Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Like Sharon Coolidge from the Cincinnati Choir. Welcome back, Sharon, thanks for
following what's going on with this FuturesCommission report to the City of Cincinnati.
Good to have you back on theMorning Show. Good morning. Well,
I saw your advanced article about theyou know, impending Tuesday session to talk
about the Futures Commission. What canbe done, when can't be done.
(00:21):
They're going to go over the proposals. They're going to be talking about what's
achievable and what's not. And ofcourse that meeting went forward and what we
walk away with is at least theywant to increase the earnings tax. Now
I don't get it. The pointwas, I guess, to grow the
city's population, to get people wantingto invest in the City of Cincinnati,
to you know, write the sinkingship of the Cincinnati's budget, however you
(00:43):
want to characterize it. My viewof increasing taxes is that repels people from
the idea of wanting to settle orotherwise invest in the city. What's your
take on that, Sharon. Youknow, the Futures Commission is a set
of twenty five recommendations and everything fromcost cutting to raising taxes to sharing services,
(01:10):
a lot of ideas, many we'veheard before in the past, but
kind of all put together, andit was very clear this is to be
taken as a whole. The businesscommunity said they would not support an earning
tax increase if it wasn't an allor nothing kind of thing. And what's
the very first thing we heard outof it, most of this is impossible
(01:32):
from the city manager. We're alreadydoing a bunch of it, and let's
raise taxes. That's what we heardat a meeting before they went on summer
break. Okay, so what Iread in your reporting sums up exactly what
I That's the conclusion you just readis exactly the way I read your reporting
on this. I so this thisI was an exercise in in in futility.
(01:59):
I guess I kind of wonder wherewe are on this. For people
who don't remember, the Future's Commissionis a group of outside you know,
noted notables, people in positions ofpower, professionals out there with business knowledge,
and they made all these recommendations thatyou put it out, twenty five
of them, which included the wayI summarize is it basically getting rid of
or otherwise selling everything that isn't naileddown, including the golf courses, leasing,
(02:23):
the lunk and airport, the CDG. You know all of this,
and I understand this, but theproblem we have is one of of decades
worth of underfunding. The pension systemis really one of the biggest elephants in
the room, is it not.I mean, I guess they said it
(02:45):
is. I haven't heard anything latelythat the pension system is other than this.
It's like super underwater, you know, where you hear about the pension
system and it really kind of comesto light that it's a problem from the
retirees. I haven't heard a peepa peep up until the Futures Commission is
like, this is dire and thisis a mat. Now. I'm not
(03:06):
saying that everything's perfect in the pensionsystem, but they really have kind of
up to the amount of money they'reputting in it. No pensions one hundred
percent funded. So yes, Ithink it's a problem. Do I think
our city's going to go away?Uh? If it isn't six no,
I don't, okay, But thepoint I do, I do want to
(03:28):
put something in context, please thatreally wasn't in the story. Uh,
And it's really kind of the contextis now really coming to light. This
meeting happened less than twenty four hoursafter Procter and Gamble said they were going
to move eight hundred to one thousandjobs out of the city to Mason.
(03:49):
To Masons. Yeah, correct,but everything's fine. We want to raise
the hearnings tax. We're doing everythingas we should. Good when we low
when Cincinnati, which had warning bythe way, if you go and you
look in the archives like I didin twenty twenty, Rocter and Gamble said,
(04:10):
h we're selling an office park.Uh okay, Well maybe I didn't
make that connection, but so issomebody's job to make the connection. If
you sell your buildings, where arethe people going. Well, turns out
they're going to Mason. Huh.And it wasn't even mentioned. Perhaps that
a more welcoming environment Mason. Well, certainly with taxes er going back to
(04:34):
my original point on raising the earningstax, like, ah, it's like
the exact opposite of what I thinkwould bring people in. H So that
the meeting was a lot. Imean, one of the recommendations in the
Futures Commission is to three high levelpeople. I mean, we're talking like
(04:55):
Steve Leaper type people in the citymanager's office and not do development as we've
done development the same old, same, although don't forget too the GE building
is basically empty. It has likesome subliesers in it. But that building
is supposed to be full of athousand jobs and a headquarters building and it's
(05:16):
not. And so that's a recommendation. We didn't hear that much about.
