What happened at Thursday's City Council meeting

City council met last night to vote on some ordinances and resolutions. But the Mayor’s presentation on school safety — and her proposal to hike the income tax — stole the show.

Here are some key facts:

• The proposal will raise the income tax from 2% to 2.25%. It will generate between $1.6M and $1.7M per year.

• There are 9 schools in the district (7 in Stow). To hire seven cops to man those posts would cost about $525,000 per year. (Traditionally, we have calculated a cost of $75,000 for each new officer.)

• Munroe Falls is not involved. If they want to hire their own officers, or hike their own income tax, they are free to do so. But it’s not tied to the Mayor’s plan.

• The levy money is not tied directly to school safety, but rather to police in general. In other words, if the levy passes, there is no obligation to put a single extra officer in the schools.

• Senate Bill 42, once signed by the governor, will allow school districts to levy property taxes specifically for school safety. Ohio Rev. Code 718.10 allows for two cities that share a school district (like Stow and Munroe Falls) to combine forces on an income tax levy. The Mayor’s plan adopts neither of these recognized methods.

• As you may know, there was an online survey. Of the 372 people surveyed, only 17.08% said school security is “less than adequate” or “inadequate.” But 71.2% said the school system should improve security.

My first impression is, yes, we should do something. My second impression is, no, we should not do this. Raising the income tax hurts our residents, but also hurts our ability to attract businesses to Stow. (The great majority of surrounding municipalities have an income tax of 2%, like ours is currently.)

I have a lot more I need to learn before I opine much further. Stay tuned.

City council’s committees will meet next on Monday, April 22. I anticipate that we will take an additional step forward in adopting the Transparency and Green Savings Act — which will save our taxpayers $100,000 over the next five years, will make our city more paperless, and will make our government more accountable through transparent operations.