Gloria Ferris

Tuesday, July 24th, I received an invitation to attend a meeting at Gypsy Beans and Baking Company.  I went.  I think it may have changed my life. I thought I was through with my days of political activism.  Turned out I was wrong.  When I went, I did not know the reason for the meeting other than it had something to do with the last public hearing about the convention center/medical mart. Turned out PutItOnTheBallot.com was born that day.

A group of activists and others were concerned that the commissioners were bent on adding 1/4% local sales tax to our state sales tax without a vote.  There were Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and community activists in the room. Four things weighed in heavily on gearing up for a referendum: 

1. The Republican Party at their Central Committee meeting was supposed to adopt a platform that would come out against a tax levy without a vote;
2. Peter Lawson Jones would stand firm on his “no” vote for the automatic increase; 
3. 90,000 signatures would be needed to make the 45,254 signatures needed to put it on the ballot
4. Funding would  probably be necessary to reach our goals.

Everyone felt funding was our weak suit since all of the business leaders and moneyed people in town believed that a convention center was the next best thing since sliced bread.  Personally, I enjoy slicing my own bread, but then that is just me. A tired, old, overused idea as a loss leader was what we were getting with an untested, unproven Medical Mart idea thrown in for good measure. My take on it was it might work, but how would it work and what would be the benefits for the taxpayers?  Too many unanswered questions for my taste. I hadn’t attended the first public hearing but no way was I missing the second, and I was extremely uncomfortable with the voting public being left out of the decision.   I wanted some answers. So that was my take, but there were as many other takes on the issue as there were people in the room–some wanted no tax increase under any circumstances, others wanted the choice of a vote, others thought the med mart was a good idea but the convention center wasn’t, others debated that without the convention center the medical mart made no sense.  The only consensus in the room was  “the people’s right to vote on tax issues”.

Someone suggested that we needed a very narrow focus.  Someone else suggested that a web presence could overcome some of our shortcomings–we could use paypal for contributions, we could recruit volunteers, we could have a schedule of events where signers and circulators could meet, and on and on.  And then, the room grew silent for a minute or two as we considered the pros and the cons.  During that time, I decided that the overriding issue for me was “the right to vote,” and I would sign on to the effort if the group decided to go forward.  I would put aside my questions about the Med Mart/Convention Center until September 1st.

When the room erupted into sound again, it was decided that a website would be formulated in anticipation of going forward with the referendum, a printer would be waiting in the wings, we would all attend the public hearing, and if we spoke, we would speak to the issue of the right to vote on tax issues,  and we would make our final decision after the public hearing.  And so it began.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 8:31 am and is filed under Cleveland, developing community, growing an economy, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.