Like the city manager said she waslooking into it. So it's like we're
looking into doing better about economic development. Okay, sound good? Well,
and that's and that's the part Iread with with much interest. I mean
in your reporting in the enquire Again, Cincinnati dot com is where you find
(05:36):
Sharon's writing and all the reporting fromthe Cincinni Inquirers SINCINNTI dot com book market
I do and I subscribe. Commissionreport also recommended raising the city's earning tax
yer point one five percentage points,with the increase dedicated to spurring economic growth
and boosting public safety. And Iknow that we need more police officers.
The question is can you get anybodyto sign up for the job. I
(05:58):
presume the funding is their police officers, but how does this increase in earnings,
tax spur economic growth, well youknow it creates, it does there's
spending. So the money isn't justfor police and fire. It's also for
to create an economic development fund togive money to ready Cincinnati like a job
(06:19):
growth kind of accelerator and the Portof Greater Cincinnati, things that we already
have. But no, it wasno huge funding streams. I think the
number was one hundred million dollars.They want to give it over ten years.
And so some of the tax moneydoes go to like the jobs,
like, you know, can weready sites to bring people in? Can
(06:43):
we you know, lower these bigcompanies here all well, big companies are
leaving. But I just I haveto tell you. I'm going to tell
I love you guys, and Ireally don't put a lot of my opinions
as you know, and my stories. That's not my job. But I
will tell you something I did notdo. This meeting was at one o'clock
(07:04):
on Tuesday, and I had tobe done with work at five o'clock that
day. It's not usually true Iwork late, and I loved it.
I needed to be done. SoJeff grammerning a counsel and Jeff Grammerting.
Actually I wrote like about the bigideas several like and myself and Patricia Newberry
at the Inquirer like the Big Ideas, But I didn't do a point by
(07:27):
point on the twenty five different things. But Jeff Crammering did and he passed
out during the meeting. And Iwas going to put them all in the
story and then say the city managersaid this is you know, we're doing
this. This is a long termthing. We can't do this and like
point by point. But when Istarted to do that, seemingly I could
just write something out of a meeting, I didn't really think that the city
(07:49):
was doing everything. So I hadto stop doing the point by point that'll
come in a story later, justbecause I really couldn't take everything at face
value that was said in the meeting. Like I was like, oh,
no, it's gonna take way more. I don't you know. This isn't
what the teacher's commission meant. Didn'treally match up with what's being said here,
and so I was like, Istop that exercise and I'll be revisiting
(08:13):
it. The summer Well Council isnow on break. As you point out,
this was you know, that Iguess the last meeting of council before
the break, and I thought itwas rather interesting the deadline to put the
earnings tax increase on the ballot,which they must do. The citizens have
to actually vote this, sing votethis saying this end you reported that Cramerting
said that there would need to bea community conversation about the need and what
(08:35):
the money would cover before the Augustseventh deadline. That would require calling special
meetings and getting community engagement. Thissounds like something that they're going to try
to push through under cover of darknesswithout a community engagement like they have in
the past with other very important issuesand topics that the citizens would love to
chime in on. I just can'timagine the resumes I have special meetings.
(08:58):
When you canceled the last twos,you already are off two months. But
that's OK. But we're done withthe work. Remember the budget process was
like fourteen to twenty days somewhere inthere, which Jeff Kramering did say that
wasn't enough time to bet the budgetand he was very upset, although I
think he probably could have said somethingearlier and not at the very last second.
(09:20):
But that's fine, he's not wrong. But then they go ahead past
the budget and they cancel the lasttwo meetings. Is there no work to
be done at city Hall? Iguess not. Apparently not. Well,
it is a part time job,Sharon, and come on, it is
to be there. But then theyget off in the summer. It is.
And I will say, you know, they they work, you know,
(09:45):
I'm not just think that they don't. But when there's work in your
face to take off, yeah,you know, they're like, oh,
well, connected communities is really hard. Well oh yeah, then yeah,
sometimes your job is really hard.Yeah. True, you're gonna have to
go a little above and beyond thenorm of the job and get to actually
(10:05):
get something done. But as youpointed out, a lot of the projects
on there, like you said inyour reporting, sell one or all the
six golf courses. Well you pointout there's self funded. The sale proceeds
a venue. We have to goback to the golf program. Shared services
we did parking recreation departments. That'sup to the Cincinnati Parks and since II
Recreation Commission, they could get together, they could hammer things out. They
could share services, which would requiresome or both of them to actually agree
(10:28):
to pair back. The number ofindividuals working shared services necessarily means perhaps fewer
admin level folks. Maybe we've gotthe deck stacked a little high on management
side of things, looking at leastin the looking airport to since Northern Kentucky
International Airport. You point out thatinvolves federal regulations and complicated ones regionalize the
(10:50):
water system. This needs deep vettingand involves to the federal court oversight.
