We are lucky, Mayor Doscher presented a balanced budget for 2010, without a tax increase. With the current council we might just get the budget passed before the end of the year. Other municipalities aren’t so lucky. We have been in an economic down turn for over a year now and some elected officials just don’t get it.
Right next door Mayor Luke wants to tax post secondary school students, for the privilege of attending school in the city. When the Intergovernmental Cooperative Group said no to the tax the mayor immediately said he would have to stop the next class of police officer trainees, eliminate a firehouse and all school crossing guards. He even hired a $650 dollar an hour Philadelphia lawyer to get his way. Sounds like a joke doesn’t it?
I wonder why the first thing to go wouldn’t have been the 125 Citiparks Summer Food Service Program sites that “provides healthy and delicious breakfasts, lunches and snacks to all children up to 18 years old” seems like a luxury to me. I wonder how many other line items are less important than police, firemen and school crossing guards but they aren’t on the chopping block?
I’m guessing his threat was to scare the people of Pittsburgh into supporting a tax on all those outsiders who attend Pitt, CMU, Duquesne, Chatham, Carlow, Robert Morris and CCAC. Why should Pittsburgh stop at the post secondary schools? Why don’t they tax the grade school kids also? I mean, after all isn’t all education a privilege? Most of the people around the world would agree that all education is a privilege.
Now the city is calling for a study to see how many city services can be laid on the schools by calculating their property values. Following that logic does that mean that a million dollar home in Fox Chapel uses more services than a $50,000 walk-up in East Liberty? Remember, these people want to tax patients in hospitals like they do hotel guests to pay for government services.
We can’t rely on the property taxes paid by the residential and commercial property owners to pay for needed services. We can’t rely on wage taxes paid for by the residents who work. We can’t rely on the Emergency Services Tax paid for by workers in the community. We can’t rely on license fees, parking fees, enforcement fines or a sales tax to pay for our regional assests. We have to tax student tuition?. Why not go after EPA consent decrees that cause our storm water runoff to cost so much and government taxes on landfills that cause garbage collection costs to skyrocket?
Why is it that politicians go after the police and fire departments when they want to add a tax? Why is it that eliminating police officers and firefighters is what they go after to reduce budgets? Locally our police department takes less than 20% of the budget but I’ll bet somebody thinks that is a lot. But it’s not really how much emergency services cost, rather it’s that the topic scares people into supporting a new tax. While they look for recurring revenue they have failed to see their population has been cut in half over the past 30 years because of the taxes they believe give them recurring revenue.
Pay attention to what is going on next-door, because that type of politics is like a virus, it spreads. Watch and see if it spreads this way and if you see that bug step on it, and the politician who is carrying it.
OUTRAGEOUS NEWS
When questioned about discrepancies in the unemployment rate and the failure of the American Recovery Act, President Obama's Recovery Czar, Ed Pound, responded "Who knows man, who really knows?" 11/19/2009
