CLASS WAR DECLARED
City of Ashland Declares WAR ON THE POOR!
by Vanessa Houk
Nearly a decade ago, the city of Ashland’s Health and Human Services released their mission statement as follows; “To ensure that all people in Ashland live in a safe, strong, and caring community, the City of Ashland seeks to enhance the quality of life and promote the self-reliance, growth, and development of people. To these ends, the City of Ashland will strive to provide resources and services to meet basic human needs”. As benevolent as that sounds, the city has repeatedly made efforts to undermine this goal in a number of different ways including three utility hikes just this year, a regressive 25% utility tax, an increase on reconnect fees for residents whose power is shut off by the city and a history of paying outside recruiting firms tens of thousands of dollars to study city challenges. The city of Ashland has continuously failed to keep promises made to not just low income Ashland residents, but to all who live in our beautiful city.
Residents may have noticed that it was more expensive to water gardens and keep yards green this summer since the city council approved a 10% water rate hike in May. The warm month of June brought another increase on the utility bill with a 6% jump in sewer rates. Before low income residents could even scramble for a budget shifting breath, the city smacked a 4% increase in electric bills beginning October 20, 2011. The electric department already collects a 25% utility tax on top of all of those new increases, money that the city website says it needs to support “city services”. There is no mention of why this needs to fall on the shoulders of elders living on fixed incomes and the working poor, but it seems to somehow be an integral part of the cities $102 million dollar annual budget.
Ashland Electric Utility customers who fall behind on utility bills need to know of several new increases. If a city employee stops by your residence with a “door hanger” reminder of your bill (a 72 hour notice) those residents will now be charged a $10 fee for this “service”. When the city cuts off electricity in a household struggling to pay utility bills, they can now charge up to a $100 re-connection fee which is a $25 increase. These budget straining increases were just approved by the city council for the 2011-12 annual budget.
In a county with an 11.6% unemployment rate, the city has repeatedly chosen to hire outside firms to “study” internal problems. Just last month as it was announced that City Administrator Martha Bennett decided to take a job in Portland, city leaders decided to pay The Waters Consulting Group of Texas $21,500 plus expenses to find a replacement. This is the same firm they used a year and a half ago and paid $22,789 in fees and expenses to find an Information Technology Director, Rob Lloyd, who left after just a year and a half of employment in Ashland. This time the city was granted a “reduced fee” from Waters and paid another $8,750 plus expenses to re-fill that position. This in a town full of brilliant, creative, unemployed people who could have undoubtedly been used to fill some of those roles and or have been hired to find qualified candidates. With the fast turnover of city employees it seems prudent to examine these disconnected business practices and create new expectations of city hiring procedures.
With the glutton of expanding costs for basic human services many Ashland residents will be making a choice between “heating and eating” this winter unless the city begins to be more true to their promises regarding meeting basic human needs.
by Vanessa Houk
Nearly a decade ago, the city of Ashland’s Health and Human Services released their mission statement as follows; “To ensure that all people in Ashland live in a safe, strong, and caring community, the City of Ashland seeks to enhance the quality of life and promote the self-reliance, growth, and development of people. To these ends, the City of Ashland will strive to provide resources and services to meet basic human needs”. As benevolent as that sounds, the city has repeatedly made efforts to undermine this goal in a number of different ways including three utility hikes just this year, a regressive 25% utility tax, an increase on reconnect fees for residents whose power is shut off by the city and a history of paying outside recruiting firms tens of thousands of dollars to study city challenges. The city of Ashland has continuously failed to keep promises made to not just low income Ashland residents, but to all who live in our beautiful city.
Residents may have noticed that it was more expensive to water gardens and keep yards green this summer since the city council approved a 10% water rate hike in May. The warm month of June brought another increase on the utility bill with a 6% jump in sewer rates. Before low income residents could even scramble for a budget shifting breath, the city smacked a 4% increase in electric bills beginning October 20, 2011. The electric department already collects a 25% utility tax on top of all of those new increases, money that the city website says it needs to support “city services”. There is no mention of why this needs to fall on the shoulders of elders living on fixed incomes and the working poor, but it seems to somehow be an integral part of the cities $102 million dollar annual budget.
Ashland Electric Utility customers who fall behind on utility bills need to know of several new increases. If a city employee stops by your residence with a “door hanger” reminder of your bill (a 72 hour notice) those residents will now be charged a $10 fee for this “service”. When the city cuts off electricity in a household struggling to pay utility bills, they can now charge up to a $100 re-connection fee which is a $25 increase. These budget straining increases were just approved by the city council for the 2011-12 annual budget.
In a county with an 11.6% unemployment rate, the city has repeatedly chosen to hire outside firms to “study” internal problems. Just last month as it was announced that City Administrator Martha Bennett decided to take a job in Portland, city leaders decided to pay The Waters Consulting Group of Texas $21,500 plus expenses to find a replacement. This is the same firm they used a year and a half ago and paid $22,789 in fees and expenses to find an Information Technology Director, Rob Lloyd, who left after just a year and a half of employment in Ashland. This time the city was granted a “reduced fee” from Waters and paid another $8,750 plus expenses to re-fill that position. This in a town full of brilliant, creative, unemployed people who could have undoubtedly been used to fill some of those roles and or have been hired to find qualified candidates. With the fast turnover of city employees it seems prudent to examine these disconnected business practices and create new expectations of city hiring procedures.
With the glutton of expanding costs for basic human services many Ashland residents will be making a choice between “heating and eating” this winter unless the city begins to be more true to their promises regarding meeting basic human needs.