Speaker 1: You're twenty twenty four election headquarters.
Speaker 2: Our country's just falling apart and we need a major change.
Speaker 2: Fifty five krs the talk station eight oh five.
Speaker 1: If you're a fifty five PRCD talk station, Bryan Thomas here,
Speaker 1: wishing you a very, very happy Friday.
Speaker 2: I hope you have some great plans for the weekend.
Speaker 1: I was really looking forward to this all morning, ever
Speaker 1: since I saw it. A proposal by a former House
Speaker 1: remember Tom Brinkman. He's currently running for Hamlin County Auditor.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows who owns property here in Hamilton County and
Speaker 1: basically outside as well. Property taxes went through the roof.
Speaker 1: Some people got lucky and there's only one up maybe
Speaker 1: nine percent. Others are facing a sixteen percent and even
Speaker 1: higher property tax rate, and many people can't afford it.
Speaker 2: You got a senior in the House on a fixed income.
Speaker 1: They cannot manage a property tax bill that goes up
Speaker 1: that much. Maybe a solution is in Columbus. But Tom
Speaker 1: Brikman has a solution. He's just turned in a proposed
Speaker 1: charter amendment and it's made the obviously made the news rounds,
Speaker 1: supported by, among others, Adam Kaylor, who's running for Hamilton
Speaker 1: County Commissioner to take some of the railroad money. The
Speaker 1: one point six billion dollars is CINCINNTI put in trust
Speaker 1: when they sold the Cincinni Southern Railway and take six
Speaker 1: hundred million of that to put it in a separate
Speaker 1: fund to help people with their property taxes. Tom Brakman,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the fifty five Cassey Morning Show. It's great
Speaker 1: to have you on to talk about this today.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1: Now, I guess the first question across is my mind.
Speaker 1: We were told over and over again, and I was
Speaker 1: not in favor of the sale. I had Adam on
Speaker 1: a bunch of times. I had other experts on the
Speaker 1: subject talking about how stupid it was to sell it.
Speaker 2: But here we are. They sold it.
Speaker 1: They put the money in trust, but they promised us
Speaker 1: until they were blue in the face that this money
Speaker 1: could only be used for existing infrastructure they're going to generate.
Speaker 1: They claim eighty eight million dollars a year on this investment.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the market dropping the other day,
Speaker 1: whether that's even possible story to be told later on it.
Speaker 1: But the point is they take the money from the
Speaker 1: revenue that's generated, and they must work on the hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars in infrastructure needs we had because well,
Speaker 1: for the last four decades, I guess they've ignored roads
Speaker 1: and bridges and core infrastructure and they got themselves into
Speaker 1: a real pickle. And now you want to take six
Speaker 1: hundred million to that to tell people with property taxes,
Speaker 1: how is this going to work in practice? And is
Speaker 1: it even legal given the background behind the sale. I
Speaker 1: know it's a long winded way of opening this up, Tom,
Speaker 1: but that's all I got, man, Okay, okay.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, we received approval of our petition
Speaker 3: yesterday from the city slicter. That means is a workable document,
Speaker 3: it would work. We can take six hundred million, put
Speaker 3: it in a fund and get it to give taxpayers
Speaker 3: relief immediately, meaning in January. In January, the citizens living
Speaker 3: the property owners in the City of Cincinnati would see
Speaker 3: an eighteen point seven reduction of their property tax bill
Speaker 3: because the fund would make that payment for him. That
Speaker 3: fund should last about ten to twenty years, depending like
Speaker 3: you said, on investments.
Speaker 1: Now, so real quick though, with the fund being established,
Speaker 1: assuming it gets approved on the ballot, it goes into
Speaker 1: a fund to generate income much in the say, the
Speaker 1: same way the one point six billion is generating. It's
Speaker 1: actively managed by investments. But you would have to dip
Speaker 1: into principle immediately on the six hundred million because it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have time to generate the kind of revenue you
Speaker 1: need to relieve taxes.
Speaker 3: Correct, right, right, Well, we would we would use about
Speaker 3: it's about fifteen million dollars, okay, would be taken out
Speaker 3: of the six hundred million dollar fund. Now, I've seen
Speaker 3: projections where it could go on in perform, you know, forever.
