Has The City Found New Ways To Rasie Taxes Without Us Voting On It?

[Jim O'Bryan]

As has been pointed out for nearly 4 years, City of Lakewood broke the city in more ways than one, in an effort to move massive public assets into the hands of friends of the Mayor. Because we have lost our largest and best employer, our medical security future, and cause irreparable damage by selling off assets for pennies if not giving them away. Is the City Administration now desperately looking for ways to get more $$$$$$ from the residents, as it would appear businesses are not stepping up?

As we pointed out 7 years ago, When a bag of Lays Potato Chips cost $2.00 for 16 oz. and now cost $2.00 for 12 oz. the price just went up. One can say they still cost $2.00 but less for the same amount is a price hike.

The City of Lakewood has achieved this through various ways, cutting staff and service crews. Cutting back on police and fire through retirement. Getting rid of backyard trash pick up, and soon going to privatized trash pick up, and now it would appear through water rate hikes. All forms of taxation without representation.

Will the Schools follow suit, if they haven't already?

Time to replace elected management on all levels, if they will not come clean with documents and truthful explanation, we have no option but to replace them with people who will.

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[Mark Kindt]

As has been pointed out for nearly 4 years, City of Lakewood broke the city in more ways than one, in an effort to move massive public assets into the hands of friends of the Mayor. Because we have lost our largest and best employer, our medical security future, and cause irreparable damage by selling off assets for pennies if not giving them away. Is the City Administration now desperately looking for ways to get more $$$$$$ from the residents, as it would appear businesses are not stepping up?

As we pointed out 7 years ago, When a bag of Lays Potato Chips cost $2.00 for 16 oz. and now cost $2.00 for 12 oz. the price just went up. One can say they still cost $2.00 but less for the same amount is a price hike.

The City of Lakewood has achieved this through various ways, cutting staff and service crews. Cutting back on police and fire through retirement. Getting rid of backyard trash pick up, and soon going to privatized trash pick up, and now it would appear through water rate hikes. All forms of taxation without representation.

Will the Schools follow suit, if they haven't already?

Time to replace elected management on all levels, if they will not come clean with documents and truthful explanation, we have no option but to replace them with people who will.

.

Mr. O'Bryan, we must trust the ballot box to elect a new slate of council-members in 2019 committed to honestly, accountability, transparency, and municipal reform.

Now, looking back on the Fall of 2014, we know how terrible the policy choice really was:

The City of Lakewood was awarded the renewal of its NPDES permit for its wastewater system in September 2014 that mapped-out new compliance obligations, previously understood by the city administration to be in the tens of millions of dollars (if not hundreds of millions of dollars) range in implementation costs.

About the same time period, the Mayor of Lakewood declined to negotiate with Metro Health System over its proposal to run Lakewood Hospital and invest $100,000,000 in the hospital over 10 years. Instead, the hospital was liquidated and most of its funds and assets were (or will be) conveyed to private parties. This included the abandonment of long-term lease revenues and employee income tax revenues.

On one hand the City's cost are piling-up, yet on the other hand we witnessed the most extraordinary give-away in the City's history.

I have described the loss of the hospital as a debacle. Now, I will have to begin to use the word "travesty".

I would never have ever believed any of this, if I hadn't lived through it.

[Jim O'Bryan]

About the same time period, the Mayor of Lakewood declined to negotiate with Metro Health System over its proposal to run Lakewood Hospital and invest $100,000,000 in the hospital over 10 years. Instead, the hospital was liquidated and most of its funds and assets were (or will be) conveyed to private parties. This included the abandonment of long-term lease revenues and employee income tax revenues.

On one hand the City's cost are piling-up, yet on the other hand we witnessed the most extraordinary give-away in the City's history.

I have described the loss of the hospital as a debacle. Now, I will have to begin to use the word "travesty".

I would never have ever believed any of this, if I hadn't lived through it.

Mark

And soon the music stops, the chairs go on the table and someone is going to have to pay the bill.

