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I'm not sure where Dayton gets such a good rap for its water supply. I find the local (downtown) water to be quite terrible, and I've been in a lot of other places.
The water supply claimed another victim just today, in fact - my steam iron. When I took it apart, I saw that the insides were completely calcified. I've lost coffee makers that way, too. Undoubtedly the consequence of running tap water for years. Never again.
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But I wanted to share an article I just read: evidently the feud between Centerville and Sugarcreek Township is taking another turn.
SUGARCREEK TOWNSHIP — Township trustees have created a new fire district that will exclude property in the City of Centerville, specifically the ever-growing Cornerstone development.
The move, which came during a regular board meeting Monday, is the latest in the battle between the two entities regarding fire and emergency medical service for that area.
“Over the past year, the board has worked diligently to find an agreeable solution with the City of Centerville for the provision of fire and EMS services to the incorporated portion of the township located in Centerville,” the township said in a news release. “After lengthy negotiations, it became apparent that Centerville would only accept an agreement that would result in our citizens and existing businesses subsidizing the services to the incorporated area.”
I don't have much sympathy for Centerville - they wanted the tax money from annexing the land, but they want someone else to pay for the emergency services that the area requires.
I'm not sure where Dayton gets such a good rap for its water supply. I find the local (downtown) water to be quite terrible, and I've been in a lot of other places.
The water supply claimed another victim just today, in fact - my steam iron. When I took it apart, I saw that the insides were completely calcified. I've lost coffee makers that way, too. Undoubtedly the consequence of running tap water for years. Never again.
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What's the source of Dayton water?
And, for that matter, was it really worth holding up the construction of Greater Cincinnati International Airport in Boone county Kentucky for the sake of Cincinnati water?
There's no denying it's basically hard water or that it was ruined some with floride.
When this regional government is established and the elected officials are
chosen by all who will be in this consolidation those who are in the suburbs
will be able to clean the stables of the urban democrats who destroyed the urban
core to begin with, kiss nan goodbye, the educated, productive, successful
citizens will send her and her ******* minions packing, then a true recovery for
the area will take place
Yeah, that's one way to put it. There are more people living in the count than city so just by raw numbers he suburbs should get majority representation on a merged city council.
One has to look at the numbers. Registered voters and likely voters. A trend in voting is that lower income and less educated voters participate less in eletions; they are less likely to vote and less likely to be registered to vote. So for countywide racs (as for mayor) this would give an advantage to county voters. Drawing a council district based on population would also advantage county voters (as long as the district were not Gerry mandered in some way to skew representation in the city).
The maps of the Louisville metro area in the thread header show the consequences of 35 to 40 years of school bussing in the countywide school district, not the consequences of merger. Back in the 1970s the Louisville and Jefferson County school districts were merged and bussing for racial integration was instituted. Recently this was found unconstitutional but bussing continued based on socioeconomic criteria (as a proxy for race).
The maps don't show he abandonment of Jefferson County public schools by white middle/upper income managerial/creative/professional class, who send their kids private or to one of the public magnet school programs (if they can get in).
Since, for this demographic, schools don't matter as a location choice on where live other criteria became prominent, such as quality of housing, neighborhood style, amenities, etc. This is one reason the gentrification trend that was building up in the 1970s really took off (vs being squelched, like in Dayton), resulting in Louisville having those vibrant urban neighborhoods popular with millenials, yuppies, hipsters, (and everyone else who likes vibrant urban neighborhoods, for that matter).
Of course if one doesn't want to or can't afford to send their kids private and cant get into a magnet program, they can relocate to those outer counties or across the river to Indiana (and these choices also segregate by social/economic class and taste culture). Locating ot an outer county would be the choice of suburban in-migrant families from places like..say..Dayton...who are used to separate school districts for suburbs and cities. This would be mostly in-migrants from places like the Midwest and Northeast, since the South usually has countywide districts, or at most two districts per county.
Yeah, a bit of digression but I wanted to set the record straight on the comparison with the Dayton merger proposal. We are not talking school district merger, which had a long-term bigger effect on white flight and population shifts than merger has.
