Adam Koehler for Commissioner

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
It's seven oh six here fifty fivekr CD talk station. I'm very happy
Friday Eve toys promised in studio.They return of Adam Keylor you can find
online at Adam Keller dot com.K O E H L E R.
Running for Hamilton County Commissioner and abetter alternative to these street house We do
have choices and we can make betterones, so I hope you can do
that in November. If you're notfamiliar with Adam, you want to see
where he is on the issues andpolicies, then please head her to Adam

(00:22):
Keller dot com. He's been onthe program many times and he has he
been a Cincinnati resident, a Cityof CINCINNAI resident for hell, practically my
whole life, Yeah, outside ofgoing to school in Pittsburgh, which was
you know. I had a bigBengal sticker on the back of my car
there and they broke into it twice. It actually made me love Cincinnati more.
Bron I need to spend it allthe time. My wife grew up

(00:44):
about an hour outside of Pittsburgh,so of course I married then a Steelers
fan. I think she's come around, but I understand that it's a it's
a fun rivalry, so we don'tever come to blows over that. But
I understand, but an event becausebecause you running for county comissioner of the
city since any within the county,so a lot of the issues overlap.
But because you're a longtime resident ofthe city and you are astute observer of

(01:06):
matters political, and you have someunique insight on these things. It's the
Cincinnati's Futures Commission report that came out, and I had Sharon Coolidge on the
program because she's been reporting on thisin the enquire among others. The commission
said that the city has a fourhundred and thirty eight million dollar deficit over
the next ten years and the pensionsystem is going to fail without major changes

(01:26):
they're supposed to. I mean,is, as I understand the report,
sixty million dollars a year every yearuntil twenty forty two that they'd have to
put into write the pension system.It's amazing, Brian, I mean,
it's this is the overall report.I mean, this is a long report.

(01:49):
This is a seventy page report thatCherry had had to get together.
Yeah, and Cherry's one of thebest, I mean, one of the
best in the city at explaining what'sgoing on in the city and what's happening.
I mean, if it wasn't forif it wasn't for her and some
other people, I mean, wewould be in the dark about a lot
of this stuff. Yeah, Iknow, And I still, in spite
of the fact that she does greatwork, I still feel like we're in
the dark on most everythings. Haveyou ever seen any reporting about what's going

(02:14):
on hamilch uinty commissioners or what they'redoing or saying, or any I mean
there's any quotes from any of them. I mean, it's the silence from
the commissioners are deafening. But thesame thing kind of goes for since any
city council. You know, Purvalloves to come out and make grandiose statements
and platitudes and all that, butyou never hear anything from the council members
or rarely, and if you do, it's you know, Sharon's the one
that's usually reporting on it. Butback to this commission report. This this

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report, these conclusions, the recommendationsfrom the CINCINNTI Futures Commission total seven hundred
and twenty eight million dollars. Yeah, yeah, that's in terms of spending
taxes, moving money around, andselling things like the Cincinnati water works because
they think that's going to generate enoughmoney to write the pension system. So

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that's sort of reminded me of sellingoff the railroad in order to fix the
current problems with infrastructure. We've dugourselves so deep into a hole that we're
going to sell the one lasting,guaranteed, long term return investment, which
is the railroad. Yeah. God, Brian, they're gonna be selling the
ducks down at Mount Airy Forest heresoon to the restaurants, just so they

(03:21):
can make some money. I mean, this is Yea, it looks so
this is. These are the kindof things that they're doing that just keep
digging us into a hole. Haveyou ever heard of anybody like leaving Cincinnati
because the taxes were higher somewhere else. I've never heard. I've never heard
anybody say that, right, I'veonly heard people say, look, I
can't deal with this anymore. I'mgetting out of here. And as somebody
who's lived here my entire life,I want Hamilton County to do better.