What you are told you are witnessing is a much loved local high school football hero that has a tremendous business background.

When the truth is a good for Lakewood Football player, no chance at the pros, and his greatest accomplishment was liquidating the family business.

A City that lives on romantic legends not facts.

They go after a man in black face in Halloween costume, while ignoring the real racists, misogynists, xenophobes with multiple convictions for those acts.

They tar and feather men fighting in court for their public records, while protecting the people that lied to them and just sold the future for some magic beans.

Do I hear the band packing up?

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[Mark Kindt]

Let me quote the city administration in answer to the question posed in your subject heading:

"While considering these new solutions we must not lose focus on the need to maintain investments in our current 2nd-century infrastructure plans. These plans involve improving our drinking water infrastructure, streets, century-old homes, parks and pools, and city buildings and equipment. The goal is to have an integrated plan that can combine multiple projects with investments in the sewer system."

(See, "Lakewood Life, A Report from City Hall, Fall 2018".)

So we can see that the increased water/sewer rates might have to cover two "plans":

1. The Integrated Wet Weather Improvement Plan (the sewer-related improvements), and

2. An integrated plan that can combine multiple projects with investments in the sewer system.

We are being faced with a 5-year rate increase that appears to include expenditures outside of those required by either a federal consent order or a 2019 NPDES permit renewal.

Alternatively, the "multiple projects" in Point No. 2 could be paid for out of current tax revenues or increased future tax revenues.

The newsletter does not identify the dollar value (or even a range of dollar values) for these "off-book" unfunded federal mandates or future "multiple projects" costs.

Is it $1.00? Is it $300,000,000? Who knows?

[Mark Kindt]

More Information on the City Website

http://www.onelakewood.com/cleanwaterlakewood/

Lots of interesting photos too!

We did have a rate hike in 2018.

I'm sure we will learn more about potential compliance costs as the City completes its negotiations for its 2019 permit renewal period.

The figure of $274,000,000 is featured prominently in the mayor's October 1st letter to city council as the cost to implement "an engineering plan that will capture and treat substantially all water in dry and wet weather circumstances (as described in "A Note From Mayor Mike Summers" on the front page of the recent newsletter.)

[Jim O'Bryan]

The figure of $274,000,000 is featured prominently in the mayor's October 1st letter to city council as the cost to implement "an engineering plan that will capture and treat substantially all water in dry and wet weather circumstances (as described in "A Note From Mayor Mike Summers" on the front page of the recent newsletter.)

ark

While I applaud the Mayor for at least finally letting residents know, after destroying Lakewood's economy City Hall needs basically $300,000,000 dollars. It is something that has been a subject on the Deck since 2006. Through most of that the message from City Hall was, they are not correct.

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[Mark Kindt]

The Oxymoronic World of Public Relations

Putting on my gadfly hat for a moment, here are a few gadfly comments on the world of municipal public relations.

In Lakewood, "Healthcare Transformation" means demolishing your hospital for the construction of upscale town-homes.

In Lakewood, "Clean Water" means organizing the civic leadership to protect continued sanitary sewer overflow discharges into Lake Erie.

But, Mr. O'Bryan, none of this is a problem, because the trusty taxpayers and ratepayers can handle any mistake that the city administration can make.

So what do you think "Resiliency" is a code word for?

[Mark Kindt]

"The Regulators"

The Ohio EPA and the U.S. EPA are not the bad guys here.

The City of Lakewood has had 45 years to comply with the Clean Water Act and, in fact, could have been a leader in pioneering the mitigation of storm-water run-off and waste-water discharge to Lake Erie.

Postponing this effort did nothing but increase the ultimate financial costs of implementation. Postponing compliance to future permits will have the same effect. Future engineered infrastructure is likely to be more expensive.

The City of Lakewood has a duty to comply with the law.

But that's exactly the problem that we've been writing about now for years.

In a very serious sense, the city administration seems convinced that it only has to comply with the laws that advance its agenda, but not the rest of them.

More on municipal reform in coming posts.