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Also, the Louisville city-county merger wasn't a bail-out for the city since the separate income tax rates were maintained for city and county residents, with city residents paying a higher rate for their higher level of services (in Jefferson County there already was a countywide income tax paid by people living in unincorporated parts of the county).
Presumably something similar would happen in Dayton, where the city income tax would remain in effect but just for the city, with the townships being income tax exempt (unless covered by some sort of JEDD or other backdoor way of doing income taxes).
Thinking about this merger one realizes how pointless it is. How little would actually be merged. The efficiencies and cost savings would be minimal (we have not seen any numbers on this, BTW).
I can think of maybe three departments that could be merged. Mont. County Parks and the City Dept Parks & Recreation, County Engineer & City Public Works, and the County Sheriff and Dayton PD.
The PD/Sheriff merger would affect townships that contract with the county sherrif for police protection. They would be contracting with the merged PD instead, or they could do what Miami Twp has done & have their own PD.
So, any other city and county agencies that would be merged. Almost want to lay the county and city "wiring diagram" org charts side by side and see what boxes could be combined....hmm
I hear that city after city is trying to attract the "white middle/upper income managerial/creative/professional class," who can afford to send their kids to private school or are lucky enough to get into a public magnet school. They're fighting tooth and nail to get as many of these people as possible back into the city.
Some do it better than others - but for every Austin there's a Detroit. In each city, there are neighborhood variances as well. For every house rehabbed in OTR that gets headlines, there's the wholesale ghettofication of Price Hill. Every time Charlie Simms builds a condo downtown, Steve Rauch tears down something else.
But here's something the cities haven't thought about: there simply aren't enough white upper-middle income managers and professionals to turn the cities around, at least not on the scale we need. No number of feds, eds, or meds will be large enough to revitalize the city on their own.
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I always talk about how the middle class is getting split in two: how there will be a minority, 15% or so, who are white collar and professional. The engineers and doctors and such. I could count administrators and anyone working in government here as well. They'll continue to do reasonably well, and may accelerate into the upper-middle or minor elites. They'll wind up in the top two income quintiles and likely remain there.
But the rest of what we call the "middle class", more like the working class, has been stagnant or sinking for years. This could well consist of 80% of what we called the middle class. We talk about how Fuyao is coming to Moraine and creating hundreds of jobs. And don't get me wrong, it's awesome that they are coming to town, but tell me this - is Fuyao paying as well as General Motors did? The answer to that is an obvious "no." Plus, that plant was idled for six years - six years where thousands of formerly middle class people had little or no income. Equity evaporates, retirement accounts empty out, and home maintenance or upgrades get postponed.... this has a negative effect on the neighborhood and thus the city.
Unfortunately, at least in manufacturing towns like Dayton (and to a lesser extent Cincinnati), most of this "working class" is getting sucked into low-paying service sector jobs. You can see the consequences of this in many areas of town. The quality of housing stock in Moraine, West Carrollton, Miamisburg, and many parts of Kettering have declined considerably... values have dropped, and likely people just haven't had the money to perform maintenance or upgrades.
We can't count on revitalizing the city if our economy is primarily based on selling burgers to each other.
The discussion needs to be on a national level. Policy needs to be formulated to reverse the evisceration of the middle class, which is almost purely on the backs of NAFTA and other "free trade" agreements which have only served to destroy the working people in this country.
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If we revitalized the middle class, we wouldn't have these nasty fights over class and income... because everyone's boat would be rising. There wouldn't be talk about cities trying to reach their hands into the pockets of suburban taxpayers. That would go a long way towards reducing suburban suspicion of the city. That provides a better atmosphere for regional cooperation.
^If you think that an economy can be rebuilt from bring back a bunch of no-skill assembly jobs from China, Mexico, wherever, then all I have to say is please reconsider your thinking, especially on issues like the minimum wage.