Speaker 3: You know, the markets come and go. I don't want
Speaker 3: to say that to folks. I'm saying it would last
Speaker 3: between fifteen and twenty years. But the way it's structured
Speaker 3: is the fund would be started in fifteen days. The
Speaker 3: city would contact the county auditor in fifteen days find
Speaker 3: out what their tax bill would be, and then fifteen
Speaker 3: days after that they write a check to the county treasurer,
Speaker 3: so that when we would see our bills, we would
Speaker 3: see that we owe one thousand dollars, let's say, but
Speaker 3: we would also see on the bill that one thousand
Speaker 3: dollars has been covered by this city fund and we
Speaker 3: see that type of reduction and into substantial reduction. It's
Speaker 3: about eighteen point seven percent depending on what type area
Speaker 3: you live in. And you know, if you're paying for
Speaker 3: your trees or you know, your sidewalk repair, you know
Speaker 3: that type of thing. Now, you know, we have home
Speaker 3: rule in the City of Cincinnati, in the state of Ohio.
Speaker 3: It's in our constitution, so at charter city can take
Speaker 3: care of what they want to do within their boundaries. Now,
Speaker 3: I've been in the legislature and i know they're always
Speaker 3: trying to cut back on that. But we meaning like
Speaker 3: when the city wants to ban guns, or the city
Speaker 3: wants to ban plastic bag, right, there's always attempts to
Speaker 3: cut back on that. But generally, if the city wants
Speaker 3: to take their money and waste it on a street car,
Speaker 3: no state legislation is going to stop that. If they
Speaker 3: want to spend it on a spray park or something
Speaker 3: like that. So our ability to been just on the
Speaker 3: taxpayers to take care of the old time people. I'm
Speaker 3: an old time person. I'm sixty six, I've been in
Speaker 3: the city my whole life. Nobody's given me tax abatement,
Speaker 3: nobody's setting up a fund for me. So my ancestors
Speaker 3: who were here in eighteen forty, so they were around
Speaker 3: when they built that railroad. They were assessed property tax
Speaker 3: to pay for that railroad. It's fitting that the people
Speaker 3: who own property in the city now get relief from
Speaker 3: that fund. And I think it's only the right thing
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Is this going to be index based on income or
Speaker 1: ability to pay a tax? Is it going to be
Speaker 1: a uniform across the board? How's the amount calculated generally speaking?
Speaker 1: And are there you know, proposals along those lines built
Speaker 1: into the process.
Speaker 3: No, it's very simple. The city right now brings in
Speaker 3: about twenty nine million from this tax, and that is
Speaker 3: what we will cover, regardless whether you're a small business,
Speaker 3: regardless if you're just a senior who's struggling to make
Speaker 3: your payments. And yeah, you know, some lord's going to
Speaker 3: get a cut, and I'm sorry that's the way it goes.
Speaker 3: But the bottom line is we're going to cut it
Speaker 3: for all property tax the payers in the City of Cincinnati,
Speaker 3: and just it makes it, you know, keep a simple,
Speaker 3: stupid system, And that's that's how we plan to do it. Now.
Speaker 3: It's interesting we used to index our increase in our
Speaker 3: property tax in the City of Cincinnati. Beginning this year,
Speaker 3: city council took that index off, so it was going
Speaker 3: to go up from twenty nine million to thirty two
Speaker 3: million that they were going to bring in. And also
Speaker 3: this is a city council who is proposing an increase
Speaker 3: in the earnings tax. So here they get this big
Speaker 3: railroad money. They they're they're letting the property tax go up.
Speaker 3: I get rid of that, holding it the same with
Speaker 3: twenty nine million, and then they want earned more earnings tax.
Speaker 3: And I you know, I drive on Columbia Parkway for
Speaker 3: it worsen away. It's a mess. Yeah, but garbage isn't
Speaker 3: picked up. It's a mess the street. They say, oh,
Speaker 3: we're going to do these little bumps to stop people
Speaker 3: from rolling through the stoplight. You drive across seventh Drive
Speaker 3: across seventh Street. When I dropped off my petition yesterday
Speaker 3: at City Hall to get the seventy one oh you
Speaker 3: got his bom bom bom bom bom bom boom boom boom,
Speaker 3: the air false terrible. Yeah, and they're and they're yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I've been I've been using a default phrase
Speaker 1: of late Fred One of my listeners called in self
Speaker 1: identified black man living in the city of Cincinnati. I
Speaker 1: worried about national scope politics, but he wants his road fixed.
Speaker 1: All Fred wants is somebody to come out and patch
Speaker 1: his damn street.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a simple ask.
