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1. Global warming claims all hot air, says speaker at OU2. Police chief: City can’t stop parties before they start3. Parties spun by OU alums have bootie-shakers raving4. High St. student renters take on big local landlord5. Is another oil and gas land-rush starting in Athens?6. OU student charged with raping 17-year-old7. Tanning parlor fights to get back into uptown Athens storefront8. For most, the journey to Nine Fest seemed worth it9. Oak and Mill fests mellow down easy10. Landowners’ group renews leasing pitch11. City Council acts to ban ‘fracking’ in water supply area12. Wal-Mart asks judge to grant store win in shoplifter’s lawsuit13. OU and city officials urge better fest behavior14. Pills defeated relative when no other drugs could do it15. David Alan Jones16. Local developers hoping to revive struggling hotel17. Electric blue skies, May warmth frame music fest18. Festering fests; down, down deep; and the Golden Rule19. Hall of Fame baseball coach calls it a day at OU20. Graphic design students show off their chops
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Thursday, February 10,2011
City Council wants to take another jab at OU students
The
city of Athens is poised to dip into the bottomless well of Ohio University
student wealth, by requesting that OU contribute to the city’s purchase of a
new fire truck.
Under the resolution approved by Athens City Council Monday night, the city will ask OU officials to pitch in $250,000 to help pay about a quarter of the cost of a new fire truck. Council went a step further, proposing that OU pay the amount in $50,000 installments over five years.
Council members also helpfully suggested that OU raise student fees to cover the extra cost, with each student being responsible for $2.35 per year. According to council member Elahu Gosney, this equals the cost of a cup coffee. (Methinks Elahu needs to find a cheaper place to get his java fix.)
This idea has some problems. First of all, it assumes that students don’t already contribute to the financial health of this community. Yet, they pay a variety of taxes, including on property (through their exorbitant rents); on sales (through each student’s large amount of local spending); and on income (through their part-time jobs and indirectly, though the incomes of the thousands of local people whose jobs directly depend on the student population).
If there’s ever been a better example of the goose that laid the golden egg than OU students’ value to the Athens community, I haven’t heard it. These 20,000 individuals are dropping from $9,000 to $28,000 a year into the local economy just through tuition and room and board, and then thousands more apiece in additional spending.
This money doesn’t just disappear after it gets to Chubb Hall; it goes out in salaries, utilities, food and a zillion other expenditures that percolate in the local economy.
Person for person, students at OU contribute far more to the local economy than the great majority of non-student taxpayers.
Yet, whenever the university – and now the city – is perplexed about where to find money for something, the answer all too often is… a surcharge on OU students! If you nickel and dime students often enough, pretty soon you’re talking about real money. And that’s on top of their paying Ohio-level tuition fees, among the highest for public colleges in the nation and sure to grow ever higher with the state’s ongoing budget crisis.
Granted, it’s easy to see why the city needs a new fire truck, and why city officials think the university ought to contribute to the cost. The Athens Fire Department spends an inordinate amount of time responding to calls on campus, and the sought-after ladder truck is designed to put out fires in tall buildings, of which OU has many.
My problem is with City Council members taking it upon themselves to gratuitously reinforce the myth of the Athens student deadbeat. They want these students to pick up part of the cost of the fire truck, over and above what they’re already paying indirectly and directly in city taxes. It ignores the fact that the university and city are already milking students (and their parents) dry.
It seems to me that non-student residents of Athens need to get cracking and start contributing their fair share to the local economy. While they’re at it, they can go ahead and forgo one more cup of coffee a year to pay for a whole fire truck rather than just three-quarters of one.
Also in Wearing Thin:
Festering fests; down, down deep; and the Golden RulePills defeated relative when no other drugs could do itMore ruminations on the city and OU's festering problemState’s not willing to stop oil & gas over-reachingOU tuition 96th costliest of 663 public 4-year collegesVicious McCarthyism now part of GOP mainstreamEditor Smith is beside himself on Athens fracking banDrunk Homecoming brings out the worst in some folksWhile oil & gas boom doubtful here, it could still happenYes, I’m sure oil-gas industry will shun Ohio if taxes raised
Also from Terry Smith:
Festering fests; down, down deep; and the Golden RulePills defeated relative when no other drugs could do itMore ruminations on the city and OU's festering problemState’s not willing to stop oil & gas over-reachingOU tuition 96th costliest of 663 public 4-year collegesVicious McCarthyism now part of GOP mainstreamEditor Smith is beside himself on Athens fracking banDrunk Homecoming brings out the worst in some folksGeologist: County may still be in oil windowWhile oil & gas boom doubtful here, it could still happen
So in an article where you decry the perpetuation of the deadbeat student myth, you choose to substitute another myth, the townie not paying his or her fair share?
There are a fair number of townies here who are facing the prospect of furloughs, layoffs, and long term unemployment/underemployment, and you have the gall to complain about paying $2.35 for necessary equipment that will help keep students and firefighters safe?
I know it's no fun feeling like you're getting nickled and dimed to death (it's even less fun when it isn't nickles and dimes), or feeling like you're blamed for every ill, but grow up.
What does growing up have to do with it? I was just making the point that one can't argue that students aren't paying their fair share (they are, in spades) any more than one can argue that city non-students aren't doing the same. It was irony. The whole point of the city's efforts to shift part of the fire-truck cost to the university and its students depends on the assumption that students aren't already contributing to the city budget in myriad ways. That's a false assumption.
You do cover the contribution students make to the town economy through their purchases and rent. Since OU is being run as a business, with efforts to squeeze the budget ever lower, increase their customer base, and lower quality, perhaps the city feels the campus property should be taxed as business property? If the college property is state property, perhaps it should be run to a higher standard that businesses. Your thoughts on this perspective, Terry?
I'm not sure what you mean by a "higher standard" than business. It's apples and oranges. My baseline point of view is that all the whining about non-taxed university property ignores that this property/entity very significantly "taxes" its main occupants, students, and those millions upon millions of dollars percolate in the local economy, generating money for both business and city government. I'm pretty sure if city officials had to help pay their kids way through OU, or for their own education here, they'd have a different perspective on to what degree students contribute to the local community and economy.
Your weren't "just" making any point, Terry. You wrote a lazy, unfocused article that has an appeal to a specifc audience and then called it a day. Been then, done that. You took a valid, but fairly unintersting topic, and invented news. I really don't have a problem with the article except that you chose to criticize another group of people unfairly.