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I want Hamilton County to grow,And they claim this plan is going to
grow the city and people are goingto come back to the city, I
believe, and a lot of otherpeople believe the opposite is actually going to
happen. Right, Nobody ever movesto a place because the taxes are higher.
You see that nationally, places likeTennessee with no state tax, Florida
no state tax, Miami doesn't evenhave a city tax. You could go

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to Miami and don't have a cityor state tax. And contrast those with
Chicago. The state of Illinois,it's one of the most underwater states in
the Union, and it's one ofthe highest taxes states, and it's one
of arguably, since I live there, I can define it as one of
the most corrupt states. But youknow, they're so underfunded that there's just

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it's like a virtual or literal impossibilityfor them to clim out from under it.
And look how many citizens Illinois haslost over the years, and how
many people have fled the city ofChicago. High taxes, poor services,
high crime, and an insurmountable financialhurdle. Well we're in an insurmountable financial
hurder here, I would say,And I don't think the rail deal helped
at all. You're apparently making accordingto UBS, you're making six and a

(04:50):
half percent on that rail money,right, this is what they claim.
Well right now, well, halfof it is in treasuries. The other
half is in ETFs, which you'repaying them to put money into ETFs,
which have their own fees. You'repaying these guys to manage it something that
you and I could put together.The other half is in fixed income.
Well, Brian, fixed incomes payingalmost five percent right now, maybe even

(05:12):
over five percent. What happens whenthat goes back down to one half percent,
Well that's six and a half thatthey claim, we're Getton's eventually going
to go back to five and ahalf to pay for things steal concrete,
asphalt, union labor. That inflatesit eight percent. Then out of that
five percent, you have to taketwo of that and put it back into
the trust every year. Right,So you've got trust too. That's an

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important part. See this is whyI like haming you on the program,
because that you reminded me of thatcomponent. One of the obligations under this
deal was you must reinvest some ofthat money so you can maintain the tra
from what you are feeding every year. That's so you've got to automatically take
that off. So that's not goingto even be available as to use as
an expen expend for expenses during theyear. We already screwed up on that.

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You know, the voters, youknow they did, they listened to
the six million dollars in commercials thatwere put out there, but they believe
the poverty pimps. Right, thisis what I call them, the poverty
pimps. Right. You hear onepoint six billion, You think, oh,
wow, that's a lot of money. Well no, no, no,
you guys got to understand this moneyin this pool is losing its buying
power. If you're only putting twopercent back into this trust every year to

(06:20):
pay for things that historically inflate ateight percent, then it's losing six percent
of its buying power every single yearuntil that money's worthless. This is what
we're dealing with, Brian And Okay, So Michael Beck I wanted to bring
this up. Michael Beck, hebrought up this truth in accounting. It's
a nonprofit group called Cincinnati A sinkWhole City. A sink whole City says

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it's Cincinnati's taxpayer burden is now sixtyseven hundred dollars, So every citizen of
Cincinnati would have to come up withsixty seven hundred dollars to get Cincinnati back
on track. And it received ad from this nonprofit group of accountants.
You know, we're getting this committeetogether, right, that's a bunch of
local people. Multimillionaires, so HydePark folks and you know people from Indian

(07:11):
Hill, multimillionaires some of these guys, right yeah, And they're telling us,
oh, you should, you shouldjust go ahead and take this l
right now. And I you know, as I mentioned to a caller this
morning, Bobby, who brought thatup? And I'm willing to give them
the benefit of doubt. I don'tknow how they were appointed. I don't
know how the group came together.But if you are a successful entrepreneur,
if you have grown successfully private businessand industry, and you know how to

(07:35):
make money and maximize the return oninvestments and cut waste and cut fraud and
lean things out to improve the organization, you have a skill set that might
be very valuable when analyzing how thecity works. Because we all know cities
don't make money, they just consumetax dollars. So you can take a
look at any given cost center,as business executives do, like the legal

(07:58):
departments, they're lost leaders. Theyjust eat money, they don't make money,
and we just have to deal withthis. At Anthem. We're a
cost center. You're either you're eithersome an entity that makes money within a
business or you're one that draws dollarsand so everything in government draws dollars down.
But there are ways of ferret outthe abuse and lean things out.
So I'm willing to give some ofthem the benefit of the doubt, even
tho they don't live in the cityof Cincinnati, that they have some level

