BuckeyeBlog

Even as Columbus city officials moan and groan about budget crises and their need to increase the city’s income tax, the Columbus Department of Recreation and Parks has decided to take on a whole new project. An article in today’s Columbus Dispatch states that the city may be forced to close its parks department if Issue 1’s tax increase does not pass on August 4. However, the Department of Recreation and Parks has decided to build an entirely new two-acre park and make improvements to another. The department claims that the projects will draw from “charitable grants and special funds” rather than the city’s operating budget.

Right. But parks require maintenance, equipment, personnel and other overhead costs after that. Where will the department, supposedly at risk of getting shut down, obtain these funds? It doesn’t really matter. After all, spending money unsustainably seems to be Columbus’ modus operandi these days. And more than likely, it will use those budgetary shortfalls to advocate another tax increase in a few years.

The vote on Issue 1’s tax hike is fast approaching, and the city continues its rhetoric and threats about shutting down major government services. But the City of Columbus really does not help its case when, instead of streamlining its spending, decides to pile it on. Columbus taxpayers should be asking hard questions. Why build new parks, when we can’t even afford the exorbitant services and spending the city involves itself in? If city officials cannot recognize misplaced priorities when everyone else can, do they deserve a tax increase?

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?