Jackson hopes to get the issue on the ballot in November of this year or March of next.
The proposed hike would raise the current 2 percent tax to 2.5 percent and would, Jackson said, generate an additional $83.5 million for the city.
All that extra money is required, Jackson said, to pay for the costly Consent Decree and to sustain the city’s current level of service (which would be impossible otherwise, due to funding cuts from the state).
Jackson told cleveland.com reporters and editors in a private meeting that if voters do not approve the measure, city residents can expect a “devastating decline” in quality of life.
A devastating decline?
“In short, more potholes, more blight,” cleveland.com wrote, “unplowed snow and slower police response.”
Though the city income tax hasn’t been raised since 1981, and though some city councilpeople — Zack Reed, notably — say they’d support the increase if for no other reason than to get more police officers on the streets, Jackson’s language is surprisingly threatening:
“The choice people will have is, do you want a structurally balanced budget that increases capacity to deliver services, or do you want a budget that is balanced but reduces service and lays off people?” Jackson asked his receptive audience at cleveland.com.
It’s distressing that Jackson felt compelled to frame it as an either/or proposition, especially because it’s not like his administration has done everything in its power to maximize efficiency. (And that doesn’t just mean layoffs.)
The division of waste collection, for instance, was last month revealed to have consumed 274 percent more than it had budgeted for overtime because workers were chronically absent, even when they were clocked in. In February of 2015, the commissioner of the division of streets was demoted after a “fiasco” when snow plows abandoned city protocol.
Shouldn’t it be incumbent upon Jackson, when he’s asking residents to pony up yet again, to prove that a tax increase is a last resort?
This article appears in Jan 27 – Feb 2, 2016.
Lazy journalism. No mention of how the decreased tax rates from Kasich severely limited funding provided to Ohio cities?
Lazy Journalism. No mention of the real driver, pensions contributions to city workers, cops, firemen, teachers, etc. If they were moved to a defined contribution plan, like every other worker outside of govt employment, there would be plenty of money for potholes.
The city would set the pace for the entire area with a city tax increase because the suburbs would all soon follow. The bad thing about it is that the city has less revenue because of the lack of working residents to pay taxes, so the people who remain and the people who work in the city will have to foot the bill for the city’s decision to sit back and watch as the population continues to decline without doing much to try to reverse that long standing trend. I say sell bonds and build
apartments and condominiums with views of the lake to middle class people who would contribute to the city in new housing surrounded by retail, services and entertainment connected by atriums,
retail tunnels and bridges like the ones in Montreal (people avoid the cold of winter) and Houston (people avoid the heat of summer). I have been told that the city is not in the housing construction business, but there has been plenty low income housing built over the past 50 years and many programs that keep poor people poor, and the city in decline. With many neighborhoods in very bad shape, there could be rebuilding of some of those areas too in order to attract working people who would both pay city income taxes and property tax on more valuable homes. The project by the W44th street exit from I90 that included 12 new townhomes, and was surrounded by poverty, could not be successful because neither I nor anyone I know would want to pay premium price for a new home surrounded by run down old homes
and no stores or services. The only way I would consider voting for a tax increase would be if there were
vast improvements in the quality of life because of the new development that attracts new working people and make this city a much better place to live.
“The division of waste collection, for instance, was last month revealed to have consumed 274 percent more than it had budgeted for overtime because workers were chronically absent, even when they were clocked in”
um, yeah, that sounds like something you might want to look into if you’re the boss.