Katie+H

=Problem: Not Enough Taxes To Fix Public Works=

Katie Huster
Roman Tax Collector adding up his daily collection. Rome Facts: 1. Public works included roads, bridges, schools, public buildings, distributing grain supply ect

2. The citizens kept protesting against high taxes. When they got the low taxes they wanted, the government couldn’t pay for all the things that needing to be fixed. This would upset the citizens because their roads where not kept up. (It went back and forth.)

3. Farmers where not making enough money from selling their crops so they would pay taxes with the grain. This grain didn’t earn the government any money to make up for the money the farmers weren’t paying.

4. When people started to see that grain was cheaper than taxes, many decided to buy grain from farms, to then give to the tax collectors. Even though one of the public works jobs is to distribute grain, it isn’t their job to BUY it. (Therefore they loose money again.)

5. Most people working to fix what public works covers where slaves. When Rome stopped expanding, they didn’t have as many slaves, therefore having to pay citizens to fix things.

6. Tax collectors in Rome would be able to keep the part of what they collected, this made less money to use on public works.

7. Eventually paid taxes by their selves so that they could do the census at the same time. This also eliminated the money that it took for tax collectors.

Current Facts: 1. People today HAVE to pay taxes in money, not grain.

2. The government has spent a lot of tax money on focused projects that cost a lot of money, despite the US’ dept.

3. Public Dept is one of the top five biggest economic problems in the US. This is because the US is in dept of trillions of dollars that are not getting paid back.

4. We have more thought through, well-planned roads, bridges, buildings ect. This means we most likely will not have to fix things as frequently as in ancient Rome, where they didn’t know how to make them as sturdy to last.

5. The U.S. is going through the recession. This means people don’t have as much money when they get laid off to pay their taxes. This means that there are less jobs, or people working for the public works. (Cause and effect)

6. Cincinnati’s lack of tax money is causing some major problems with our main structures such as roads, unoccupied buildings and frequently used bridges.

7. Example: The Brent Spence Bridge in downtown Cincinnati is in need of repairs. Cincinnati tax money isn’t paying enough to fix the bridge. To plan an alternate bridge would cost $90 million dollars. To fully replace the bridge would cost billions of dollars that the public works fund doesn’t have. The city is trying to come up with a solution but so far none of them are in a decent price range.

My e-mail to him:
Dear Mr. Heller, Hello, I'm Katie. I am a 7th grader at Nagel Middle School. We are creating a presentation about a specific topic.(mine is: Not having enough tax money to support public works.) It would be great if you could answer a few questions in your field of knowledge. 1. In a city what are some of the first public works or amenities they cut out? 2. Based upon the cities you have audited, what public work (roads, police, water, schools, parks) needs the most money? 3. What do cities do if they cannot financially provide for all the public works necessary to run a city? Do you have any examples?

If you could share your thoughts on any of these questions that would be great.

Thank you for your time, Katie H.

His Response:
Hi Katie, These are some great questions that many adults don't even think about so I think it's great you decided to do a presentation on this topic!

1 - It's first important to understand that every city is unique and will act differently depending on their individual circumstances and resident concerns. I would say that typically some of the first public works or amenities cut are nonessential activities. That would include parks & recreation activities, city owned golf courses, city owned pools, and/or city owned community centers. Personnel cuts are also made in order to reduce costs and try and keep some level of service to the city residents.

2 - Based on my experience auditing local municipalities, Security and Safety departments (i.e. Police, Fire, EMS) need the most money. This is because those departments typically employee the most people and personnel and payroll expenses cost the city the most money. Then roads or Transportation departments typically follow Security and Safety departments as needing the next most amount of money. Water and Sewer departments are unique because they require a very large initial investment of money to get all the infrastructure in place, but then they are fairly cheap to run and maintain. Plus the Water and Sewer departments charge residents based on usage so they are able to cover most of their costs directly from utility bills to residents.

3 - That is the big question regarding many cities in these difficult times! The quick and easy answer is if a city cannot afford to provide the service they make personnel cuts to still provide the service but not at a lesser quality to the residents or they cut the service altogether. (This was in the news recently when the City of Cincinnati wanted to cut police officers to save money). Another thing they can do is charge a fee for the service (every time you call the police to your house you get a bill in the mail for the time the police spent with you.) A city can also raise their income tax percentage to receive more revenues from their residents to pay for the services. City's sometimes will share services with other cities and split the costs so that two smaller cities can still provide services that alone they could not afford. (Madeira and Indian Hill share a fire department that serves both communities).

I hope that my answers were useful and feel free to contact me any time if you need more help with you project or have any other questions!

-Ryan Heller

Rome:
Roman Empire. 2011. Taxes in the Roman Empire. []

The Cato Journal. Fall 1994. How excessive government killed ancient Rome. []

Current:
Brent Spence Bridge. January 27,2012. Replacement/ Rehabilitation Project.[| http://www.brentspencebridgecorridor.com/]

=Possible Solutions for Rome are on my Prezi:= []