The one thing apparently they can accomplishwith taxpayer approval is the earnings tax incre
which Cameron said he's in favor of. So I'm not quite sure all this.
I do want to see let's putsome more context in things, and
I will put this all together inlike a big story later more context.
(11:11):
There's a lot of consternation right nowabout the property tax increase, the county
wide property increase. Now, I'mvery much of a person this is like
a state formula. It's sad,this is not something that the county auditor
can control. It's very there's aformula to this, and it has resulted
in a lot of property taxes skyrocketing. It is very hard to find
(11:37):
interview subjects that cry in interviews youknow, other than when you're doing something
really sad there. I have seenmultiple interviews by many news organizations in this
town where there are people breaking downin tears about mortgages. The county,
uh they have they switched a wholerental assistance program over to mortgage assistance to
(12:01):
try and help. Mark Jeffries andother counselman has put together a task force
and he suggested using a pot ofmoney that's kind of set aside for something
else to help with mortgage assistants becausethere's so much concern that people cannot afford
to stay and live in their homes. Well, I had gotten that is
a backdrop of what is happening here. Yeah. I had a woman named
(12:24):
Sarah Wolf on the program. She'sa Hamilton County activist regarding property taxes,
and there is a joint resolution inColumbus that they're considering which will cap property
tax increases to the lesser of fourpercent max or rate of inflation, So
we can, you know, maybeperhaps down the road, never get a
four hundred percent increase in our propertytax bill, which is causing seniors on
(12:45):
fixed incomes to get real concerned aboutwhether they've got to be able to stand
the places that they bought and paidfor. Crazy Sharon Coolidge since any inquire
online CINCINNTI dot com. I'll belooking forward to your follow up article breaking
down this in more detail. Sharedand I appreciate your spending the time and
listening to what was going on,and your your candor and your willingness to
come on the morning show to talkabout it. I always enjoy our conversations.
(13:11):
Thanks for having me. Take care, We'll talk soon. I hope
seven fifty five Care CD Talk StationUSA's premium Foam put my money where my
mouth is. I recommend and Ihave the
Like Sharon Coolidge from the Cincinnati Choir. Welcome back, Sharon, thanks for
following what's going on with this FuturesCommission report to the City of Cincinnati.
Good to have you back on theMorning Show. Good morning. Well,
I saw your advanced article about theyou know, impending Tuesday session to talk
about the Futures Commission. What canbe done, when can't be done.
(00:21):
They're going to go over the proposals. They're going to be talking about what's
achievable and what's not. And ofcourse that meeting went forward and what we
walk away with is at least theywant to increase the earnings tax. Now
I don't get it. The pointwas, I guess, to grow the
city's population, to get people wantingto invest in the City of Cincinnati,
to you know, write the sinkingship of the Cincinnati's budget, however you
(00:43):
want to characterize it. My viewof increasing taxes is that repels people from
the idea of wanting to settle orotherwise invest in the city. What's your
take on that, Sharon. Youknow, the Futures Commission is a set
of twenty five recommendations and everything fromcost cutting to raising taxes to sharing services,
(01:10):
a lot of ideas, many we'veheard before in the past, but
kind of all put together, andit was very clear this is to be
taken as a whole. The businesscommunity said they would not support an earning
tax increase if it wasn't an allor nothing kind of thing. And what's
the very first thing we heard outof it, most of this is impossible
(01:32):
from the city manager. We're alreadydoing a bunch of it, and let's
raise taxes. That's what we heardat a meeting before they went on summer
break. Okay, so what Iread in your reporting sums up exactly what
I That's the conclusion you just readis exactly the way I read your reporting
on this. I so this thisI was an exercise in in in futility.
(01:59):
I guess I kind of wonder wherewe are on this. For people
who don't remember, the Future's Commissionis a group of outside you know,
noted notables, people in positions ofpower, professionals out there with business knowledge,
and they made all these recommendations thatyou put it out, twenty five
of them, which included the wayI summarize is it basically getting rid of
or otherwise selling everything that isn't naileddown, including the golf courses, leasing,
(02:23):
the lunk and airport, the CDG. You know all of this,
and I understand this, but theproblem we have is one of of decades
worth of underfunding. The pension systemis really one of the biggest elephants in
the room, is it not.I mean, I guess they said it
(02:45):
is. I haven't heard anything latelythat the pension system is other than this.
