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Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Matt Maupin Day
Flags will fly at half-mast Friday, April 11, as the city observes Matt Maupin Day.
Vice Mayor Pat Moeller submitted the resolution to council Wednesday evening. He said he got the idea while at Opening Day for the Cincinnati Reds where the flags were at half-mast. He said Maupin’s parents had visited Hamilton several times and Matt had become a symbol of the American soldier. The city has honored other sons lost in the war, but not to this extent.
Moeller and Councilman Jim Noonan both expressed desire that the city take this action in the event of any local combat deaths in the future.
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The quest for dollars
With the Hamilton’s general fund expected to come up $600,000 short of expenditures in 2008, the city is always looking for an additional revenue source. The prospect of raising income tax isn’t desirable and the process of building up industry to increase the tax base is desirable but neither easy nor quick.
So, where else can money come from?
City officials floated the idea of red light traffic cameras in the fall, but it met with some opposition on council and has yet to take off. Though, there has been some mention of the idea again recently.
Another idea is for the city to follow the lead of Cincinnati and Oxford and own its own vehicle impound lot. Currently, the city contracts out impoundment services to four towing companies. Those companies then make money by charging storage fees and by selling the cars if the owner never comes to pick them up.
“Those are all fees that we could charge if we had our own impoundment lot,” said Capt. Joe Murray, operations commander for the Hamilton Police Department.
While the idea is still in very preliminary stages, Murray said it would change nothing but where people pick up their cars. There’s not even a lot of start up cost to the idea.
“If you have the land, you basically need a fence around it,” he said.
So, in this early stage of discussion, how does it sound to you?
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Hydro power
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown has written a letter on Hamilton’s behalf to the Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Brown is trying to help urge the commission along to allow city officials to get started on the hydroelectric plant on the Meldahl Lock and Dam on the Ohio River.
Brown’s letter is probably due to the fact that several city officials went to Washington D.C. at the end of February to lobby for support for the project. Timing is everything, City Manager Mark Brandenburger has told me. A year’s delay in the project could cost an estimted $9 million as construction costs continue to rise.
Consequently, Brown urges the commissioner to make a final decision in a “timely manner.”
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