Bed Tax Concerns New Philadelphia Ohio

       On Monday, June 24, the Finance Committee of the New Philadelphia City Council met to discuss the imposition of a three-percent (3%) bed tax on the motels, and other overnight lodging businesses within the city.  Should the tax be passed by the city council and approved by the Mayor, it would increase the city’s revenue by approximately $200,000 a year.

       This increase in city revenue, while not an economic cure for New Philadelphia’s worsening financial stability, would help to keep the city from the disaster of a possible bankruptcy. 

Consider the following:

The Estate Tax in Ohio has been repealed.  This alone has reduced income to the city by two million dollars this year already;

Income tax revenues are down $55,000;

Businesses are experiencing decreased sales due to increased prices combined with decreased personal income;

State contributions to the city from the state have been reduced, as have those from the county;

The recent round of pay increases for city employees amount to almost 8% in the next three years, some of those the raises being retroactive to January of last year, others to January of this year;

City maintenance costs have risen along with the rate of inflation.

       Increases to city funds will help alleviate an impending financial crisis, and if the increase in revenue can be accomplished without adding additional hardship on the taxpaying citizen of New Philadelphia, so much the better.

       But wait.  We’re talking $200,000 here.  Like road kill on a country road attracts vultures, new revenues attract people and organizations who believe that they are entitled to a piece of the take just because it is there.  Think not?  Well, get a load of this.

The local Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) based at Clever Airport in New Philadelphia, wants $50,000 as its “educational projects bring many visitors to the city airport.”  I belonged to the EAA in past years and appreciate what it does, but the use of city tax money to support a flying club really does not make sense.

The Athletic Department of the New Philadelphia Schools, wants $50,000 according to the president of the Quaker Club.  After all, they have made improvements to the stadium, which the School Department rents for a dollar a year.  They feel they deserve the money as football games bring people into town and the school contributes to the stadium maintenance. 

      The Tuscarawas County Convention and Visitors Bureau (TCCVB), in a letter to the City Council, requests $100,000 (50%) of the collected bed tax for their use, at their sole discretion.  $75,000 of this would be given to local facilities including but not limited to local museums, historic sites and the downtown of the city, beautification of public property including public parks, bike and hiking paths, the Tuscarawas River, and special events.  $25,000 is recommended to be spent for crosswalks and other capital expenditures.  Incidentally, if more than $100,000 becomes available because of an increase in bed tax revenues, the TCCVB wants the same percentage of payment (50%) from the bed tax if it exceeds the original $100,000.

Then there is Councilman Zucal.  He wants the money from the bed tax to be spent on specific projects, and get this, which are specified by legislation which means forever.  Remember, we are dealing with around $200,000 a year here.  Here’s his plan:

$70,000 (35%) to be spent for an Economic Development Director, who would be charge of the enhancement of the economy and climate of the city.  What ever happened to the Chamber of Commerce and the CIC?  Oh, yeah.  We can’t forget the secretary to help the new director out and the salary and benefits that would go along with that job.

      $10,000 (5%) for operating expenses of Schoenbrunn Village which is owned, operated, and funded, by the State Historical Society.

$10,000 (5%) for operating expenses to support Trumpet In The Land.

$10,000 (5%) for operations of Tuscora Park.

$10,000 (5%) to support the Quaker Club, an intrigal part of the New Philadelphia School System.

$30,000 (15%) to no more than six nonprofit organizations to be named later.

$60,000 (30%) to be given as grants for unnamed projects.

Let’s see.  Zucal’s plan spends the whole $200,000 (100%) proposed bed tax revenue on some very interesting places, only one of which, Tuscora Park, which is owned by the city and currently funded through city taxes.  The remainder of Zucal’s recommended spending plan goes to organizations which are not even a part of the City of New Philadelphia. 

The Quaker Club, as a part of the New Philadelphia Schools, is a separate political entity with its own taxing system, administration, and budgeting, and as such contributes nothing to the City from its over ten million dollar yearly budget.  The school system, supported by the real estate taxes of the citizenry of New Philadelphia, additionally charges its student families for sports, music instruction, books, and then wants additional money from the bed tax to pay its bills.

