By Roldo Bartimole
Wonder if you gave all Cleveland homeowners 100 percent tax abatements on their homes - instead of just new condos and houses - would the school tax have passed.
Wonder if Barbara Byrd Bennett had told people before the recent levy loss, this is so important to the children that I’m going to make a sacrifice: I’ll pay full property taxes rather than take my tax abatement on my home. Would the tax levy have passed?
What if BBB had said, this is so crucial to the children in my charge that I am going to return $100,000 of this year’s salary. They need it more than I do. Would the tax levy have passed?
Would people respond to self-sacrifice by those who would be hurt very little by giving something up?
This society asks little of those in positions of power. They are asked no major sacrifices. However, those same people expect others will always make up the difference and fill the breach.
This has become the essence of our corporatized society.
We have seen the ultimate in that crucial divide in this community in the past week with the useless waste of young men in Iraq. The President, to make the contrast as bleak as it is, was enjoying summer vacation in Texas.
One knows that BBB’s salary or taxes would not make up the difference in the financial needs of the Cleveland school system. However, ask for sacrifice, give some. Show leadership. Show the willingness to participate in the real cost.
The thrust of the levy campaign signals just how myopic the leadership of Cleveland has become.
The attempt to run a campaign under the radar not only didn’t work, it has fractured the community – east side, west side - even if the figures aren’t that clear.
The Plain Dealer, which participated in this shady charade for the most part, failed to cover the campaign seriously. There was one very good Sunday piece by Sandra Livingston, Janet Okoben and Scott Stephens that gave an excellent rundown and balanced accounting of the operations of the schools here. However, the one-day articles, comprehensive as they are, can be quickly forgotten. Only the daily drip of coverage penetrates the public’s busy mind.
There was a failure, however, in everyday coverage of the levy. A failure to explain the issues. For example, I still don’t understand why a $46 million levy would only bring back 100 teachers. Maybe I did not pay close enough attention.
Campaigns, however, are meant to examine all the issues and at least get answers to questions on the table for discussion. Campaign coverage is supposed to provide the information a public needs to make decisions in a democracy.
(The Plain Dealer ran a fact-short article on the candidates filing of donations recently. Why, in this day, doesn’t the PD print on its website a complete accounting of all or all major contributions to each candidate? Then the public can get a picture of what business interest are backing what candidates. Similarly, although the PD blamed certain wards of not voting for the school levy, why hasn’t it printed the exact vote of each 21 wards? Is that too much to expect from the city’s monopoly newspaper?)
Maybe this goes back to the Plain Dealer’s backing of mayoral control of the schools with a school board that also operates under the radar. The same quality is attached to the PD coverage of this year’s mayoral election to say nothing of 21 Council races. The PD doesn’t like any of the candidates. (Who does?). Therefore, we’re a couple of months away from the primary election and little has been written about the candidates and what they are doing, what they are saying. I haven’t read it yet but several bloggers got together to interview one of the candidates and put it on a web site. Where’s the Plain Dealer?
The Plain Dealer is failing in its prime function – to provide enough information about important matters for people in a democracy to form reasoned opinions and to foster public debate. The PD seems to want a detached public.
Having denied public participation in the schools, it’s apparent that the powers that be don’t appreciate the fact that in the end some public assent is required.
(Interesting: The day after the vote, the Convention Facilities Authority canceled its August meeting. Why would you think that happened? CFA members obviously need time to figure out how they can squeeze the public of tax subsidies while schoolchildren at left adrift. Could it be that the school levy loss denies the CFA the easy ability to go for another tax? Would the County Commissioners be less likely, for example, to add a non-voted one-half percent sales tax for a new convention center, depleting the ability to meet future financial problems of the County? It does make one think a bit more carefully.)
Cleveland continues to falter badly. Yet it continues to stalk the same worn track. Having given away tax revenue with abatements and property tax exemptions (the Free Times’ Charu Gupta reported last week that tax exemptions (rip-offs) for the three sports facilities alone have hit $16.5 million a year), now the Campbell administration wants to give away 25 percent of income tax revenue for those who locate downtown. What a failing policy!
The Plain Dealer did print as good an assessment of Cleveland’s problems as it could July 19 by Tom Bier of Cleveland State’s Urban Affairs department. Then essentially ignored it. Bier, canary-like, has been warning for a long time about Cleveland’s inability or unwillingness to face its problems.
“It’s now apparent that big ticket items such as Gateway and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum cannot generate the needed milieu.” Bier was speaking of creating a workable, attractive city. (So what’s top of the corporate agenda: another big-ticket item – a convention center.)
Bier also says what the city should be doing.
“It takes unrelenting determination to achieve competitive attractiveness. And it takes investment, primarily public monies for landscaping, mini-parks, public art, new sidewalks and curbs, street cleaning, weed-pulling, parking facilities and hidden infrastructure (sewer, water) upgrades.” He does add, “And some subsidies for business.”
What I get out of his thrust is that city government should do the things that city governments traditionally have done to provide for public safety and health.
However, going back to the days of urban renewal, cities have continued to take on a role that they are not suited or capable of accomplishing. Too many public and non-profit institutions are mimicking a corporate culture agenda, pushed by foundations and corporate-created institutions. Cities are not supposed to be pursuing profit making, but are meant to provide and maintain the public good.
Bier doesn’t mention specifically fire, safety and health, but they should be the prime tasks of city government, not helping build hotels, stadiums and new condominium complexes.
The past 30 years or more, the public sector’s mindset has been on economic development, of which little has taken place without heavy public subsidy, draining resources from what the city should be doing.
One still looks at Public Square where there sits a parking lot where a number of buildings, filled with tenants, stood in 1989. At that time, Cleveland gave 20-year tax abatements and 20-year no interest grants to Dick Jacobs for Key Center and the Marriott, which were constructed.
Jacobs got the same deal for a bank building and hotel on the west side of Public Square. They were never built. Why? The city gave the same tax breaks as to the other development. Yet it remains a parking lot because the market, not the subsidies, determined the outcome.
Finally, what effect will this have on the mayoral election?
It would seem to hurt Campbell most since she’s the mayor and is supposed to have control of the schools. Her main opponent Council President Frank Jackson also supported the levy but didn’t have the same responsibility.
Jackson, as the prime opposition, however, hasn’t been able to gain traction. He continues to appear aloof, unable to change from his natural inclination of the lone, silent warrior.
This provides an opening for someone who can breach the loss of confidence of the Cleveland public. An issue to ride: tax equity and justice. Dare anyone challenge the corporate/foundation agenda of feeding developers rather than taking care of neighborhoods and constituents? I don’t think so. I don’t see that kind of courage out there.
A note of personal privilege: Many old issues of Point of View, a publication I wrote for years, are available at the Bookstore on West 25th Street. They represent a view of Cleveland politics and media over the years 1968-2000, and some interesting rummaging if I say so myself.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole RoldoAtAdelphia.net
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