It's like super underwater, you know, where you hear about the pension
system and it really kind of comesto light that it's a problem from the
retirees. I haven't heard a peepa peep up until the Futures Commission is
like, this is dire and thisis a mat. Now. I'm not
(03:06):
saying that everything's perfect in the pensionsystem, but they really have kind of
up to the amount of money they'reputting in it. No pensions one hundred
percent funded. So yes, Ithink it's a problem. Do I think
our city's going to go away?Uh? If it isn't six no,
I don't, okay, But thepoint I do, I do want to
(03:28):
put something in context, please thatreally wasn't in the story. Uh,
And it's really kind of the contextis now really coming to light. This
meeting happened less than twenty four hoursafter Procter and Gamble said they were going
to move eight hundred to one thousandjobs out of the city to Mason.
(03:49):
To Masons. Yeah, correct,but everything's fine. We want to raise
the hearnings tax. We're doing everythingas we should. Good when we low
when Cincinnati, which had warning bythe way, if you go and you
look in the archives like I didin twenty twenty, Rocter and Gamble said,
(04:10):
h we're selling an office park.Uh okay, Well maybe I didn't
make that connection, but so issomebody's job to make the connection. If
you sell your buildings, where arethe people going. Well, turns out
they're going to Mason. Huh.And it wasn't even mentioned. Perhaps that
a more welcoming environment Mason. Well, certainly with taxes er going back to
(04:34):
my original point on raising the earningstax, like, ah, it's like
the exact opposite of what I thinkwould bring people in. H So that
the meeting was a lot. Imean, one of the recommendations in the
Futures Commission is to three high levelpeople. I mean, we're talking like
(04:55):
Steve Leaper type people in the citymanager's office and not do development as we've
done development the same old, same, although don't forget too the GE building
is basically empty. It has likesome subliesers in it. But that building
is supposed to be full of athousand jobs and a headquarters building and it's
(05:16):
not. And so that's a recommendation. We didn't hear that much about.
Like the city manager said she waslooking into it. So it's like we're
looking into doing better about economic development. Okay, sound good? Well,
and that's and that's the part Iread with with much interest. I mean
in your reporting in the enquire Again, Cincinnati dot com is where you find
(05:36):
Sharon's writing and all the reporting fromthe Cincinni Inquirers SINCINNTI dot com book market
I do and I subscribe. Commissionreport also recommended raising the city's earning tax
yer point one five percentage points,with the increase dedicated to spurring economic growth
and boosting public safety. And Iknow that we need more police officers.
The question is can you get anybodyto sign up for the job. I
(05:58):
presume the funding is their police officers, but how does this increase in earnings,
tax spur economic growth, well youknow it creates, it does there's
spending. So the money isn't justfor police and fire. It's also for
to create an economic development fund togive money to ready Cincinnati like a job
(06:19):
growth kind of accelerator and the Portof Greater Cincinnati, things that we already
have. But no, it wasno huge funding streams. I think the
number was one hundred million dollars.They want to give it over ten years.
And so some of the tax moneydoes go to like the jobs,
like, you know, can weready sites to bring people in? Can
(06:43):
we you know, lower these bigcompanies here all well, big companies are
leaving. But I just I haveto tell you. I'm going to tell
I love you guys, and Ireally don't put a lot of my opinions
as you know, and my stories. That's not my job. But I
will tell you something I did notdo. This meeting was at one o'clock
(07:04):
on Tuesday, and I had tobe done with work at five o'clock that
day. It's not usually true Iwork late, and I loved it.
I needed to be done. SoJeff grammerning a counsel and Jeff Grammerting.
Actually I wrote like about the bigideas several like and myself and Patricia Newberry
at the Inquirer like the Big Ideas, But I didn't do a point by
(07:27):
point on the twenty five different things. But Jeff Crammering did and he passed
out during the meeting. And Iwas going to put them all in the
story and then say the city managersaid this is you know, we're doing
this. This is a long termthing. We can't do this and like
point by point. But when Istarted to do that, seemingly I could
just write something out of a meeting, I didn't really think that the city
(07:49):
was doing everything. So I hadto stop doing the point by point that'll
come in a story later, justbecause I really couldn't take everything at face
value that was said in the meeting. Like I was like, oh,
no, it's gonna take way more. I don't you know. This isn't
what the teacher's commission meant. Didn'treally match up with what's being said here,
and so I was like, Istop that exercise and I'll be revisiting
(08:13):
it. The summer Well Council isnow on break. As you point out,
this was you know, that Iguess the last meeting of council before
the break, and I thought itwas rather interesting the deadline to put the
earnings tax increase on the ballot,which they must do. The citizens have
to actually vote this, sing votethis saying this end you reported that Cramerting
said that there would need to bea community conversation about the need and what
(08:35):
the money would cover before the Augustseventh deadline. That would require calling special
meetings and getting community engagement. Thissounds like something that they're going to try
to push through under cover of darknesswithout a community engagement like they have in
the past with other very important issuesand topics that the citizens would love to
chime in on. I just can'timagine the resumes I have special meetings.
