On Tuesday, Sept. 13, The Post ran an editorial endorsed by its editorial staff stating that it is not the university’s responsibility to contribute any money to the purchase of a new fire truck for the city of Athens.
Essentially, Ohio University shouldn’t be on the hook for any of the purchase price of this truck. This is backed up by citing a tough budget situation.
Regardless of the university’s budget situation (due to poor budget management by the university as well as state and federal problems), it is only right for OU to contribute some of the cost and to find someplace from which to draw that funding.
It is the city’s responsibility to provide these essential services, but the thing that is frequently overlooked by critics of this fire truck scenario is where cities get their funding.
Let’s take a step back to high school, which is when we should have all taken a civics class.
Governments get their money from taxes. Most cities, Athens included, fund a good chunk of their essential services through property taxes, where a landowner pays a certain percentage of the value of their property to the city.
It’s true that there’s money that comes from sales tax and income tax as well, but for many things, property taxes are important. OU contributes zero property taxes to the city of Athens, because it is located on public, state land.
What this lack of property tax money means, though, is that there is a sharp decrease in the amount of money that the city has to run from day to day, making the purchase of things such as a $1.3 million fire truck rather difficult.
Because OU does not regularly contribute any money for property taxes, despite owning more than half the property within city limits (and arguably property that, were it appraised privately, would be worth quite a bit), it only seems fair that it contribute some amount of funding for those city services.
It is also misleading for The Post to only state that one third of the calls to the fire department come from OU properties.
That’s not the majority, but it’s a large chunk. And of the buildings that would require a ladder truck (which is, remember, what we’re talking about purchasing here), 80 percent of those are on the OU campus.
We make a large chunk of the calls, have the vast majority of the buildings that would need a ladder truck, and don’t contribute anything in the form of property taxes to pay for these services.
Somebody please explain to me how that’s fair.
Isaac Smith is a sophomore studying political science in OU’s Honors Tutorial College.
