This is the way I look at the tax increase: If I owned a business and my sales were down I would have to downsize or lay off employee to keep afloat and make a profit. But think about this: What if government told me that I had to keep 88 employees working and it was against the law for me to lay them off and that I would have to go out and borrow money to keep them working. In other words, forget about me and my family, just make sure those 88 employees have a paycheck. Portsmouth doesn’t have revenue coming in like we used to have, but we would if we stopped the tax abatements, but nobody wants to talk about that. Why is it that nobody thinks about police officers and firemen when city government gives out tax abatements and their selves raises? We do need to make changes in the city charter. We don’t have the population we had when it went into law to have so many police and firemen. If the tax increase passes, does this mean the police officers can go back to driving their police cars back and forth to work?
And about this city manager thing: Do we really want city council to have a monopoly on who runs Portsmouth? I don’t know about you, but I don’t. I want to see our city council work with whoever we elect to run our city. I don’t want our city council to pick someone who’s going to run our city the way city council wants it run, and if they don’t do what city council says city council will fire them. City council says with giving them the power to hire and fire a city manager would save the taxpayers money in recalls. Wrong! Because if they did find someone who was doing a good job running Portsmouth, and say this individual made our city councilmen mad for one reason or another and city council fire whoever it was, it would take four votes from city council to fire them. Well, that means we would have four recalls instead of just one. I think some of our city councilmen need to grow up and start working with whoever is running Portsmouth. Remember when Jane Murray was mayor, we had some of our city councilmen running to the Portsmouth Daily Times every other week with a story about Mayor Murray. Well, it’s kind of funny, now that David Malone is mayor, our councilmen have kept their mouths shut, but all of a sudden they want to get rid of his job by going to a city manager to fun the city. I’ll get you $10 to a doughnut that if Jane Murray would have been a John Murray we would still have a Murray as out mayor. Oh, I forgot, city council was going to give us a mayor that we’re all going to draw from a deck of cards every year and the one that got the highest card got the job as mayor. Drawing cards is easy. I think they should get a deck of Old Maid and put New Mayor and the winner of the game got to be mayor. Let’s stay with what we have, so we can elect who we want to run Portsmouth, not a group of six.
Ray Mitchell
Portsmouth
But look at the other side. Just like the current Mayor, Kalb and Bauer, what qualifications do any of these 3 have to go out and recruit a General Motors plant to locate within the city limits, Ford, General Electric, etc ?
If they knew how wouldnt they have done it while in office ? New industry was and is locating in other Ohio cities but not here. Because the people in Portsmouth goverment dont know how to recruit any.
Go to these council meetings. I used to watch them on tv. Part of the discussion was who was going to bring the doughnuts next week. Red lights, Martings Buildings, tax levies, they never discuss jobs.
A City Manager is educated, trained, a recruiter, has contacts with industry, and if they dont get jobs inside the city limits they can be fired.
The current Mayor doesent even have the ability to get double yellow lines painted on the streets of Portsmouth. Drive through Portsmouth and Sciotoville and see. They dont cut grass, pick up trash or patch holes. No Industry = No taxes= No Money.
But also I am sure if there was Industry here, you still would not get your lines painted or holes patched, but a new Police Station and a new City Building!