The Tuscarawas County Convention and Visitor Bureau is funded by state and county taxes and responsible for increasing tourism in the entire county.  Most of the projects mentioned in the request for $100,000 from the proposed bed tax are not in the city of New Philadelphia.  The suggestion that the TCCVB should also take over responsibility for projects such as painting crosswalks for motels is ludicrous.  Such projects are the city’s responsibility, not one of an organization wishing to grab funds from a city bed tax.

The fact of the matter is that New Philadelphia is going broke.  The bed tax is a partial solution to keeping the city solvent and by accomplishing that, keeping the State of Ohio from coming in and taking control of our city as it has already done in several cities.  I say a partial solution because until New Philadelphia city management, Administrative and Legislative, face the fact that the city is in need of realistic budgeting and acts accordingly, it will never achieve a sound financial state.

The bed tax should be passed.  However, the ordinance creating it should specifically stipulate that all income from that tax must go into the city’s General Fund and may not be spent without proper legislation by the City Council and approval of the Mayor. 

Legislation of a tax which does not directly have a favorable result for the citizenry should be defeated, no matter what the personal, political, or other gain, may be realized by members of city government.

Rosemary LaBonte on Immigration

I hate it when when somebody says it better than I do, in this case they did, but that doesn't stop me from passing it along.  Rosemary is so correct and to the point that I had to share it.  It was sent to me by a friend so I don't know Rosemary, but boy, do I agree with her.

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From: "David LaBonte"
My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the OC Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to "print" it myself by sending it out on the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so inclined. Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register:

Dear Editor:

So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren't being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.
Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.

They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity.

Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought alongside men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy , France and Japan. None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people.

When we liberated France, no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.


And here we are with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in t he early 1900's deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.

And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty, it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn't start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.

(signed)
Rosemary LaBonte

D-Day, June 6, 1944. Bernard Sterno's story of his jump into Normandy and History.

D-Day.  June 6, 1944, as recalled by Bernard Sterno, Infantryman, 101st Airborne Division, United States Army.  Originally from Georgia, he had moved to New York in search of work.  New York was not what he thought it would be, so when the war started, he volunteered.  His objective was to get into the paratroopers.  He was 19 years old.  This is his story, in his words.

 

 

They postponed D-Day one day because the weather was too rough.  Then the next day, it was it.  They had a meeting before dark and General Eisenhower came out and walked right among us.  It was very informal.  Usually, when a general comes up they have you at attention. But as soon as Eisenhower walked up, the company commander was briefed.  He said, "At rest."  That meant you could stand around.  Eisenhower came browsing through us, talking to us, joking with us, asking questions, where we were from, what did we do in civilian life, and things like that.

After he left, they took us, and all our heavy equipment, down to the C-47s, and we loaded up.

     We took off before dark on the fifth of June.  I don't know how long it took us to get into formation.  I was sitting next to one guy and we got tired and fell asleep.  It was dark then, we were still flying.  When I woke up and looked down, I could see a light flashing up at us.  We were over the English Channel.  It must have been a submarine or something like that that was flashing.

The next thing I knew, I could hear what sounded like a bunch of gravel on the plane.  I could see streaks of tracer bullets coming up from the ground.  I said, "Look there.  It looks like tracer bullet fire or something."

The guy next to me said, "It's just fire from the exhaust of the engines."

I said, "No it's not."

Then we started rocking.

They told us to stand up and hook up and we parachuted into Normandy at night.

We were scattered all over and mixed in with the 82nd Airborne[1].  It was just all mixed up that first night.  Every time another plane would come over the Germans would start shooting.  We got as close to them as we could and threw some hand grenades at them.  That quieted some of them down.  When it got daylight and we started seeing some of our own people.

We stayed together and when we ran into groups of Germans, we'd get rid of them.  Some of them would run and roll.  It was nip and tuck.

When we came to a village, we hit it along with other companies.  We were all mixed up with the 82nd Airborne.  We were just disorganized.  After a couple of days we all got together as people wandered in.

