After a few brief, calm council meetings, it would have been easy to think that 2020 would go out like a lamb. But tonight’s meeting opened a new can of worms that got messy quickly.
In this edition of Norwood in Nine, we recap the November 24th Norwood City Council meeting, which lasted 130 minutes. Usually, I am to keep these episodes under ten minutes, but that was impossible tonight — or maybe I was just energized by tonight’s spirited discourse.
This edition of the show dives into:
- the Mayor’s exploration of outsourcing city services to the county
- council’s decision to extend a Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) district for 30 years
- The pros and cons of Norwood possibly partnering with Adsposure
- And much more… Check it out:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS
To get a sense of how the cost of Dispatch impacts the city’s budget, here’s a quick overview of last year’s budget. The four biggest expenses are:
- Fire Dept & EMS: 31.26%
- Police Dept: 27.66%
- Public Lands & Buildings: 5.00%
- Dispatch: 3.98%
To learn more about TIFs, check out the Ohio Development Services agency website.
Here’s more information about Adsposure and their business model.
—
Move Norwood Forward aims to shed light on the people, businesses and happenings of Norwood, Ohio that are bettering the city. If you know of a person who should be featured on an episode, nominate them here.
For those who can’t read the graph, that’s nearly $1 million dollars. According to the quote provided by Hamilton County it’s going to be about 1/4 of that, or $20 per call right now, vs $5 a call for Hamilton County. This is because currently Norwood residents are paying double for 911 services, after the Hamilton County 911 levy passed last year.
We have a number of city services that have been neglected over the years due to budget shortfalls. Further with the current economic climate the city is going to struggle for years to come with income issues. We can’t afford to double pay for the same services while failing to fix and maintain our roads and other critical infrastructure.
For the Water bill – one could question how is this better? City is not making money off this; someone, some bill pay group is. Why is there a 1.95 charge to pay ones bill by e-check. In theory by the notice “Exciting News” one can not mail a check in. It’s either drop box or pay to pay options. If credit card option I could understand but a plain e-check should be fund direct.