Vote ‘No’ on 29?

taxedenough

Hamilton County IS taxed enough! Vote ‘NO’ on Issue 29. In this blog post, we will be diving into why you should vote ‘No’!

A recent Cincinnati.com article by Jason Williams called out the folks on the park board for being tone deaf and we agree!

We are all being called upon to tighten our belts: small businesses are going under, inflation continues to rise, Covid fears are escalating and we’ve lost so much culturally and socially over the last 18 months. Yet in the face of all of this, The Great Parks of Hamilton County thinks it is a great time to raise your taxes by 90%!

“I have to pause to wonder whether the Great Parks have some serious swampland that needs draining. I mean the more I look into this, the more like Washington DC it becomes. We’ve got our very own local, bloated bureaucracy (over $1 million in salaries/year), we’ve got the high-priced consultants, lobbyists that get paid to lobby politicians in Columbus for who knows what, we’ve got inefficiencies and waste, and of course the constant drumbeat for higher taxes / more and more money! All I know is there must be something very addictive about taxes rolling in to all these various taxing institutions because, just like an addict, once they get a taste of it, they just can’t seem to get enough.” – Barbara Holowadel

Issue 29 is going to DOUBLE the amount of park money you are paying on your property tax bill! If you don’t own property, your rent will rise to reflect this increase. The city has their own parks! Some of the people least able to afford this increase have their own beautiful parks that they are already funding. For the most part they do not use the county parks, yet they will have to fund all of these pet projects.

Despite the sales pitch, the taxes taken by Parks increases with each county auditor assessment.

Some of the known projects Great Parks expects us to fund include:

  1. $800,000 on Planning
  2. $1.75 MILLION for a Cafe and TapRoom
  3. $4.7 MILLION for an RV Campground
  4. $3.5 MILLION for a golf course sprinkler system
  5. $3.6 MILLION to repurpose the old Shawnee Lookout Golf Course back to being woods. Taxpayers had to pay to turn the woods into a failed golf course and now have to pay to convert it back again to its natural habitat!

And, worst of all, more than $100 MILLION is unaccounted for, in other words, they don’t want us to know what they will do with the money!

“It’s like a career politician saying we have to pass the bill in order to find out what’s in it. Well the park board wants us to fund their projects in order to find out what their projects are.” – Barbara Holwadel

3 thoughts on “Vote ‘No’ on 29?”

  2. Murray Seasongood, founding father of the Hamilton County Park District, has the Seasongood Nature Center at Woodland Mound Park named in his honor.
    Previous Hamilton County Park Boards recognized the importance Mr. Seasongood played in protection of the local environment.
    Unfortunately, the current Great Parks Board does not see the need to honor Murray Seasongood and wants to tear down the Seasongood Nature Center per its new Master Plan.

  3. Question for Great Parks of Hamilton County Board of Park Commissioners.
    Why haven’t expenditures shown any depreciable reduction when CEO Palmeter closed and cancelled the following:

    Shawnee Lookout Golf Course, Woodland Mound Steamboat Bend Campground, Woodland Mound Steamboat Bend Reservable Picnic Shelter,
    Miami Whitewater Forest Parky’s Pirate Cove Wet Playground, and cancellation of both Halloween Nights and Easter Eggravaganza special events.

Comments are closed.