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of expertise to make recommendations, whichthey did. The question is, as
you point out, even if thesewould work down the road, you're gonna
have to wait a long time forit to happen. In the meantime,
you're raising the cost of living inthe city of Cincinnati. You are now
paying for garbage where you didn't payfor it before, you're now paying higher
income tax. And the result ofthe way they want to jockey this money

(08:45):
around, they claim and the endwill make the city a much more viable
place, a much more desirous destination. But that's there's a lag time on
that on the rail money. Imean, you go, you got a
year you're not getting money. Thenon top of that, the money has
to build up, right, AndI don't know if you've seen the stock
market recently and what's coming out ofthe Fed, but they're not lower in

(09:07):
interest rates anytime soon. I mean, the the cor inflation was up from
estimates. It was supposed to comein at three point three, three point
four based on some essemates, cameinto three point five. So then you
had Chairman Powell come out and say, hey, we're not lower in interest
rates anytime soon. What did thatdo to the stock market? Brian?
They were anticipating two rate cuts thisyear. Good luck with least. Good

(09:28):
luck with that. So now interestrates are going to be higher. Thirty
year mortgage is up over you know, seven and a half percent. Nobody
can buy houses. Rent's gone throughthe roof. This is a disaster and
a lot of it ties back tothese COVID policies that you know, which
side of the aisle decided to institutesome of these things. Well, and

(09:48):
we got a lot of COVID moneythat came into the city. Whatever happened
to it, not anymore and inthe since A public schools, they're you
know, they're going to be shortI think sixty million dollars or something they
were getting a year from from theCOVID money. What are they going to
do? They're already in trouble.People are fleeing like rats on a sinking
ship. They're fleeing Cincinni public schoolsare taking their kids out of there.

(10:11):
I mean, we've got some hugeproblems in this city, bro. So
they can use less money, fewerstudents and less need for money p nineteen
thousand dollars a student right now,brin pause, We'll bring Adam killer ac
clinement online Adam Kayler ko e hl e r dot com. Pause,
and let me mention a way tosave money and get better services an alternative

(10:31):
Adam Keller dot com ko e hl e rs where you find Adam's website
for that one. We're talking aboutthe the since Any Futures Commission Report,
which involves raising income taxes, sellingoff pretty much any kind of property that's
not nailed down, golf courses,the Sinseai Water District. They think there's
enough money in that water district sellto to dig us out of the pension
hole of hundreds of millions of dollars, but that will result in a higher

(10:56):
water rate for the city of sincea residents who currently enjoy a discount over
we hear out in the county whoare basically subsidizing the city residence water consumption,
so they can kiss that one goodbye. They can also the residents kiss
free garbage collection goodbye, because theywant to charge every resident what fifteen and
change unless you're on life's margins andthen you only get charged seven to sixty

(11:18):
a month. People won't like that, and the concern is that will result
in a lot more garbage being justthrown out on the street or something because
people won't pay the bill. Idon't know. I already stand garbage as
a problem in the city. Itook a picture of a pile of garbage
the other day. It was justconstruction waste. There's a couch, there's
you know, homeless people kind oflive behind the pile, and it's just

(11:39):
it's a mess. I named itthe pile. So it's just right by
one of the city parks. Irun by it every day and I go,
I'm going to name this thing thepile. I'm going to see how
big this thing gets. Yeah,I'll call three one one to have them
come out, but it takes,you know, weeks for them to come
out. They got Yeah, thatworks as well. It's all the popole
right, Oh yeah, get theapp for the potholes. It just keeps
getting bigger because now you've got abroken window afect. Right, you see

(12:00):
trash, you throw more trash down. I was out running up Vine Street
yesterday. I get to the youknow, the shady part of Vine Street
where everything's closed down, where youknow Tucker's restaurant was, and all that
just trash everywhere, trash all overthe street. There's a garbage can sitting
right there, but there's trash allaround it, Like you see that.
We that's the problem now when there'salready free garbage pickup. Yeah yeah,

