County commissioners have a lot of responsibility. One small part of their job is overseeing county agencies like: Community and Economic Development, Family and Children First Council, Job and Family Services (helping people to find work and assisting families), Sanitary Engineering, and Stillwater Center – and that’s a partial list. I didn’t know all that - and that's part of what Debbie wants to change. She wants to let people know what she's supposed to do - and that they can make sure she's doing it! Her plans to make things more open to everyone in the community include making Council meetings more convenient for us and making sure everyone (other than the same good ole boys) gets a shot to serve with the county.
She’s already working with business & community leaders, making solid plans to help small businesses while keeping our major industries here and healthy. She pointed out that there are twelve different economic directors in the county, each doing their own thing. A marching band where everyone's doing their own thing doesn't work well, and that goes for counties, too. Her plan is to get everyone in the county working together so we can all benefit – without it being at the expense of someone else. Her experience with mediation - where everyone works out a common agreement where they all “win” - will serve her well in this.
Working together like this can also save us all money - while improving services. Would it make more sense for everyone on your block to buy a snow blower, or for everyone to chip in to buy one or two good ones? This kind of cooperation also makes it easier to solve problems that ignore city lines, like our sewer and road systems. Ask the Hearthstone residents having problems with a county sewer pump affecting Dayton sewers! She wants bureaucratic problems over issues like this to be a thing of the past.
She's put a lot of thought into how to help Montgomery County - and is already trying to help. Let's give her the ability to put some of these great ideas to work! Visit her site at http://www.debbielieberman.org
I "spoke" with Dayton City Commissioner Matt Joseph via e-mail; here's an excerpt of the interview:
ICTH: What would you like to see happen with business in Dayton?
MJ: While I was at UD I taught entrepreneurship to foreign visitors,
and I’m convinced that the more we invest in local people
starting their own small businesses, the better off the city will be.
ICTH: That makes sense. Non-local stores don't always pay locals
a good wage, and the profits go to corporate HQ, not to our community.
What do you think about how we fund our schools?
MJ: If we revive the schools, we will revive the city. If we
don’t revive the schools, it will be almost impossible to bring
Dayton back the way we want. The state’s school funding mechanism
is ridiculous, unfair and a failure.
ICTH: As we mentioned last month, Senator Fingerhut is among
those working to ensure that everyone gets a quality education by
fixing school funding. When I moved here, the smog was one of the first
things I noticed. I still see it regularly when I drive to work. What
are local agencies doing about local air pollution?
MJ: I believe the only local agency working on air pollution is RAPCA.
They run promotions giving away new gas caps and they announce the
ozone warning days in the summer. Since our state’s EPA has had
its funding cut and it’s regulatory powers destroyed by our Ohio
legislature, we are left relying almost solely on the federal EPA for
relief, and this is a federal EPA that continues to roll back
environmental gains we made in the 90’s.
ICTH: But doing more costs money, which means taxes. How do you
balance keeping taxes low while maintaining services in the city? How
does federal and state tax policy affect us locally?
MJ: We have no choice but to work with the amount of money the citizens
give us, through their taxes and by their choice of representatives.
When the feds reduced the estate tax rate and the states changed the
way they account for depreciation we end up with less tax money to
spend on roads and parks and police and fire. When people realize the
connection between who they elect, and the services they want, things
will get better.
ICTH: It's like the old saying - you get what you pay for. Thank you for your time.
Power plant pollution cuts short nearly 24,000 lives, including 2,800 from lung cancer, and causes 38,200 heart attacks each year according to a new study on the environment from Clear the Air. The study found that each of those people whose lives were cut short because of power plant pollution lost an average of 14 years, dying earlier than they would have otherwise. Dirty Air, Dirty Power is based on an analysis by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's own air quality consultants using standard EPA methodology.
The report compares the premature deaths that would result under the Bush administration's air pollution plan, the existing Clean Air Act, and a proposal sponsored by Senator Jim Jeffords to strengthen the Clean Air Act. The Administration's proposal would allow 4,000 preventable premature deaths each year compared with simply enforcing current law, while repealing the very safeguards that could save those lives.
http://www.cleartheair.org/dirtypower
After writing about hope last month, I knew I was in for a real challenge. With Bush & Cheney spinning and flip-flopping, trying to distract people with wedge issues rather than addressing the real needs and hurts of the American people... well, it's been a rough month.
There've been a lot of others who have found it hard - some have even found it hard to believe that hope is worthwhile. Maybe those of us talking about hope should be a bit more clear.
There's a lot of bad stuff going down. We can't ignore it - at least, if we want to keep our country anything like it could or should be. We have to be able to address things that are wrong. But it's after we've identified the problems that it's time to be hopeful.
A good - but pessimistic - friend of mine often tells me: "It won't work. People won't go along with it." But stories like the one above prove him wrong. Re-read the last paragraph of the story again: To do better than the Bush administration's plan we'd have to just leave the existing law in place.
In one sense it's sad that "progress" would simply be going back to the way things were four years ago. But we've been there. We know we can do it. The slogans of "Another World Is Possible" aren't unrealistic when that possible world is one we had just four years ago.
Another world is possible - and we know we can do it.
We’ve done it before. Let’s do it again.
- Steve Saus
