Toledo council has vision, principle
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090807/OPINION03...
Imagine a business that's spending more than it makes, and whose customers are unhappy with the quality of the company's product and who are leaving to buy from competitors. An adviser recommends that the business raise prices and let product quality slide. Bad advice. Yet that's essentially the advice The Blade urges on Toledo City Council by criticizing council for failing to support the mayor's plan to fix the deficit by raising taxes.
Like this imagined business, Toledo spends more than it makes. Toledo's employee compensation packages are out of whack with Toledo's income and needs. Taxpayers are unhappy with services and are moving to suburbs. The poorer the neighborhood, the greater are the unmet needs.
The mayor has addressed the problem as did the imagined adviser. He negotiated compensation packages that ignore the long-term problem, half-way meet the short-term deficit, allow services to slide, and then he asks for new taxes to meet the rest of the short-term gap. Bad strategy.
Yet The Blade continually berates council for having demanded that the mayor should have forged a long-term solution that improves services and doesn't raise taxes. Admittedly, the mayor's wrongs can't be undone, and council now has to choose the course that will do the least harm. But council has been the one with vision and principle.
The issue The Blade should push is that the mayor's race is about who'll have the courage to stick up for Toledo's residents, not add new taxes, and work with city unions, like all America's surviving industries have done, to lower costs so that we can add police officers, help business create jobs, pave more streets, add youth programs, improve parks, tear down more nuisances, and free Toledo to thrive.
Peter R. Silverman
Barrington Drive
Ohmigosh, what commen sense Mr. Silverman, but the Blade will always only push issues that serves it's interests and the interests of who they control. But I applaud Mr. Silverman's letter!
".....None so blind as those that will not see. They have baffled their own consciences, and so they walk on in darkness.” ~~~Matthew Henry~~~
Raise the taxes. It's proven soooo well in the past that it's bound to work. Wait.... let's call it a "fee" so we can argue for it without laughing.
Will the last person in the city turn the lights out before they leave.
MikeyA