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and now imagine if you got topay for it now, well that happens
after that. Like because I thoughtfifteen dollars and thirty cents a month per
household was eminently reasonable. Because Isay all the time, I embraced Rumky.
I think they're fantastic. Where inthe hell would we be without Rumky?
Right, So I get a Rumkybill. I'm happy to pay it.
Just go ahead. They could doubleit as far as I'm concerned,
and please Rumky don't do that,but keeh don't. But I mean,

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it's such an important thing to getrid of the tracks. Well, if
you want people to move to yourcity, it came trashy, right,
you can't trash laying off over theplace. I think overall what Sherry came
up with was around three hundred dollarsper taxpayer. This would cost everybody,
yeah, per year. And here'sthe problem, Brian. They think they
can constantly solve problems by raising taxes. The solution to everything is raise taxes

(13:09):
or sell off our assets like theydid the railroad. Brian. Eventually you
run out of things to sell.What's next? What are they going to
lead us down the path of thecity's gonna own nothing. And you know
these are all Democrats that we're workingwith. You're supposed to be four public
ownership of assets, right, butnow they want to privatize things. The

(13:31):
people that voted for them did notvote for this, right, This is
not what they are for. Andnow they want to, according to the
to the Commission report, create essentiallywhat is a marketing department under the city
manager. So if we're already inthe hole, Brian, why are we
adding more people to the government.Well, and don't they already have a

(13:52):
department that does that, right youalready Cincinnati, You've got the Chamber,
which you know they were for therail sale, which upset me about them.
But ready, Cincinnati does a greatjob. Cincinnati USA. Right,
website, you could go there,you could take a look at all this
information. They're trying to bring companieshere. And by the way, Brian,
you mentioned it earlier, people whobuild businesses. Right, You've got

(14:13):
a commission made up of people CEOs, folks like that. One thing that
drives me crazy about Cincinnati. Icome from the startup world. We built
a business, you know, fromscratch, three guys in a Panera bread
up in Clifton. Eventually grew thatbusiness to over twelve million dollars a year.
We sold it for over nine figures. We've hired thousands of people over

(14:33):
the years. A big tech companycame in and purchased our business, and
you brought attention to the region forstartups. Right. One problem is is
you always have this pool of peoplefrom these large companies around town that they
bring in and they say, hey, mentor these young people on how to
grow business. None of these peopleever grow business, Brian. They were

(14:54):
given a sixty million dollar budget fora brand or whatever that they worked on
when they come into the city.They've never grown anything. They got a
business degree and they were given ahuge business, already existing business. The
Future's Commission is kind of made upof those people. Yeah, right,
people are buildings from scratch. Sure, it'd be like me going to work
for P and G. Exactly alot of people built P and G before

(15:18):
I No, I know, Iknow this isn't criticism, but it just
illustrates the point you're making. Thefolks, as you suggest on this commission,
weren't the creators of business status.Were successful CEOs or higher ups within
successful businesses. And I know youlearn a lot being in that position.
I know you can come up withgreat ideas and identify problems and solutions.

(15:39):
But to your point, it's thepeople wet behind the ears who start out
with nothing and build something brand new. And that's the kind of better magnet
that you're read. That's right.I mean, you got people like Katie
Blackburn, like Mohler. You know, Blackburn's grandfather started, you know,
the Bengals in the NFL, andyou know, she kind of inherited this
business. And I'm sure she's learneda ton from owning an NFL franchise,

(16:02):
obviously, But these are not bootstrappeople. These are not people that are
going to come in and clean houseand say, look, why do we
have these departments in the city thatdo nothing and produce nothing? Why are
these things in the county that spend, spend, spend and produce nothing.
If you have a startup, youdon't throw money at things. You have

(16:22):
limited amounts of money, right,and every dollar has to be accounted for.
Every dollar has to produce two dollars. Right. We have one dollar
that we spend and it produces aquarter, if at all, if at
all, if anytimes say you're outthe dollar and projects, well, I'll
tell you we got to take abreak. I wish we could go longer

(16:44):
on this. We'll heavy back atthem, of course between now and November,
and Donovan and Neil for Americans forProspecty is going to be joining us
year after. In the next segment, How Spilled seventy nine, which involves
energy efficiency programs. That's coming upnext