Jackson Slams The Little Guy, Avoids a Fair Tax



See what I mean? Mayor Frank Jackson wants to charge $9.25 a month, or $111 a year for garbage pickup. Hitting the little guy because he’s afraid of tapping those who paid his campaign bills.

This is GARBAGE, Mayor Jackson! The same will go a weak-kneed City Council if it, as is likely, go along with it.

Is there a council member who has any regard for the people of Cleveland?

Jackson is trying to play a game by saying that he’s following a report of experts that are as bad as he is. See Henry Gomez’s story about Jackson’s tax your garbage GARBAGE: http://www.cleveland.com/cityhall/index.ssf/2009/11/cleveland_mayor_frank_jackson_7.html'

I wrote the other day how politicians don’t go to the well off or the rich for tax increase, they go to the little guy. Regressive tax upon regressive tax. This is a tax! I outlined tax after tax that slams the little guy while the wealthy enjoy low taxes. Please take a look: http://realneo.us/content/its-fair-taxes-honest-city-revenue-stupid

Mayor Jackson has made a mistake that I hope wakes up some people in Cleveland. People should be angry. Damned angry.

Mayor Jackson, you can’t even pick up the garbage with the high, unjust taxes paid in Cleveland. This is a new low.

Jackson is turning out to be just another bad Cleveland mayor. A caretaker of the city for the wealthy.

He’s the mayor of no good ideas. He’s the mayor of no ideas. He’s the mayor of allowing what is BAD to be what is.

If Jackson wants this tax, Council and the People of Cleveland should tell him: Put it on the ballot. Let the taxpayers vote!

Taxes- Fair & Unfair, Dumb and Dumber

I guess I’m just stupid. I don’t get it. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson wants to tax garbage to raise $13 million a year. Then he wants to tax non-profits to raise $5 million a year.

But residents already pay taxes to have their garbage picked up. Non-profits don’t any pay taxes. Seems to be a contradiction right there. Don’t you go after those that don’t pay taxes rather than those that do?

But there’s more.

Most Cleveland residents are not doing that well. Many of them you would call low income. Non-profits may be having some money problems but there’s plenty of money there.

Example: The Cleveland Clinic, likely the biggest of non-profits, had $3.4 BILLION in revenues in 2007, latest IRS report available.

Example: University Hospitals had net assets of nearly a billion, $994-million, in 2001, latest I could find.

Example: Cleveland Museum of Art has net assets of $873 million.

Example: Cleveland Foundation – assets of $1.49 billion.

Example: Gund Foundation – Assets of more than a half of billion dollars.

So from these behemoths you’d get $5 million a year but from working and unemployed stiffs you’d get $13 million? And you know the $9.25 garbage monthly fee will soon be $12, then $15 and then more.

So from the big money institutions you want $5 million but from people, who already pay plenty in income and property taxes, you want $13 million a year.

Doesn’t sound right. Not to me. Not to anyone with any sense.

What sounds even more ridiculous is this. The city would tax the Cleveland Museum of Art and the County gives the Cleveland Museum of Art $1.5 million in 2008 from the Culture & Arts fund from the cigarette tax.

Do we tax Playhouse Square, a non-profit that also gets subsidies from the County and got more than $1.5 million in 2008 from the County’s Culture and Arts fund, via a tax on cigarettes from the County?

Do you tax the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a non-profit? The Rock Hall got $880,000 from the Arts & Culture 2008 fund.

Do you give with one hand and take back with the other?

And then there’s this. Do you tax the tax exempt property users? They don’t pay taxes.

Would there be the tax on Progressive Field, on Q Arena, Browns Stadium? If not, why not? Shouldn’t they chip in?

It seems as though the plans for clipping people for chump change that hurts little guys but doesn’t much damage the big ones hasn’t been thought out and doesn’t make sense.

Go back to the drawing board, Mr. Mayor.

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MMPI Playing With Cleveland & Cuyahoga County

I talked with MMPI’s Mark Falanga after a three hour Council briefing to ask a simple question. Did MMPI expect to build a private medical mart on public land at no cost?

MMPI’s Falanga told Council that among a number of possibilities examined, MMPI wanted to build its Medical Mart on the Mall area between City Hall and the County Courthouse overlooking Lake Erie. Well, who wouldn’t, especially for nothing.

Falanga kept saying that the County was paying the City of Cleveland $20 million, as if that answered my question. The $20 million was for convention center and public auditorium. The latter Falanga has tossed out as useless or worse.

The site originally expected to house MMPI’s Medical Mart was on private land that had to be purchased. MMPI failed to make a deal.

I asked Falanga that since MMPI was rejecting the purchase of private land at St. Clair and Ontario was he now proposing to build it on private government land, the Mall, at no cost. He told Council members that the owners wanted $24 million, a budget breaker, for the St. Clair site.