Speaker 1: And this is what this is what leads us to
Speaker 1: this position, Tom, is the city under Democrat rule for
Speaker 1: how long? How far back do you have to go
Speaker 1: to find a Republican that ran the city of Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: Was it Gene Ruleman or something or Ken Blackwell? But
Speaker 1: don't even They have neglected Fred and everybody else's road
Speaker 1: in chasing stuff and things and bright shiny new objects
Speaker 1: like streetcars. Point valid. And you mentioned raising the earnings
Speaker 1: tax rate, and I think this is the reason. Maybe
Speaker 1: they know, based upon the promises and whatever restrictions are
Speaker 1: placed on the one point six billion dollars, that they
Speaker 1: have to put that toward existing infrastructure and therefore can't
Speaker 1: build the second leg of the street car. Maybe they
Speaker 1: want all this extra revenue because money's fungible. If it
Speaker 1: doesn't come from the earnings on the one point six
Speaker 1: billion investment, then they can use it to go for
Speaker 1: new shiny objects and things. That they want exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: So we think that we need to take care of
Speaker 1: the current property tax payers. The people have been here
Speaker 1: for a long time. The people are the heart and
Speaker 1: soul of the city. Although they've forgotten about that. Our
Speaker 1: leaders say have.
Speaker 3: And this would take care of them for you know,
Speaker 3: fifteen twenty years, and then they can figure it out.
Speaker 3: I'll be moved off the stage. The next group can
Speaker 3: come along, but at least help the people who you know.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the people getting increases. There are three hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand properties in Hamlin County, sixty thousand properties
Speaker 3: a twenty five percent increase or more, and a lot
Speaker 3: of those were in Avondale and Price Hill and Westwood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, more side.
Speaker 3: I mean, some of them were outrageous. And these people
Speaker 3: are struggling. And I know the number of people who
Speaker 3: failed to pay their property tax in June. I don't
Speaker 3: want to say it's the highest, but it definitely went
Speaker 3: up over the previous year because people just couldn't forward
Speaker 3: to pay it.
Speaker 2: I certainly understand that I've talked to some of them.
Speaker 1: You mentioned slumlords earlier, you had to, you know, so yeah, well,
Speaker 1: some slumlords are going to get the benefit of this.
Speaker 1: But the positive potential impact of that is because slumlords
Speaker 1: also are facing increases in property tax, sometimes substantial. That's
Speaker 1: a pass through that goes along to the renter, so
Speaker 1: the rents will increase. So by taking away the sting
Speaker 1: of this tax increase, maybe the rents won't be increased.
Speaker 3: Well, that's right, and you know, you hope people do
Speaker 3: the right thing. That's the invisible hand of the free
Speaker 3: market system. You know, if all of them get some
Speaker 3: decrease there, then maybe they decrease the rents or they
Speaker 3: take the money and improve the property. You know. And
Speaker 3: because people can get up and move too, so it's
Speaker 3: not like they're locked into that place. But it's one
Speaker 3: one landlord said, hey, I'm going to lower my rates.
Speaker 3: Maybe people go that way. So and but you know,
Speaker 3: again there's a lot of small businesses, the local hardware store,
Speaker 3: the local shoeshine guy. You know those places need help too,
Speaker 3: because they have to push those prices onto us.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's certainly true.
Speaker 1: Well, this screams for a legislative solution from Columbus. This
Speaker 1: property tax increased the way they calculated. I thought that
Speaker 1: they were working on a fix on that in Columbus.
Speaker 1: So what happened to that? And did you reach out
Speaker 1: to our elected officials and Columbus to inquire about this?
Speaker 3: Well, after sixteen years in Columbus, I know how slow
Speaker 3: they move up there. And I'm not saying that they
Speaker 3: won't do anything. But we wanted to jump on this
Speaker 3: right away. And you know, again we were black, not
Speaker 3: that we wanted it, but we're blessed with having this
Speaker 3: big fund after the sell of the railroad because the
Speaker 3: one thing I want to make clear, this will not
Speaker 3: cut services. This is a fund that will make the
Speaker 3: same payment. The city budget will get the same amount
Speaker 3: of money because it'll come from this budget, from this
Speaker 3: this fund we set up, so city will get their
Speaker 3: twenty nine million or thirty two million this year and
Speaker 3: there will be no cuts to police or fire or
Speaker 3: social programs or all the stuff they do. And you know,
Speaker 3: because that's what they generally do when you want to
Speaker 3: cut taxes, they go, oh, we're going to have to
Speaker 3: cut services. Nope, there'll be no cut unless they cause
Speaker 3: a cut, but they'll get the same amount of money.
Speaker 3: But yeah, waiting for Columbus, it just it just takes
Speaker 3: a long time to get stuff there because we're a
Speaker 3: very diverse state. And you know what, the people on Mason,
Speaker 3: they don't care, and their rest doesn't care. And now
Speaker 3: now they care when they got to keep a tennis
Speaker 3: center and they want to the city is in the
Speaker 3: state to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to keep that,
Speaker 3: and we kind of come along because you know, that's
Speaker 3: that's politics. We make the sausage. But you know, so
Speaker 3: they may get around to doing something, but it just
Speaker 3: takes time.
