Why we need to spend more

A friend last week returned from a school board meeting at Plain Local. She was faced with the option of paying more property tax that would come in form of a proposed levy measure.

She told me it’s a necessary evil. If the levy, which voters may decide on in May, fails, our neighborhood, Plain Township, could experience declining home values and sub-par school services.

“We need to do something,” my friend, a mother of four, said to me. “We already have limited busing and pay-to-play programs.”

Another district I covered for my newspaper is also experiencing the same pinch but only worse. Northwest Local Schools, in Canal Fulton, have cut its fiscal budget by more than $1.5 million and it’s still in the red roughly $1 million. The district has been placed under fiscal caution by the state less than a year ago, and the situation is getting worse.

In November, voters denied a new levy that would have increased property taxes for a $150,000 home $49 per month. That is a lot to ask of your fellow citizens. But this is an unusual time in our history.

No one wants to pay more taxes. The past presidential campaign proved indicative of that fact. Some have cast their votes, particular, on that issue alone. Many school levies in the county met the similar fate of Northwest. Nobody wants to pay more, especially in this lagging economy.

But something needs to be done. My friend’s prediction may come true in my neighborhood as well as Canal Fulton’s. Who wants to buy a house in a less-than-adequate school district? That will be the question a young family will ask their realtor when they see a home near Glenoak or Northwest.

Maybe the problem is the demagogy of higher taxes. ‘No higher taxes’ is the cry I hear from the citizens at township and board of education meetings. They don’t want that but are the first to cry when their police or fire department is lacking or when the street department doesn’t have the trucks or number of employees to clear the street after a snowstorm.

The point is that we are living in a new political era in which we must learn to sacrifice. It’s been around for a few years, we just didn’t notice it. One thing, in my opinion, George W. Bush missed when he was selling the Iraq War was our role in all of it.
Yes, he told us to go shopping, but what he failed to mention in his allure of being a “war president” was that others of his ilk asked the public at-large to sacrifice.

FDR was on the silver screen asking Americans to save rubber, ration wheat, soy and other products during World War II. We all had a part. Businesses joined in on the war effort. GM and Ford stop making consumer cars and made tanks and other armored transportation.

Years after the nation has spent our money like a drunken sailor, we must recover from that hangover and make due without and shift our priorities to something more significant: our infrastructure. Our roads, our civil services, and yes, our schools. If we continue down this road of forest before the trees thinking, our communities - Plain Township and others like it - will be a shell of it former shelf.

Happy MLK Day

As an African-American, I use the third Monday in January to reflect on the person that I am. Am I striving to be the best human possible? Am I the best reporter, husband, son, brother and friend possible? Am I keeping the dream alive?

But today has a much broader significance. Martin Luther King Day not only honors the man who was in the forefront of civil rights, but serves as a preface for the progress we have made – the eve of inaugurating our first African-American president.
At the Friendship Baptist Church Sunday, I witnessed the personification of pride.

It was shown throughout the many faces of the congregation during the church’s “Keeping the Dream Alive – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dinner.”

The program featured host pastor Rev. Reginald Hye as well as Rev. Anthony Robinson of Shiloh Baptist Church and Rev. Robert Lewis of St. James AME Zion Church.

As a reporter, it is my mission to provide objective descriptions of the events of the day. But Sunday, history kept getting in my way.

As we celebrated Dr. King’s legacy, we were reminded of how he laid the groundwork for what we will experience tomorrow.

“Dr. King in his work then and President-elect Obama now represents everybody,” Hye said before his sermon. “Not just black people.”

When Dr. King said he had that dream, he expressed his personal connection to a world, he imagined, that didn’t see color but character especially self-character, Robinson said to the crowd.

“When somebody judges someone,” he said. “It is really their self-judgment placed on that person.”

When Dr. King’s birthday was introduced as a national holiday, I admit I might have taken it for granted. An extended weekend. The extra day to move some snow from the driveway. Shame on me.

After meeting O’Dell Carpenter, of Massillon, a retired truck driver and member of Friendship Baptist, I was reminded of why this day is special.

Carpenter, originally from Lexanbria, La., told me about the segregated water fountains, bathrooms; about once living on an actual plantation. And how he beamed with pride when I told him I’m with The Independent.
I never thought about it like that.

In my profession, I just make it a point to be not an African-American writer but a writer who is just African-American; to be judged not for the color of my skin, but just for my content.

I see this as a job I do, Carpenter sees it as progress.
Progress. Moving forward may have been the plan all along.

“God tapped Dr. King,” Lewis said. “And he continued to tap him.”

Lewis preached King’s path didn’t run parallel to Obama’s but served as an entrance to the president-elect’s highway.

In a speech prepared by Dr. King in 1962, Lewis said, he referred to how “the Negro had accepted segregation,” but the day would come when there would be a “new Negro on the scene,” to fight the current injustice. Now, Obama, he said, was the "new Negro on the scene.”

Before his passing in April, Dr. King was exiting a Memphis hotel on his way to fight on behalf of sanitation workers – everyday people. And what a better way to honor King’s memory than our leader being not a black man, but an every man, an African-American in the direct essence.

“His mother was from Kansas and his father was from Kenya, an African” Emcee Curtis A. “Cap 3” Perry III said. “That really is an African-American.”
And that’s what it was all about. Progress.

We are celebrating the progress of the dream that Dr. King spoke about in front of hundreds of thousands on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. 45 years ago.

Tomorrow, we’ll see Obama keep that dream alive on the steps of the Capitol speaking to millions about the progress that still lies ahead.

The first blog of 2009

I hate New Year's resolutions. It's a waste of time for everyone, especially the resoluter. It's a commitment that lasts, if lucky enough to sustain, three months tops. It's a waste of time.

But if I had resolve, it would be in on my own terms. I would set a goal that has a realistic chance to be met. For instance, to make no resolutions.

That being said, my other secret goal in mind is to stay active here. It's been too long and I must communicate with you, whoever you are. Basically, I need to ramble and I could really give a rat's ass about what.

So going forward, there will be words, current brain activity about who, what, when and where. There will be pictures of the city of Canton and places elsewhere. My mind will wonder and my thoughts will be an open book.

Some of it will be thoughtful, some of it will make no sense of all. But who cares, it's not for you anyway.

Thus, here's to 2009. A special year right now, but let's see how things are in about ... say, 3 months.