(08:58):
When you canceled the last twos,you already are off two months. But
that's OK. But we're done withthe work. Remember the budget process was
like fourteen to twenty days somewhere inthere, which Jeff Kramering did say that
wasn't enough time to bet the budgetand he was very upset, although I
think he probably could have said somethingearlier and not at the very last second.
(09:20):
But that's fine, he's not wrong. But then they go ahead past
the budget and they cancel the lasttwo meetings. Is there no work to
be done at city Hall? Iguess not. Apparently not. Well,
it is a part time job,Sharon, and come on, it is
to be there. But then theyget off in the summer. It is.
And I will say, you know, they they work, you know,
(09:45):
I'm not just think that they don't. But when there's work in your
face to take off, yeah,you know, they're like, oh,
well, connected communities is really hard. Well oh yeah, then yeah,
sometimes your job is really hard.Yeah. True, you're gonna have to
go a little above and beyond thenorm of the job and get to actually
(10:05):
get something done. But as youpointed out, a lot of the projects
on there, like you said inyour reporting, sell one or all the
six golf courses. Well you pointout there's self funded. The sale proceeds
a venue. We have to goback to the golf program. Shared services
we did parking recreation departments. That'sup to the Cincinnati Parks and since II
Recreation Commission, they could get together, they could hammer things out. They
could share services, which would requiresome or both of them to actually agree
(10:28):
to pair back. The number ofindividuals working shared services necessarily means perhaps fewer
admin level folks. Maybe we've gotthe deck stacked a little high on management
side of things, looking at leastin the looking airport to since Northern Kentucky
International Airport. You point out thatinvolves federal regulations and complicated ones regionalize the
(10:50):
water system. This needs deep vettingand involves to the federal court oversight.
The one thing apparently they can accomplishwith taxpayer approval is the earnings tax incre
which Cameron said he's in favor of. So I'm not quite sure all this.
I do want to see let's putsome more context in things, and
I will put this all together inlike a big story later more context.
(11:11):
There's a lot of consternation right nowabout the property tax increase, the county
wide property increase. Now, I'mvery much of a person this is like
a state formula. It's sad,this is not something that the county auditor
can control. It's very there's aformula to this, and it has resulted
in a lot of property taxes skyrocketing. It is very hard to find
(11:37):
interview subjects that cry in interviews youknow, other than when you're doing something
really sad there. I have seenmultiple interviews by many news organizations in this
town where there are people breaking downin tears about mortgages. The county,
uh they have they switched a wholerental assistance program over to mortgage assistance to
(12:01):
try and help. Mark Jeffries andother counselman has put together a task force
and he suggested using a pot ofmoney that's kind of set aside for something
else to help with mortgage assistants becausethere's so much concern that people cannot afford
to stay and live in their homes. Well, I had gotten that is
a backdrop of what is happening here. Yeah. I had a woman named
(12:24):
Sarah Wolf on the program. She'sa Hamilton County activist regarding property taxes,
and there is a joint resolution inColumbus that they're considering which will cap property
tax increases to the lesser of fourpercent max or rate of inflation, So
we can, you know, maybeperhaps down the road, never get a
four hundred percent increase in our propertytax bill, which is causing seniors on
(12:45):
fixed incomes to get real concerned aboutwhether they've got to be able to stand
the places that they bought and paidfor. Crazy Sharon Coolidge since any inquire
online CINCINNTI dot com. I'll belooking forward to your follow up article breaking
down this in more detail. Sharedand I appreciate your spending the time and
listening to what was going on,and your your candor and your willingness to
come on the morning show to talkabout it. I always enjoy our conversations.
(13:11):
Thanks for having me. Take care, We'll talk soon. I hope
seven fifty five Care CD Talk StationUSA's premium Foam put my money where my
mouth is. I recommend and Ihave the
Brian Thomas News
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