Speaker 1: Now, what of the argument before we part company? Tom,
Speaker 1: and I've been enjoying this conversation. It's enlightening. What are
Speaker 1: the argument that, well, if you take six hundred million
Speaker 1: from the one point six billion, that's going to be
Speaker 1: less money generated because there's less principle in there, and
Speaker 1: therefore we'll have less money to fix the projects that
Speaker 1: we've neglected now for the past three decades.
Speaker 3: Well, my understanding is the appetite or the ability of
Speaker 3: the city to actually do projects is you know, fifteen
Speaker 3: to twenty million a year. So it's a long way
Speaker 3: to get rid of that one point six billion or
Speaker 3: whatever it is. But I will say one thing might
Speaker 3: contradict you a little or not contradict what they're saying.
Speaker 3: I think they have designs on that money that they're
Speaker 3: not telling us. I'm pretty sure they want to build
Speaker 3: a big with that money. I'm pretty sure they want
Speaker 3: to do streetcar expansion with that money. It's the how
Speaker 3: do they market that and call, well, this is infrastructure.
Speaker 3: We already have a streetcar, so we're just improving existing streetcar. Oh,
Speaker 3: we need an arena. It's a Remember they expanded the
Speaker 3: convention Center twenty years ago, declaring it was an act
Speaker 3: of war. We were and we were in a state
Speaker 3: of war with other cities who had convention centers, and
Speaker 3: they they that's the excuse they use to raise our
Speaker 3: earnings tax to pay for the convention center expansion. So
Speaker 3: they'll use any argument or anything they have to to
Speaker 3: do things like those big shiny objects like you talked about.
Speaker 3: So I'm not so sure that they planned on doing
Speaker 3: fixing that guy street who wants to pottobles fix with
Speaker 3: that money. I think they have their designs on something big,
Speaker 3: so I have teb can ride off into another office
Speaker 3: or in the DC or something like that. So I'm
Speaker 3: not I questioned their motives.
Speaker 1: I do tootos we're not gonna get an argument from
Speaker 1: you on that one. That's sort of a I got
Speaker 1: my popcorn out waiting to see for I'm waiting for
Speaker 1: the Shenanigans declaration along the lines of what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: But at least in the meantime, we have what they promised,
Speaker 1: and we can all make an argument that whatever they're
Speaker 1: trying to do that's new is not existing infrastructure. And
Speaker 1: those arguments will be made whether or not your proposal
Speaker 1: goes through. So, since you got the language approve, you
Speaker 1: need how many signatures and in what time in order
Speaker 1: to secure it being on the ballot.
Speaker 3: We need about I think eighty seven hundred signatures, so
Speaker 3: we're going for about nine thousand. We need to get
Speaker 3: them within the next few weeks. You know, the dates
Speaker 3: kind of flexible. You know, there's a hard date, but
Speaker 3: there's some others saying I've seen it go later earlier,
Speaker 3: depending on reasons. But yeah, I'd like to get them
Speaker 3: this month. And we do have a way where people
Speaker 3: can get.
Speaker 2: To the.
Speaker 3: In touch with us. We have a Facebook page which
Speaker 3: is Hamilton County Ohio Homeowners Hamilton County Ohio Homeowners. That's
Speaker 3: our Facebook page and We also have an email EHCH
Speaker 3: which stands for Hamilton County Homeowners eighth Unite at gmail
Speaker 3: dot com. If you go to that either send us
Speaker 3: an email, we can get your petition to circulate, we
Speaker 3: can get your signature. We're going to have gatherings like
Speaker 3: at Sinley Margaret or you know, restaurants or breweries where
Speaker 3: people can come and sign and also get petitions to
Speaker 3: get their folks out there. We've been using this time
Speaker 3: to organize people. So when we get those petitions, which
Speaker 3: is going to be early next week, we're going to
Speaker 3: hit the ground running, yeah, and get your signatures.
Speaker 1: Well, one thing it certainly does, it takes politics out
Speaker 1: of it. Every single property owner in the entire city
Speaker 1: gets a benefit from this without any you know, picking
Speaker 1: and choosing the winners and losers, which typically comes from politics.
Speaker 1: So I understand that. Tom Brickman, thanks thanks for explaining
Speaker 1: this to my listeners and me. I truly appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And I'll have my popcorn out on this. What is well? Tom?
Speaker 3: All right, well you have a great weekend.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thanks brother, you too, say twenty one fifty
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