Campbell plans to cut 700 jobs

Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell plans to cut more than 700 city jobs, delay the opening of outdoor swimming pools and scrap eight fire companies to help eliminate next year's $61 million budget deficit.... The Parks and Recreation Department and the Service Department, which handles road repair and trash pickup, will each lose 60 jobs... The city will eliminate 60 part-time jobs and not hire 310 seasonal employees for such tasks as snowplowing and trash pickup.

So tell me again, after all the agonizing and hand-wringing, why is a temporary income tax increase not on the table? A quarter-percent surcharge for the last three quarters of 2004 would raise nearly half of the shortfall -- if it was on the ballot March 4 instead of a Convention Center tax. I believe it could pass, given the alternatives.

The safety forces may be grandstanding and exaggerating the dangers, but I can tell you from bitter experience that closing eight fire stations will slow response times and risk lives. And if you think that safety, recreation, and street repair failures aren't serious "quality of life" issues that will drive middle class families out -- along with the laid off workers themselves -- you just haven't been paying attention.

Correction... The Mayor's proposal calls for eliminating eight fire companies, not stations. Apparently a company is the crew of a truck, more or less. There is no proposal on the table to close any stations. This is a obviously a big difference. The Mayor says trucks and response times can be protected through changes in work rules, i.e. one fewer firefighter per truck.