Look at the mighty billboard advertising Lakota Tomahawk football and cheerleading registration. Doesn’t it look expensive? Considering these types of extracurricular activities are now pay to play sports at Lakota because of the levy failures, the advertising of on this billboard seems misleading, even audacious. That is because anyone can see the hypocrisy just in looking at that billboard. The Lakota School System needs its sports programs to keep busy parents occupied on something easily measured like sports to justify the extraordinary cost of public education. Sports unite a community under school pride that causes regular thinking people to forgive many of the flaws inherit in any school system where education methods simply fall short most of the time to the expected results.
But even deeper than that, the government schools know that they need parents to buy into the pride of their sporting programs because it is a proven formula into gaining additional revenue. Mike Brown mastered this art when he constructed his stadium deal with Hamilton County in the mid 90’s which have led to nearly bankrupting the city of Cincinnati today, even though the warnings were sounded by many beforehand. Cincinnati did not want their Bengals to leave for another city, so they did whatever they had to do to make Mike Brown happy.
Labor unions and school boards have figured out that the same formula works in their education institutions for obtaining additional taxes. They use sports and a parents pride in their child’s participation to increase their budgets and obtain increased wages and benefits for the employees. It’s a nice little sleight-of-hand that has been going on for many years now. Parents have shown they will support higher taxes to give their children an opportunity to be a part of a winning team, or even the possibility of a scholarship.
The other side of this issue is that once the school marketing has successfully created in the mind of the parents and the community the need for sports to fill the community newspapers, the school sports programs are part of the cultural significance of an entire district. This of course gives schools leverage over voters when it comes time to ask for increases in taxes, because the community overwhelmingly wants sports from the schools to entertain them. For many parents it is more fun to root for the kids in their neighborhood rather than those at a professional level, because they can relate to the local athletes. So if a school like Lakota does not get their funds, they can then make the sports programs pay-for-play programs, which is just a fancy way of extorting the public into voting in favor of higher taxes. This is where Lakota is. They want parents to sign up their children into sports programs and they’ll spend the money on a sign to advertise the openings, then they’ll turn right around and demand $500 per sport for a child to play. What gets missed in the discussion is that the employees of the district are already being paid an average salary of $63k per year and many of the teachers would happily donate their time so that the kids could be coached. And uniforms and other costs are already covered by other fees that the parents must commit to. And at football games there is admission revenue, concessions and other streams of money that come back from the community and go to the school. So why the $500 fees? Where does it go and who gets it?
The fees are to force a community to pass a levy, to increase the taxes on their property and its raw extortion that is very destructive to the sustainability of neighborhoods everywhere. Such a practice is incredibly short-sighted and brings to question the merit of the entire educational institution when reason cannot be seen by them, yet they insist they are qualified to teach our children.
Darryl Parks of 700 WLW and I have been at this levy fighting thing for a long time. He is currently gearing up his fight against the Forest Hills Levy in his district. One of the great fights of our time is the realization that we have seen what tax increases do. We’ve seen over time what tax increases have done to Cincinnati Public, Reading, Princeton, Mt. Healthy, and Fairfield, those with means and money move away. Currently the wealth band of affluence is around the I-275 loop most notably Sycamore, Mason and of course Lakota. Darryl and I know that this trend will last for a few short years and once taxes become too great, residents who now have grown children will simply move on to a cheaper home that is taxed at a lower rate. This brings down the demand for homes since a disproportionate amount of homes hit the market in a given area as average home values decrease.
Growing up, I used to work on Chester Road just down the road from Princeton High School. That was the days when many of the Reds players lived on the west side and in Blue Ash, so Chester Road was the main strip in all of Cincinnati. It was where everything happened. Restaurants like the Wind Jammer and Bombay Bicycle club where the destination dinning centers in the city and I was right in the middle of it. Because of all this Princeton City School dominated sports as many involved parents made their home around the Princeton District to be near this hot spot of activity. Today Princeton has an average per pupil cost of $15K per student and it’s a district in decline simply because many of the successful home owners have moved away and now reside in Lakota and Mason. Today Chester Road in Sharonville is only a slim reminder of what it once was, a victim of high taxes that push away property owners and businesses.
The church I always attended all through my life in Fairfield used to be the heart of community. Playboy Magazine in the 80’s listed Fairfield as having the most attractive high school girls in the country because it was a rising star of economic activity–so attractive, successful parents moved to Fairfield to be near the great schools and great shopping on RT. 4. My church always had lots of very attractive girls looking for a date, and had a very active youth group that was mainstream back then. Most of the kids who went to Fairfield High School went to church because the girls had to be home around midnight on a Saturday to get enough sleep to go to church the next day. When you picked up a girl for a date you had to meet the parents. There were always two of them, as a divorced woman alone in a big home was still not considered normal. So in other words, there was a culture in Fairfield that aimed to produce some sort of quality in the family unit.
I went back to that church a few weeks ago and there was no youth. All that was left were gray hairs from my parent’s generation. The nice homes 20 years ago now had public housing residents filling them with single mothers caring for two to three children per home and those kids weren’t going to church. The culture in and around that church was dying and all you had to do to see it was look at it in the parking lot of the old church. It was spreading like a disease.
The reason I brought up Darryl is because he was speaking to a neighbor of his earlier in the week and they reported they were moving, because of the Forest Hills levy request. They had simply had it. You can read what Darryl said about this situation at the link below. I also have the broadcast by him discussing this during his Saturday show below the link.
http://www.700wlw.com/pages/onair_parks.html?article=9719712
Darryl is dealing with the microcosm of his neighbor leaving which is similar to what communities are dealing with in the macrocosm. When we fight these tax levies we are not trying to hurt kids, hurt the schools or the parents who move to these districts to attend the great schools. We are fighting to keep the costs low so that the cancerous destruction that we’ve seen happen in our lifetimes does not destroy our own homes and the communities they reside in. It is not our fault if the types of people who so easily vote themselves tax increases don’t understand the basics of economics. Or that they don’t care what happens to their communities 20 years from now because their plans are to sell their home and move any way.
Taxes do not incentivize people to stay in a community. Higher costs make them leave. It doesn’t matter if it’s a business or a residence. Anyone who governs money with a loose had and perpetually thinks that taxes can always increase is a fool who does not understand economics, and it is not the job of the wise portions of the public to give these people educations they should already have as adults. Those who believe in tax increases simply do not value money and that is a failure of their personal philosophies. They will not be allowed to destroy communities without opposition. Darryl is fighting for his community from his home district and I am from mine. I know of hundreds all across Ohio who are joining us in this endeavor, and they are all doing it for the same reason—they wish to preserve their homes and not see them destroyed by reckless tax increases initiated from a looter mindset.
The billboard in Lakota says it all. It’s an elaborate display designed to show off the wealth of the district and increase enrollment. But it’s also designed to advance the cause for further tax increases. Such a sign to me reminds me of the kind of gloating that went on in the days of Chester Road by Princeton High School, in glory days long gone, and at Fairfield. If the taxes continue to increase, the fate of all the poorer districts of Hamilton County are in the future for Lakota and it’s our responsibility as citizens to use our knowledge of history to prevent that treachery. Because without opposition, there will be more and more neighbors like the ones Darryl Parks mentioned leaving for land that is less restricted by taxes and allow the residents to keep the value of their hard-earned wealth. They won’t do it because they are mean, or selfish. They’ll do it because they are wise.
Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:
Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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