But he wouldn’t answer my question. He kept dodging it by referring to the $20 million deal between the county and city.

A cost for the city land hardly got mentioned by city officials.

Not until late in the three hour meeting did a Council member address the question of payment for the site Falanga proposed for the Medical Mart. Zach Reed asked Falanga, “Are you going to pay for Mall D?” That’s what Falanga called the site where he wants to build. I’ve never heard of Mall D. It’s really Mall C and the overhang down toward the railroad tracks.

He told Reed that it was included, apparently referring to the $20 million price tag agreed to by the city and county. Reed, unfortunately, dropped it there.

Since he was expecting to pay $17 million – an estimate set by the Greater Cleveland Partnership - for the Ontario/St. Clair site, what was he going to pay for the city’s land, I continued to ask.

Falanga did the fandango.

Here he was bald-facedly expecting me to believe that he shouldn’t have to pay for a site overlooking the lake because he couldn’t – or wouldn’t - deal for a site overlooking St. Clair and the side of the Marriott hotel.

Falanga – who one Councilman credited with a good poker face – gave me the poker face. He said that the County was paying the city $20 million for the convention center, indicating that that covered the price where his business was going to go.

Apparently, that’s what MMPI has wiggled itself into and seems to be making progress convincing City Council and the Frank Jackson administration.

MMPI told Council that it couldn’t deal with land owners at St. Clair and Ontario. They were asking too high a price. These properties were needed to build the medical mart as part of the deal for a new convention center. Falanga said that the price of $17 million was too much. Two representatives of the owners at the meeting said after that MMPI had not negotiated with the owners. One said MMPI had made two telephone calls to his client. Another said MMPI offered $800,000 to one parcel owner and the owner countered with $6-million. But there was no dickering. No counter offer. They just walked away.

Council members were worried about the future use of Public Hall. Three, unfortunately, pressed County Administrator Jim Mc Cafferty? to press the County Commissioners to extend the sale tax increase voted to fund this project.

Council members Brian Cummins, Mike Polensek and Matt Zone asked that the quarter percent sale tax increase be extended five more years beyond the 20 years the Commissioners voted. That would bring in more than $100 million. Mc Cafferty? said that the Commissioners had extended themselves as far as they would on the sales tax.

The idea that Cleveland would allow a private business to build a Medical Mart on public land at no cost and violate the Group Plan for government buildings going back to the start of the last Century attest to how corrupting and indifferent our governing bodies have become.

It’s likely unthinkable that any city administration would even consider allowing a private business to occupy that Mall space.

This is what Harper’s Weekly said of the Cleveland plan back in 1904:

“Probably no city in the country, outside the capital, has undertaken the systematic development of public architecture and parkage (parks) on so splendid a scale as has the city of Cleveland…. (The creation of the Group Plan Commission is) the most significant forward step in the matter of municipal art taken in America. It is comparable to the designs of Napoleon III, who remade Paris… or to the prescience of Jefferson, who called to the aid of the new government a distinguished architect in the laying out of the national capital on its present scale… Here is a city among the most radical in its democratic tendencies of any in the country courageously authorizing the expenditure of from ten to fifteen million in the development of an idea. It suggests a new conception of the municipality.”

And we’d ruin that for a so-called medical mart.

Clevelander Bill Gunlocke Has Something To Say

Clevelanders over the years have taken over the Yankees, the Knicks, the Nets, the Rangers, Madison Square Garden. If sports, why not the book industry. Well, not quite that ambitious but Bill Gunlocke who gave Cleveland the alternative paper The Edition, has started a blog and wonders if New York City is really a Book City.

Bill, who also ran a book store in The Arcade when was The Arcade, questions whether it’s true that N. Y. C. is the Book City. Maybe it’s Cleveland, he wonders.

Anyway, Bill has always had the ability to bring maybe a quirky, but wise and different view. It is what he brought to Cleveland with The Edition and I wish he was still here and not in New York.

His love of school kids comes through. It’s a passion that keeps him looking for a new way to inspire and provoke.

Take a look at his first blog entry here. You won’t be disappointed:

http://acityreader.blogspot.com

It's Fair Taxes for Honest City Revenue, Stupid

I haven’t read the 300 page plus consulting report on management and efficiency of Cleveland government and I probably won’t. I'll leave it to others.I know it won’t touch the one revenue source that Cleveland should tap if it had any concern for its citizens. It is out of the question. Won’t happen.

The so-called city income tax – the city’s largest revenue source by far - is really a payroll tax. It’s a tax on your wage income. It’s a regressive tax that takes from the first dollar someone earns. It’s a tax that hits people so poor that they don’t pay federal income taxes but must pay this tax. The feds at least tax somewhat progressively though the rich still get away with tax robbery.

If we really wanted a fair tax the so-called city income tax would be progressive. In other words, the guy who makes $150 a week would pay far less proportionally than the guy who makes $150 or $500 a day, or more.

