The Observation Deck

Grace O'Malley wrote:

The point about the Cleveland Curfew seems to make more sense than anything to justify the change.

Since when do we follow Cleveland's lead?

I wouldn't call Cleveland a paragon of a forward thinking city.

Grace

While I agree that the sooner we separate from Cleveland the better.

I think Shawn was referring to the point that Cleveland kids will flood into Lakewood for that extra 30 minutes he mentioned.


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My point was that while Cleveland imposed an earlier curfew in the mistaken belief that it will reduce crime, we decide to follow their lead with the same lame excuses, including the one that Cleveland youth will rush into Lakewood.

Maybe we should follow the national sentiment and erect a fence on the Lakewood Cleveland border.

It does disturb me that we are singling out a group that has does nothing wrong to restrict. I think we should punish bad behavior. If we are profiling - are children our biggest problem out in the evening?

If anyone suggested that our biggest problems come from Women out at night or blacks out at night or Clevelanders out at night - they would be hung out to dry.

But we can discrimate all we want against teens and everyone seems to think it is okay. I have no problems with parents restricting what their child is doing. But I know I refused to patronize stores that said only 2 school age children allowed in at a time.

While we are doing these crime statistics - it would be interesting to see who commits the most crimes in Lakewood. I think we are barking up the wrong tree and I really hate to see the limited police budget focused on this and away from real problems.

JMHO

Ryan, my experience has been the complete opposite. I am blown away by the intelligence of people everyday. And the teens in Lakewood never fail to impress me.

Let's look at the last election - one of the most complicated issues on the ballot was the smoking ban. I believe it was truly designed to be extremely complicated by the people that opposed it. The voters were able to understand both the issues and vote to ban smoking in public places. (Whether you are for the ban or not - it was a consistent and intelligent vote.)

In terms of taxes - teens pay a lot in taxes as I already documented. Non property owners pay property tax indirectly through the rents increasing. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Even students who may live at home know that there is less money to go around when property taxes increase.

I agree there are people receiving goverment money and not working. Maybe volunteering in a nursing home (lots of them there), a mental hospital or a soup kitchen might help you understand some of the problems that some of these people face. Many people work hard everyday and need government assistance as well. That is a shame. I'm sure that there are some people who take advantage of the system - but the large majority of people that I meet everyday are good.

However, Ryan, I would like to suggest a book - What's the Matter with Kansas for you to read. It does tell a tale of people who are voting against their interests - so perhaps in some ways you are right - at least in Kansas the voters don't seem to be doing a good job anymore.

I didn't mean to take this so off topic I just raised some questions. In regards to intelligent voters all I know is that for the past 4 elections I have stood outside of many voter booths and met one on one with voters, not in coffee meetings, not on a blog, but walking into the building to vote. I am not sure how many times you have done this Lynn but I was amazed at how uninformed people are.

I have no doubt high schoolers and college kids are informed, it is probably more than those in their older years! That's why I said if they can pass a basic history or basic voting purpose test 12 year olds should be able to vote.

I am for everyone to vote, but lets know what we are voting on!

Robert Bobik wrote:I'm assuming by non-property owners you mean renters? Why should non-property owners not be allowed to vote on property taxes? Are you of the mindset that non-property owners vote for increases because they don't directly pay property taxes? I have heard this said several times since I have lived in Lakewood. I could be wrong here, but if a property owner has their property taxes raised, do they raise what they charge their tenants? Or, out of the kindness of their hearts, do the property owners cover the increase for their tenants? That makes good business sense. If a non-property owner(renter) votes for property tax increase, maybe, just maybe they are willing to pay more taxes via rent for the higher quality of life the taxes might fund.

I don't think that there is such a direct connection of increased taxes being subsidized by increased rents charged. There is still market pricing to consider and in Lakewood there is more supply then demand so if we increase taxes I seriously doubt that the 20K+ rental units will all mark up prices because of it.
I would be curious if a correlation exists between Property taxes and % of property owners in a city. Realistically, I would think that it has much more to do with the offset of commercial tax base but then again correlation does not equal causation.
It would be an interesting experiment if there was a tax on the ballot that only applied to renters.

As a renter and as someone who has owned property and managed property for others, I know that property taxes are part of the equation when working out rental prices and business costs.

So renters are taxed.