Here is what has happened:

a) the water/sewer lines needed to be repaired and replaced and EPA mandates regarding water/sewer lines had to be fulfilled, that was the essential need to raise the income tax by a half percent in 2010.

b) They had two options to get the money: either raise income tax by .5% or attach a surcharge to utility bills to pay for it. They understood that the tax increase would be the least troublesome to the overall populace and their political stability so, they went with that option. After discussion on how to sell it to the public, they sent out postcards and fliers, like you see here:

c) In July of 2010, this article was published in the Whitehall News:
Whitehall faces hike in income tax or fee – News – The Columbus Dispatch – Columbus, OH

In the article, then Auditor Kim Maggard said this,
“This city was built in the 1950s, and our issue right now is aging infrastructure,” Auditor Kim Maggard said. “In 2011, we’re spending $1 million on infrastructure, and that doesn’t even touch what we need to do.”
She never mentions parks and rec or services once.*

d)After the Issue passed, there was another article in the Whitehall News where, again, parks and rec weren’t even mentioned:

e) In the earlier Whitehall News article, it also stated the tax would be expecting to bring in an additional $4,000,000 a year. (Just for the purposes of this post, lets use that number to figure: the extra taxes started coming in for 2011, its now 2021 so…10 times 4 mil is $40,000,000 they would have had by now to have addressed the crumbling infrastructure. Okay.

f) The campaign for a new Mayor (as John Wolfe decided to no longer run) started in 2011. Kim Maggard ran unopposed (excepting a write in candidate). In an article from the time:

As mayor, she said, she would push for an overhaul of the city’s roads and sewers, drawing money for those projects from general-fund revenue. “We aren’t a new suburb,” she said. “When we find aging infrastructure, we’re going to have to say, ‘OK, how do we pay for this?’ We need to put the money aside in order to do that.”

g) So, money starts pouring in from the tax increase the very first year she is Mayor, 2012. She is the one (and the only one so far) who gets to play with it and put it where she wants (with Council’s approval, of course). ‘The City’ wasn’t used to this money so, while one could understand their excitement to distribute it, the citizens had every right to believe they would do so with moderation, sense and responsibility, particularly to important priorities.
(If you suddenly won $150,000 in a lottery and you had house issues and back alimony and non-fun financial priorities, would you be responsible and get those issues settled or would your inner Diamond Jim Brady come out and start feeling generous, spending it on luxuries?)
People are human no matter who they are. So then, that is the question here. Did the Mayor show restraint with this newfound bounty and do the most responsible thing or did she now have millions at her fingertips, tempting her inner Diamond Jim Brady to surface?

h) Let’s look at the numbers in the time of the last ten years or so since she took office:

Let’s add to that the I.T. department which jumped from $362,554 in 2012, almost tripling now to an appropriated amount of $924,679 per year.

We now have a Recreation Superintendent that has been appropriated $70,250 in 2021.
The ‘recreation/park fund’ went from $98,992 in 2012 to being appropriated over $278,000 for this year. In 2018 it was $713,100!
Parks and Rec went from a cost of $760,000 in 2012 to $1,131,192 in 2021

The cost of the Mayor’s office has went from $484,000 in 2012 to $1,193,309 in 2021.
The cost of employee benefits went from $7,650,000 in 2012 to $8,046,450 in 2021.

A ‘public relations’ category was added in 2017. To date, including expected expense and appropriations, by the end of 2021, they’ll have spent $373,208!

Acting as if its still the 1950’s where the worker is king, benefits and raises were given out regardless of the economic storms that existed in the real world where benefits and raises are harder to come by. When its taxpayer cash flowing in though, there seems to be enough for everyone.

If you weren’t aware, the city is in the property acquisition business; buying up properties and maintaining them until they find a purpose or buyer…
Whitehall Community Improvement Corporation – Whitehall Means Business

Franklin County Auditor
Since 2013 they have spent…get this…$19,118,721 of taxpayer money. Nearly 20 million dollars!!

The evidence of their profligate spending is all through the public record. It just takes looking at to see.

i) As you can see by the city’s chart itself, the water/sewer issue has been evident even before Kim Maggard got into office. And, despite her speaking of making it a priority when she wanted your vote in 2011 (see ‘f’ above), she instead found a hundred other places to spend that newfound 1/2 percent income tax goldmine.

At the Water/Sewer Surcharge Town Hall Meeting where ‘The City’ came to the people to sell them on the need for the surcharge, we were told that if Council didn’t pass the surcharge, the administration would have to find the money somewhere and while people like their roads taken care of, that may not happen ‘anytime soon’, meaning: we’re gonna have to take the money from the road improvements fund to pay for the water/sewer issue despite sharing with us these figures of spending for the last 5 year:

I’ve made my own version of this same chart instead of the circle to better show the dramatic differences in spending:

So, clearly, our Mayor has gussied up the city to divert attention away from the crumbling infrastructure she wasn’t properly attending to. Now, when she has no choice but to attend to that Stage 4 cancer under our feet, instead of cutting out all unnecessary spending to pay for that cancer treatment, she’s willing to renege against the city’s promise in 2010 of NOT having to attach a surcharge to our utility bills if we passed Issue 30, thereby giving her even MORE money for that which she didn’t do in the first place. She’s unwilling to give up her reckless and irresponsible spending, even as our city rots underneath, expecting US instead, to pay even more for it.

*At tonight’s Council meeting, after I urged Council to reject the surcharge legislation, she tried to degrade me to the public by inferring I was stupid at math**. She also reiterated that at Issue 30’s beginnings was talk of money being spent on Parks & Rec, and while it was part of the sell job, it certainly wasn’t the overarching theme. And even if it were as much a part of the spending as she claims, she had a fiscal responsibility to spend the tax monies wisely. She could have, at any time, said, ‘I know we talked about Parks and Recreation in Issue 30 but we’ve really got to put alot of that aside and focus on what’s really important at this time, the crumbling infrastructure’. But she didn’t. THAT is fiscally and managerially irresponsible. So too, when the public clamored for a community center or splash pad, it was her responsibility as the manager of the funds to let people know that there are more pressing problems and once we get those taken are of, we can revisit the splashpad. But she didn’t. Tonight I said she was fiscally irresponsible and in this blog I’ve made my argument as to how I arrived at that judgement. I’ve done MY job. Now council should do theirs and stop abetting her fiscal irresponsibility.

**I’ve never claimed to be a math whiz but my logic and powers of reason are well-honed.