BuckeyeBlog

On the front page of this morning’s Columbus Dispatch is a story by Robert Vitale about the city’s plans to tap into their “Rainy Day Fund” to keep the budget balanced in this fiscal year. It’s ripe with some corny plays on words, but there were a couple points made that I found myself agreeing with. Via the Dispatch, the first few lines:

If Columbus’ rainy-day fund were an umbrella, it would be the twisted, frayed, inside-out kind you see stuffed into Downtown trash cans on a blustery day.

After seven stormy years, the fund set up to shield city government during economic downturns is nearly tapped out, having been called on repeatedly to spare Columbus residents — and decision makers — the fallout from deep spending cuts.

Essentially, Vitale’s article is a combination of hard news and opinion, making it painfully clear that a balanced budget that takes into account money from funds like the city’s emergency fund isn’t balanced at all. The same can be said on the federal level, where a balanced budget that took into account the temporary social security surplus wasn’t really balanced either. If Columbus continues on this path, when the puddle that’s left of the rainy day fund dries up (I couldn’t resist), the city’s budget will become seriously cloudy.

The dispatch reported yesterday:

[City of Columbus] council members approved plans for a new city-owned parking garage at 4th and Elm streets Downtown. Their action allows the Capital South Community Urban Redevelopment Corp. to move forward with plans to levy a special assessment on about 50 property owners within 800 feet of the project.

One of them, Due Amici restaurant owner Jeff Mathes, said a few big developers are forcing the financing scheme on everyone else. Former Capital South Director John Rosenberger said property owners accounting for 80 percent of the $5.7 million expected to be raised are on board with the plan.

In addition to the assessment, parking income and property taxes on new and renovated Downtown buildings will pay for the $15.3 million garage.

Why force area business owners to pay for a parking garage? If the garage is really needed, a private company can build it and make their investment back by charging customers to use it.

A bit of a thumbsucker, but still a nice story, about Columbus’s downtown. Are German Village and the Short North areas for cool people, is City Center a vacant pit, and can a woman married to a New Albany doctor afford to throw a party for 70? Yes, indeed, and downtown condos are selling slowly in Columbus and more slowly in Toledo. It’s less news than observation.

But it is what it is. What I want to know is, what is this story doing in the Blade? Are they recruiting Toledoans to come to Columbus?