Toledo's negative momentum - December 2015

Bad signs about Toledo.

http://jothut.com/cgi-bin/junco.pl/blogpost/63556/19Nov2015/Tt-post-nov-19-2015-d

Under the mayor's proposal, the city’s general fund will be balanced next year by a razor-thin margin by nearly doubling what Toledoans pay monthly for trash collection, pushing back the hiring of new police officers and firefighters, and taking more than $10 million out of the fund used for street repaving.

http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2015/11/30/Toledo-could-turn-to-tax-hike-request-for-road-repairs.html

Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson proposed a 2016 general budget earlier this month that likely leaves nothing for residential street repaving and not enough for commercial thoroughfares. Like her two mayoral predecessors, she will be taking millions next year from the fund designated for street repair and instead use that money to pay for things such as police and fire salaries.

Without enough money to repave enough streets, or even fill potholes properly and do preventative maintenance such as crack sealing, some councilmen are calling on the mayor to ask voters for an income tax increase. The mayor is non-committal on the controversial idea for at least another week or so.

The city has a per­ma­nent 1.5 per­cent pay­roll tax plus its tem­po­rary 0.75 per­cent in­come tax, which ex­pires on Dec. 31, 2016, un­less vot­ers re­new it again, as they have done for de­cades. One of her op­tions would be to in­crease that tem­po­rary tax to 1 per­cent, giv­ing the city a full 2.5 per­cent in­come tax.

“We want it on the March bal­lot,” Ms. Hicks-Hud­son said. “We are go­ing to look at ev­ery op­tion for what we need to do to reach the goal of fix­ing roads.”

If it got raised to 2.5 per­cent — the same rate as 20 other Ohio cit­ies, in­clud­ing Co­lum­bus — the ex­tra 0.25 per­cent would gen­er­ate an ad­di­tional $16 mil­lion for the city.

Coun­cil­man Theresa Ga­briel said a tax-in­crease re­quest should be placed on the bal­lot.

Doug Ste­phens, the city’s com­mis­sioner of en­gi­neer­ing ser­vices, said the need has al­ways been greater than the fund­ing avail­able. He’s tasked with fix­ing roads, but he is not sure how ad­di­tional money, if any, would be al­lo­cated.

A pay­roll tax in­crease could have a chill­ing ef­fect on busi­ness, said Dan Navin, as­sis­tant vice pres­i­dent of tax and eco­nomic pol­icy for the Ohio Cham­ber of Com­merce.

“I think it would make a city less com­pet­i­tive for busi­ness in­vest­ment and jobs,” Mr. Navin said. “I would say most of the 600 plus cit­ies across the state are be­low 2 per­cent and [in Toledo] you also have stiffer com­pe­ti­tion from the cit­ies in the state of Mich­i­gan and In­di­ana.”

Mr. Navin said Toledo also faces com­pe­ti­tion from nearby town­ships that are not sub­ject to city in­come taxes.

In ad­di­tion to a pay­roll tax in­crease, the mayor and coun­cil could ask vot­ers to let the city dig into prop­erty own­ers’ pock­ets with a new prop­erty tax.

If Ms. Hicks-Hud­son and coun­cil de­cide to ask vot­ers for a prop­erty tax, it would have to be at least 6 mills to gen­er­ate the same kind of cash an ex­tra 0.25 per­cent added to the pay­roll tax would raise.

Janet Schroeder, city spokes­man, said 1 mill would gen­er­ate about $2.8 mil­lion.

http://m.toledoblade.com/Politics/2015/12/08/Mayor-seeks-income-tax-hike-for-roads.html

http://m.toledoblade.com/Politics/2015/12/08/Mayor-Benefits-of-increasing-tax-outweigh-costs.html

#toledo #politics #moronism