It’s an obvious source of more revenue for cities. But it’s ignored. Why? Because wealthy people decide who gets taxed and by how much.

It’s legal theft calculatedly devised by professional hired thugs. Sometimes called lawyers or legislators.

Cleveland residents pay 2 percent on their earnings. If they work outside Cleveland and pay in the work community they may reduce the Cleveland tax by one-half, up to 1 percent. So, in other words, if they work in another city aside Cleveland they pay the 2 percent to the work community but get a half off Cleveland’s 2 percent.

So they pay 3 percent total. Someone who makes a lousy $10,000 has to fork over $300 to the city. That’s a paycheck and a half a week. A lot of money to a low income working stiff.

That’s a lot of money right off the top. No deductions. You pay on dollar number one. The city doesn’t care if you have heavy medical bills or other hefty expenses. Pay up. Now. In fact, before you take your pay home.

So it’s obvious if local government wants to raise revenue it should not go to unnecessary fees - increased sales taxes, catching people on minor traffic infraction and charging $100. THEY SHOULD GO WHERE THE MONEY IS. But they can’t seem to find the path.

Oh, that would be horrible, wouldn’t it? Taxing people with money. Outrageous.

When the County Commissioners – Tim Hagan, Jimmy Dimora and Peter Lawson Jones (who didn’t vote for it but has gone along, as usual, for the ride) - wanted to raise big money for a medical mart and convention center, they didn’t go where the big money people live, but went to the small money people. They increased the most regressive of taxes - a one-quarter percent sales tax hike. It has raised $74 million as of last month.

It hits the little people hardest. Another quarter-percent to someone making $100,000, or $400,000 as Joe Roman at Greater Cleveland Partnership does, means nothing to them. But the pennies to someone trying to get by, that can add up to pain. Sometimes more pain than they can take.

When Cuyahoga County, led by Hagan the Great White Liberal, wanted to raise funds for Gateway it didn’t go to those who HAVE money but to more sales taxes, so-called sin taxes on beer, cigarettes, wine and alcohol. And most heavily on cigarettes and beer. Plus, they charge sales tax on the sin tax!

When the city wanted to build Browns Stadium, Mayor White, the African-American liberal, came up with an 8 percent parking tax, added 2 percent admission tax, increased the tax on car rentals, and best of all, added a 10-year extension of the sin taxes ($58 million collected as of last month).

This is FAR greater a mugging than anything stolen by the political thieves now being pursued by the FBI. I wish they could go after the legal thievery. That’s where the real money is.

But it passes without even a hint that a robbery is in progress.

In fact, the Pee Dee promotes and propagandizes for these taxes without a hesitation or demands for an examination of other ways to pay for these projects. Unfortunately, the Pee Dee is the only major source of information for the public. That’s why it is so central to the ills we see.

So the public is essentially in the dark.

As an example, I wrote in 1995 when Council addressed the football stadium taxes, “The day council debated this issue for seven plus hours NOT ONE SINGLE MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC was present in the room.”

It’s not the first time. We have so little real citizenship here that it is no wonder that government is so bad.

But as usual the people who feed off government were much in attendance. I wrote: “The lineup was impressive. Tony Garofoli of Climaco, Climaco, Seminatore, Leftkowitz, told council what a good deal the legislation was. Garofoli, in this scheme, is the best representative for the city. After all, he had negotiated the Gateway leases at the stadium and the arena, both sweetheart deals for the team owners, and he had negotiated the sweetheart lease for Figgie (Chagrin Highlands), now in court… He’s got the perfect record of selling the citizen interests out.”

Who else was there?

“There was Joe Roman, executive director of Cleveland Tomorrow (now Greater Cleveland Partnership), the tail that wags city government. (He) had an entourage of professionals, including Bob Dykes, a political researcher and pollsters popular at city hall; Andy Juniewicz of Wm. Silverman, politically popular public relations firm, and testifying to what a good deal the city had before it was CT member and member of the mayor’s task force, Paul Carleton, managing director of Carleton, Mc Creary?, Holmes, another investment firm.

“Tim Offtermatt, former chief financial officer at Gateway (certainly a qualification for another smelly deal), now with A. G. Edwards, a broker and public finance firm, was there, along with Alan Baucco of the firm. The financial data presented was worked up by Paul Komlosi of Mc Donald? & Co., so you can expect that firm to be part of the deal.

“All the pros were there for their bite of the apple.”

So the average guy doesn’t stand a chance here or in Washington, D. C. because he’s absent in the decision-making.

But there should be no crisis in government funding – here or nationally – if only the rich are taxed fairly.

Can we make that happen? Just a little bit. A city income tax with a graduated tax to slightly even the score.

It would take Ms. Susan Goldberg and Mr. Terry Egger to use their front page headlines in the manner of selling Issue 6 to do that. Can we expect it? Tell me.

He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991.