Some of the men landed further away from our objective than we did.  One plane load landed in the channel and were never seen again.  They were from Company A, First Battalion, 502 Parachute Regiment.  Their company commander was on the plane that went down.

I don't know how many days we were there.  After the 10th, we were supposed to go and take Carentan[2].  The whole company slept in a barn that night.  The next morning we started out toward the open causeway.  We had to rush in bunches and hit the ground and roll because the Germans were shooting at us and it was all in the open.  We'd go across one of those bridges, hit the shoulder of the road, and lay down low.  Some of the bridges were blown out.  We strung ropes across them and pulled ourselves across the water on the ropes.  We were all day long there.

When it got night, a dog-gone German dive bomber came over and was firing bullets.  He was hitting the paved road and everybody there.  He knocked several people of G Company out.  He just got them.  A British night fighter came in behind him and knocked him down.  The dive bomber looked like a torch in the air.  I could see it going over and hit the ground over on the other side of Carentan.  You could see it burning all night long.

When it got daylight, we were out on the end of the bridge. They sent Company H up ahead because the other companies had already taken a beating.  There was a big steel gate there and they pulled the gate open.  They needed somebody to go so they said Company H, that was our company.

      Our commander says, "Come on Company H, let's do it."

The battalion commander, who was Colonel Cole, Robert Cole, from Texas, was standing there in the bald open with a .45 pistol on him.  Our company commander was talking in a little whisper, and Colonel Cole said, "Damn it, Simmons, those Heinies know you're here.  There's no sense whispering."

Our company commander, Cecil L. Simmons, was from Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He was a captain.  After the war, he became the head of the Michigan National Guard and made brigadier general.  I've seen him twice since then.  I saw him at the Orlando reunion about 15 or 20 years ago and again when we were in Holland in 1989, at the celebration they had in memory of the liberation of Eindhoven.  That's the place where we jumped in Holland.

I knew the Germans were sitting there waiting, because all day long we had been trying to get to them.  When we started to cross over a hedge, all hell broke loose.  I mean, they just opened up. 

We sent one patrol out across an open field to a farm house. No sooner had they gone out, I was just getting ready to go over the hedge, and, man, the bullets and crap started flying.  We laid down in a ditch.  The rest of the battalion was up and down the ditch too, just pinned down.

It was just starting to get daylight when I noticed artillery shells started going into them, our artillery.  I said, "The next artillery man I meet I want to shake his hand."  Those heavy aerial bursts would burst over the foxholes and trenches the Germans were in.  They would explode and hit them even though there were in slit trenches.  They kept pouring that on them.

Finally the Colonel said, "When the smoke gets here," we would fire smoke shells which would hinder the Germans' visibility, "I want you to fix bayonets and charge."

I couldn't believe it.  But, sure enough, why, I looked over and saw Colonel Cole leading the dog-gone battalion.  He was the one that gave the order.  And then the rest of us, we jumped up and started going.  I went about a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet and I was looking for an German to shoot at.  One had his head right up there in the slit trench, I could see his helmet.  I aimed at it and got him.  He had a P-38 pistol and I wanted that son-of-a-gun.  I was laying on my stomach so I wouldn't get hit.  I reached up and got my trench knife out of my boot to cut the pistol loose.  I went to cut it, and my hand just jolted like that, and blood started to come out both sides of my finger.  A bullet had gone through my finger just as neat as anything.  I cut the pistol loose and crawled over to a more secure spot.

A medic happened to come by, Land, was his name, a guy from Tampa, Florida.  Zephyr Hills, I think.  He saw my hand bleeding and he said, "Let me bandage that."

I said, "Aw, it's not bothering me at all.  It's just throbs a little."

He said, "Yeah, I want to bandage it."  He bandaged it up okay.  He had my whole hand just wrapped with the darn thing.

Then we moved on forward to where the Germans were.  Colonel Cole looked over at me.  He remembered me, and he said, "Sterno, get back there and get some more medical attention.  You can't sit up here with that."

I said, "It don't bother me."

He said, "Get back," and I said, "Yes, sir."

I went back and found a friend of mine, who was a sergeant. We used to go into London together.  He was on his back holding his stomach.  I crawled over to him, and I don't know whether it was a shell, or a bullet, or what hit him, but some of his intestines were showing.

