ROLDO: This Jackson is Not My Jackson Anymore

By Roldo Bartimole

Flak-like propaganda continued to flow at the Pee Dee as it promotes Mayor Frank Jackson’s school scheme as the best thing since sliced bread (sorry Don Robertson).

Pee Dee columnist and editorial board member Joe Frolik last week wrote a piece that should have come with an advertising price tag. He lifted Jackson to sainthood. It continued the shameless pandering of Jackson by the paper. The headline said: “Jackson isn’t blinking on schools.”

Frolik wrote in praise of Jackson’s stubborn stance:

‘”I’m calling the role,” he said, “People are gonna say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to this…It’s all on us. No one goes unscathed here. Including me.”‘

Tough words from Jackson.

Jackson has said that he would even be willing to give up his post as mayor to help improve the Cleveland schools.

Such bravado.

Jackson unfortunately has never been challenged politically. A politician never challenged can freely move any direction he desires; he becomes a dictator without realizing it. That makes for a dangerous leader and for a community in peril.

I have a test for Jackson to prove his earnestness. A very simple one. One that tells whether he means what he says. Or not.

If he’s serious about his determination to help schools he can prove it easily.

Tell the downtown business lobby (main characters behind the school plan, really the pitch for a new tax) that they should not ask for nor take any new tax abatements or TIFs (another form of abatement where taxes are used for development instead of their stated purpose, like his schools). And give back those gifts they have taken. (* see the costs below).

I’d believe Jackson was serious about the school children of Cleveland if Jackson’s passion would enable him to ask Dan Gilbert, Randy Lerner and Larry Dolan to start paying property taxes on their tax-free Cleveland sports facilities. They cost tens of millions of lost revenue.

If he doesn’t, then he’s not at all serious about saving Cleveland school children. He is just the corporate puppet for new taxes.

It’s all a ruse.

He’s just another gamer. Playing a game on people. Just another politician.

I knew Jackson when he didn’t play these Greater Cleveland Partnership games.

I remember the 1996 vote on Browns Stadium, a give-away packaged to Al Lerner. A quick sellout.

Mayor Michael White had enough votes to pass the new stadium taxes. No doubt about that. He didn’t have Jackson’s vote though. He didn’t need it.

But he did want it. Because with Jackson’s vote White would have had a two-thirds vote of Council to pass the deal as emergency legislation. It would have gone into effect immediately. Full steam ahead.

Jackson’s vote wouldn’t affect the outcome. He could have given it to his friend the mayor. But Jackson was a man of principle. Stubbornly so. He told me that night that he had said he wasn’t voting for the legislation and he wasn’t changing his mind. In other words, his intransigence caused a delay.

That’s the Frank Jackson I remember.

That’s not the Frank Jackson who is now Mayor Jackson.

This Frank Jackson is a salesman for the Big Guys. Too bad. He’s been taken in by the foundation/corporate crowd and its desire to take over public education. For exposure to what this is please read:

http://www.Alternet.org/education

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* The following has pertinence to today and was written for the Free Times, July 2002 – a decade of graft – and gives a hint of the enormous losses of tax revenues for the schools. Facts lost with time. Facts never presented to the public by the fraudulent news media. School funds have been freely given to developers. Most property tax money is stolen from the Cleveland schools. Take a look back:

Nationally, corporate credibility continues to crash. Locally we continue our look at decisions that enriched the wealthy and left local government with empty pockets.

For two weeks we examined tax losses from Gateway plus Dick Jacobs’ Public Square complex. In taxes abated alone County taxpayers absorbed losses of $51 million so far for Gateway and $68 million for Jacobs’ Public Square complex, which also enjoyed $17 million in sweetheart loans. But Jacobs wasn’t the only one gulping at the public trough.

The 1980-90 orgies of greed and self-interest indulged others. The Forest City gang – Sam Miller and the Ratners – fed from one of the most fruitful plates of indulgences. Miller and the Ratners are among the most consistent donors to politicians of all stripes in Cleveland, the suburbs and state and reap benefits.

At Tower City alone Cleveland schools, the city, county and city libraries have seen millions of dollars of property tax revenue diverted to satisfy the Miller-Ratners. But that wasn’t all. Tower City bagged some $26 million in loans via the city, most at the very generous of rate of zero, and typically at the most charitable terms, nothing payable for 20 years out. Again thanks to George Voinovich and George Forbes, public sector sellouts.

RTA (Regional Transit Authority) joined in the favoritism by building an $18 million walkway from Gateway right into Tower City’s doorstep, and spent more than $70 million, largely local money, for the Waterfront line that travels through the Miller-Ratner Tower City to the lakefront. Thanks, Michael White, another public betrayer.

The posh Ritz-Carlton, owned by Forest City interests, got a $7.9 million city loan at no interest with principal payable 20 years out, plus tax abatement. Thanks again, Voinovich and Forbes. (It was said at the time the Ritz was going to be built without incentives but that Jacobs came on line for freebies for his Marriott Hotel nearby. Sam wasn’t going to outdone and demanded and got equal benefits.) A check of how much the Ritz costs taxpayers in the last three years shows the fancy hotel has escaped $1,034,084 in property taxes. Of that $629,055 comes from Cleveland’s schools. The figure would be much higher but the value of the Ritz somehow has dropped.

We like to brag about downtown’s comeback. But the hotel where the fancy people play has been reduced in value by more than half from $10 million to $4.5 million since 1993. That means that the loss to the schools, city, county, and city libraries – as bad as the figures suggest – are low only because the value has been cut.

The hotel has been getting tax relief since 1990 when it was partially built. Between 1990 and 1995 Forest City saved – and the taxpayers lost – $3,152,874 in Ritz’s property taxes. Of that $1,761,917 came directly from the Cleveland school system.

I didn’t have figures for the years 1996-98. However, the revenue lost in the last three years plus 1990-95 losses suggest the total relieved revenue would be $4,186,958, with $2,390,971 from the schools, with more years to go.

All these figures get a bit tiresome. But their meaning shouldn’t. They mean that somebody’s paying less tax and somebody’s paying more. And you know who got the short end.

Tax records for Tower City are complex. That’s because there are many parcels and parcels are at different levels at Public Square and the back streets of Huron and Prospect Avenues where the city also spent millions of dollars in road and bridge improvements. But 16 Tower City parcels have diverted property tax in addition to the Ritz, according to County Auditor Frank Russo’s office.

For those 16 parcels, not including the Ritz, in the years 1999-2001 alone, $8.3 million in taxes were diverted. Of that Forest City interests saved $2,239,435 above the Ritz’s savings. The rest Forest City paid. However, the funds didn’t go to the schools, city or county, as ordinarily would happen. That’s because the properties had a different type of abatement, a tax incremental financing (TIF) agreement.

Where did the funds go? To pay for bonds that finance the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Rock Hall also has been tax exempted. In the same three years, 1999-2001, the diverted taxes of the Rock Hall were $2.96 million, $1.8 million from the Cleveland schools. The Rock Hall’s value since 1999 also has been dropped from $18 million to $10 million. (Note: Cleveland schools don’t suffer the full loss. The city, however, takes a double hit by sharing its admission tax revenue with the schools to lessen the property tax losses.)

You might say as result of this charity to Tower City where The Avenue shopping mall resides, we have an empty May Co. (Kaufmanns’s), an empty Higbee’s (Dillard’s) and a devastated Euclid Avenue. But don’t fret, RTA will toss away another $220 million for a plan that poses as transit policy but simply is a costly ploy to spruce up Euclid Avenue.

Somebody must have won from these policies but it sure wasn’t anyone you know.

 

 

He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]

 

 

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