move is -- to rid the city of a sewer system that needs a major upgrade and is under EPA watch until it is fixed.

When the mayor announced his plan early in the spring, he stated that the sewer would be sold. Now it is the sewer system will be leased. In spring, the money would be used so that all Akron kids could go to college. Now we are hearing that the money will be used so that all working class kids can go to college. The mayor announced in the spring that he would appoint a task force to come up with all the details. In his latest announcement -- that he will put the lease on the fall ballot for citizens to vote upon -- he accuses those who have doubts of being nay-sayers and "scarerists" (rhymes with terrorists).

Mr Mayor, I take offence at your words. Why should anyone embrace your plan when the parameters keep changing? Why didn't you wait until your panel put forth the final plan with all the details so we could all look and comment at the same time? The tone of your denigrations of those who oppose the plan makes me even more suspicious. Who have you made promises to? Who is going to be making big bucks on this deal? Is it true that corporate high ups have already been given tours of the sewer works here in Akron?

No college education is free. Somebody is going to be paying for it, and it is most logical to think that it will be the rate-payers once the corporation takes over.

A group called Save Our Sewers has collected petitions for a ballot vote this fall. If you've been following the story in the ABJ, you will know that city lawyers sent the petitions back due to a technicality on notarizing each petition. Read further for the rest of the story:

Citizens to Save our Sewers and Water (SOS)
190 N. Union St., #101 Akron, OH 44304
Phone: 330-408-5409 Web: www.AkronOhio.net
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In less than 72 hours thanks to your incredible help, we resubmitted our petitions to the City of Akron — with more than 400 additional signatures! The grand total (even more than quoted in the Beacon Journal article today — see below) was 5716 signatures on 160 separate petitions!

City Hall’s effort to stall our campaign by claiming we needed to notarize our petitions on separate pieces of paper rather than on the petition itself failed. We responded swiftly and stronger than before. People want to decide! People want to govern themselves! People want to keep public utilities public. Hardly the motives of “naysayers.”

Please note in the Beacon article the very curious comment by Akron Law Director and Mayor Plusquellic appointee Max Rothal — that we intentionally filed the petitions incorrectly to gain publicity. Really? This suggests we had nothing else better to do for the last 3 days than run around the city and state getting petition circulators to re-notarize our petitions on separate sheets of paper. There’s a term for such a charge. It’s called “blame the victim” ...as a means to distract attention from others. Rothal also charged this was at least the third time some of us have had petitions not comply with the city charter. Huh? It’s true that 3 times before some of us have been involved in citizen initiatives in the City of Akron. None of us are aware of any instance of submitted petitions not complying with the charter. Once, maybe twice, we didn’t have enough signatures to qualify at first for the ballot (which we did after gathering additional signatures). More than likely, it’s simply a charge meant to discredit our cause.

Distract and discredit. We’re likely to see and hear much more of this once we get on the ballot and move into the educational phase of the campaign. We must respond to any charges but to also maintain focus on what our grassroots citizen initiative is all about — placing any and all proposals to sell, lease, or transfer any public utility before the voters.

Once the petitions are validated, the petition itself will go before Akron City Council for its formal approval on Monday, July 28. We’d like a big turn-out for that meeting. Details later.

Thank you again for all your help!

The Mayor's Proposed Akron Income Tax Increase

It's Friday night and I really want to rock out, but instead I've got taxes on my mind. The mayor of Akron is calling for an increase in income tax. It would be about $33/per 10k in income.

The mayor wants more cops -- that was the leading point of his tax plea as reported in today's ABJ. Then a list of other items, all very non-specific:

"The proposed 0.33 percentage point increase, expected to generate an additional $17 million annually, also would help replace aging vehicles, fund after-school uses of new school buildings, boost the capital budget and fuel more economic development."

My first thought was reflexive -- ouch! I can't afford it. My second reaction was "No, not more cops." Americans always want more cops and more jails, rather than finding what -- over time -- turns an innocent baby into a criminal who needs policing and jailing.

Then I began to read all the citizens postings on the ABJ article comments section. This topic garnered copious amounts of word-slinging today. There are the Love It or Leave It people vs the Hated It and Left people. The usual Won't Pay Any New Taxes Ever people are smashing heads with The What's In It For Me people. It got way too emotional in the Comments section, so I went back to the original article and read it more carefully.

Plusquellic certainly made good logical points in his arguments. He is also one gutsy politician --he and his entire Democratic city council are all running for re-election on the same ballot! The mayor makes it clear that federal tax breaks will compensate for some of the increase in local taxes. (Bush's tax cuts in essence mean that state and local governments will be paying more for services. It's the old shell game.) According to the Beacon, Plusquellic

"...argued that the city has cut costs and reduced the city's payroll in the last 10 years by 400 full-time jobs from 2,673 full time employees to 2,242.

``We have not raised taxes for the operation of city government in 26 years, a record that I think we can all be proud of,'' Plusquellic said.

``But today I stand before you and tell you we cannot be the city we want to be, we cannot be the city that we need to be, we cannot continue to compete without asking each of you to help reinvest in our future by giving back locally just a small portion of what you used to send to the IRS in Washington.''

Damn, I really wanted to go with my initial response -- No new taxes. But how can I say no to improving living conditions in the city that I freely choose to live in? I can feel myself being persuaded, but--

There's still the annoyance factor of the push for more cops and the nebulous list of new needs. What does it mean to "fuel more economic development" and what specific programming is going into our new after-hour community learning centers?

I'd like more specifics before I say OK to this new tax. In the same article, the ABJ points out that our sewer rates are going to increase by 7% just as soon as our City Council stops dithering about it.

"The city asked for the surcharge to fund a specific project: stopping the overflow of sewage during heavy rains into the Ohio & Erie Canal in downtown Akron."

Yes, I think we need to stop the overflow of sewage into our canal system that we have been spending lots of money to fix up into a recreational attraction (see photo above). Cleaning up the messes from the 19th and 20th centuries are going to increase our tax burdens over the coming years, whether we like it or not. It's either fix the sewers or wallow in the disease-bearing muck.

To conclude my meditation on the proposed new tax increase, I'd like to see some of it go to the higher things in life, something to take our minds away from the gutters and sewers. Mr Mayor, if you want my vote for sure, put some of the revenue into a fund for developing and maintaining the arts in Akron. Remember, the arts are what make life worth living!