The jobs this city had were never worth more than the minimum wage labor rate. An adolescent has the mental capacity to do an assembly job. That's why in many countries, like it or not, that's exactly who is doing those jobs. Child labor, marginalized people, etc.
Note the fact that this city alone lost 10,000 Delphi jobs between 2006-2009, all of which went to China.
This is what US manufacturing workers have to compete against. And certainly they can be competitive once higher scrap/defect rates, shipping costs, tariffs, etc. are factored in. But no company can survive with suppliers that pay their workforce $100,000/yr each with benefits, etc. when they can pay $3000/yr. for contract labor in __________ third-world country. They'll just hire a few more quality control people stateside and call it a day.
So the "middle class" of blue collar people in big factories, McDonald's kitchens, etc. can't be "middle class". It's not going to work out. But they can make minimum wage, and government can determine a rate which provides these workers with an adequate living given their location in the USA and its cost of living. Set a rate, index it and update it every year, and move on.
Those blue collar workers will never be middle class again, nor should they be, but they shouldn't have to starve and should be able to buy a modest house if they make smart financial decisions. Simple as that.
There should never be a day again where a line worker makes as much as a college grad.
That was the result of post-war inefficiency and stupidity.
These people should never be guaranteed a pension either.
But they should have economic opportunity via a $15/hr min wage job indexed to inflation, cost of living, etc. to live a modest life, not starve, and not rely on public assistance.
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Sorry about the diversion. Back on topic, I'm thinking at bare minimum there are a lot of city offices and governmental posts that could be merged and save a couple million a year at least. Correct me if I'm wrong.
And, for that matter, was it really worth holding up the construction of Greater Cincinnati International Airport in Boone county Kentucky for the sake of Cincinnati water?
There's no denying it's basically hard water or that it was ruined some with floride.
(Yeah, I know I spelled fluoride wrong -- no red underline at the time.)
The maps of the Louisville metro area in the thread header show the consequences of 35 to 40 years of school bussing in the countywide school district, not the consequences of merger.
Don't kid yourself. Of course busing was the issue that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, but the higher standards in just about everything that you can do in a suburb is more restricted (i.e. they make you adhere to higher standards) in a suburban area.
Standards are higher in the suburbs. Even blue collar suburbs! Everything from fast food joints to discount stores have to adhere to these standards. They can't do that in the city because it prices business out.
Thinking about this merger one realizes how pointless it is. How little would actually be merged. The efficiencies and cost savings would be minimal (we have not seen any numbers on this, BTW).
I can think of maybe three departments that could be merged. Mont. County Parks and the City Dept Parks & Recreation, County Engineer & City Public Works, and the County Sheriff and Dayton PD.
The PD/Sheriff merger would affect townships that contract with the county sherrif for police protection. They would be contracting with the merged PD instead, or they could do what Miami Twp has done & have their own PD.
So, any other city and county agencies that would be merged. Almost want to lay the county and city "wiring diagram" org charts side by side and see what boxes could be combined....hmm
I think merger of the city and county would also be a territorial merger by default. If that's the case, good luck getting a cop out to the far reaches of Montgomery County when you need them. They're going to be busy handling the black lives matter people, not to mention that a city just isn't set up to govern a rural area.
That begs another question. Government in a rural area is very simple -- not many people live there so government doesn't do too much. Not only that, but you have a voice in what goes on and government is very responsive. The reverse is true in an urban area and it requires a more complicated government.
It sounds to me that you are shooting a butterfly with a bazooka if you put city government in charge of rural areas.
However, I think it makes a lot of sense to merge fire departments since staffing isn't really determined by needs in the inner city areas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SWOH
So the "middle class" of blue collar people in big factories, McDonald's kitchens, etc. can't be "middle class". It's not going to work out. But they can make minimum wage, and government can determine a rate which provides these workers with an adequate living given their location in the USA and its cost of living. Set a rate, index it and update it every year, and move on.
Have you been to a fast food joint lately? $6 or $7 for a McDonalds or Wendy's combo meal. Chick-Fil-A almost $9 for a grilled chicken sandwich. THAT isn't going to work, either.
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