I heard somebody grunting and groaning and looked over and it was our medic.  He got one in his back.  He died right there. I got his first aid kit and started putting sulfathilamide powder and sulfa on the sergeant's wound with big, heavy pieces of gauze.  I gave him some morphine shots, from the little tubes of morphine they issued us.  I squirted that into him and he felt better.

Vehicles started coming up because they patched up the bridge.  One weapons carrier came driving in with more ammunition for us and they used that to pick up wounded.  There were a couple of medics on it.  They came over to where we were and got the wounded. 

"I told them, there's one over here,” and they got the sergeant on a stretcher and got him out of there. 

Another guy there was on his back.  His name was Reiley, and he was shot.  A bullet went completely through his chest. 

He said, "I can't breath, I can't breathe."

He was begging me to shoot him.  I thought he must be in pretty bad shape.

I said, "No, I can't do that."

A couple of medics came up and set him against a tree.  They saw there was not much they could do with him.  Later on, after a little more excitement, we found him on his back, dead.

A lieutenant who was there said, "Get back.  You're wounded. We've got enough people here."

My hand didn't bother me.  It was just because the darned hand was bandaged all the way, but I went back.  I really wasn't hurt bad.

I got back to the trench we started from, and there were three or four wounded people in there.  One guy, I'll never forget, had a handlebar mustache.  When Eisenhower was walking among us before we jumped that night, he said, "What did you do in civilian life?"  He said he was a waiter or something.  Eisenhower said, "I think he was a pirate, the way he looks."  He was joking humorously.  But he was there.  He apparently had been wounded, he had his arm in a sling leaning back smoking a cigarette.

I kept hearing these mortar shells.  I thought they were 88s at first.  I figured they were mortar shells, because you could hear pumph, pumph, and a short while thereafter, you'd hear the things whiz over.  They started hitting close to us.  I crawled into a little trench that was there.  It sounded like one hit real close to us and it felt like a board hitting my butt, tore my groin up a little bit.  My ears were ringing and when everything cleared, I could hear this one guy saying, "My eye, my eye."  His right eye was completely torn out.  I said, "Just be thankful you have the other one."  I put a piece of gauze and bandage on it for him.  Another guy, he had a submachine gun, was sitting there, his head lolling back and forth, blood coming our of both his nose and ears.  I don't know how he turned out.  But the guy who had the handlebar mustache, I wouldn't have recognized him if it hadn't been for that.  All that was left of his face was from the nose down.  The rest of it, it had shaved his head completely off, in two.

I was hurt then, really hurt.  I could hardly stand.  I could get up and limp.  I didn't know how bad I was hurt.  I had blood all over me, and my hip was aching.  I had shrapnel in my groin, my butt.  So I crawled on back to the iron gate.  I got back across the bridge and saw this little foxhole and got down in it.

There were other people back there who were wounded, and some who hadn't got up to the front yet.  The lieutenant from our company was there in a little foxhole about 10 feet from me.  All of a sudden, boom, it was a small caliber shell, I think a 55-mm mortar that the Germans had, that hit right between us.  It grazed my neck enough to make it bleed.  That didn't hurt bad, but it also go me in the chest.  There's still a little piece shrapnel in there now.  The lieutenant caught most of it in his arm.  I heard him over there moaning.

Finally, they had a truce.  They told all walking wounded, “If you can walk, get up and get to the rear."  We couldn't have any weapons or anything.  Our supply sergeant was there and he said, "I'll take care of that P-38 for you."  I said, "Okay."

I asked him later on back in England what happened to it.  "Well, I went across a river and lost it," he said.  I don't know what he did with it. 

So they sent me back to England.

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[1] Due mainly to inexperience on the part of the troop carrier pilots, the paratroopers of the 101st were scattered over a large area.  At dawn of June 6, only 1,100 men were under a unified command out of the 6,600 who jumped.  Working as separate units, groups of up to 50 paratroopers attempted to carry out assignments planned for battalion size units.

[2] Carentan was taken on June 11, 1944.