DOES CLEVELAND REALLY NEED A GARBAGE TAX?

The flow of federal stimulus money into Cleveland makes me wonder why Mayor Frank Jackson and his merry elves at City Council need to burden residents with a garbage tax.

 

City Council members authorized Mayor Jackson to begin collecting $8 a month for garbage collections. Having been elected for four years the Council members (all but three) figured that they had enough time for constituents to get used to paying another regressive tax.

 

And they seem to be getting away with it.

 

However, extra revenue from the federal government is flowing into the city and county. ProPublico has a list and calls it “the most comprehensive publicly available analysis of stimulus spending we know of.”

 

In one grant, Cleveland will get $11,793,750 for law enforcement. That suggests to me that a lot of city money is being freed up.

 

ProPublico, a journalism in the public interest reporting site, has listed all grants and loans to Cuyahoga County. It can be found here: http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/locale/ohio/cuyahoga [1]

 

Other grants to the city of Cleveland include grants of $10,554,939 and $5,768,717 for airport improvements. And $6,409,225 for Community Development Block Grant money. Not sure if the latter is the regular allotment for CDBG money that ordinarily comes to the city. Another $5 million grant is listed for law enforcement equipment.

 

RTA (Regional Transit Authority) also has grants allocated of $23,429,203 for capital and operating funds and $10,164,215 for rehabbing rail stations. It makes you wonder whether the cuts RTA is making are totally necessary. Here’s a link to an RTA fund: http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/item/43293 [2]

 

The City of Cleveland also will get $9.8 million to deal with problems of homelessness.

 

There are some strange loans, at least in my opinion. A number of Dunkin Donut businesses will get more than $500,000 in loans as will other food outlets.

 

Other big winners in these grants are Case-Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland State University.