Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz on Tuesday unveiled 216 residential streets that would be repaved or resurfaced in 2022 if voters next week approve a 10-year income tax increase.
He has pledged the city will fix 70 miles of residential roads annually for a decade if the increase — on the March 17 ballot as Issue 1 — passes. That’s compared to 1.6 miles of streets repaired in 2019.
The mayor’s proposal is to raise Toledo’s temporary payroll tax rate from 0.75 percent to 1.25 percent, which would bring the city’s total income tax to 2.75 percent. Total income tax revenue would be divided between 60 percent to the general fund and 40 percent to the capital improvement fund.
The mayor has emphasized crews will be able to spend $40 million annually on streets if the measure passes.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix the roads of our city,” he said.
Mr. Kapszukiewicz stood on Devon Hill Road with a few West Toledo residents Tuesday to illustrate the role community feedback will play in determining which residential streets will be fixed. His administration in January asked Toledoans to email street repair requests in, 142 emails were received, with Devon Hill the subject of eight.
“If your road is not on there, don’t panic,” Mr. Kapszukiewicz said, unrolling the long list of streets to be fixed in 2022. He said the city will be redoing streets through 2029 if the levy passes.
The streets set for 2022 are in addition to the 391 on the list for 2021. The 2021 list shrinks to 28 streets, should voters reject Issue 1. The lists can be found on the city’s website at toledo.oh.gov/roads.
Abby Arnold, deputy chief of staff, said citizen feedback is only part of the administration’s strategy to identify which residential streets need work, as crews survey pavement conditions and rate streets based on how badly it needs work.
“Just because someone doesn’t write in does not mean that it won’t be on our radar,” she said.
The Lucas County Young Republicans has mounted a campaign against Issue 1, and on Tuesday again called on Toledoans to vote against it. They called it a “tax increase for pet projects with a small set-aside for road repair.”
The group criticized the administration’s $281.1 million 2020 operating budget — which city council unanimously passed last week — specifically the $1.5 million budget for the mayor’s office.
The mayor’s office budget in 2017 was about $930,000 and has grown each year, records show. The 2020 budget reflects several pay raises in the mayor’s office, with the most significant going to his public information coordinator Ignazio Messina. Mr. Messina was paid $72,370 in 2019 and is set to make $92,488 this year.
About $15,000 of the mayor’s budget year will come from the capital improvement fund.
The Young Republicans also referenced Strategy Five, a political consulting firm run as a side-job by Karen Poore, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff; David Mann, the mayor’s unpaid policy adviser and president and CEO of the Lucas County Land Bank; and Alex Huguelet, chief deputy clerk at Toledo Municipal Court and treasurer of the Lucas County Democratic Party.
Strategy Five has been paid $165,000 by the political action committee backing Issue 1 to run the campaign. Leah Michael, a local attorney, and Molly Luetke, an account manager at Madhouse Creative, also work for the firm.
“If this city has a revenue problem, the mayor should step up and cut his own damn budget, stop allowing his closest employees to personally profit from the business of government, and tell the truth about how capital improvement funds are spent,” the Lucas County Young Republicans said in a statement.
Mr. Messina said he was previously the lowest-paid director at the city, and he is taking on more responsibilities this year, including overhauling the city’s branding and implementing a new website. He also said he was offered another job in the private sector for more than what he was making in the mayor’s office.
Mr. Kapszukiewicz said the Young Republicans are missing the bigger picture. He said his administration inherited a $3 million budget deficit and turned that into a $17 million budget surplus in a little over two years.
“It’s not that we’re not budgeting frugally. We are. It’s that we don’t have the resources to provide the services that we need,” Mr. Kapszukiewicz said.
He said the political group is taking the mayor’s office budget out of context. He also criticized the group’s spokesman Josh Culling for living in Wood County, which means he can’t vote on Issue 1 next week.
“Political operatives will always try to throw stuff against the wall and see what will stick,”he said. “I don’t take them very seriously, primarily because their leader doesn’t live in Toledo. He doesn’t even live in Lucas County.”
Mr. Culling has said he cares about what happens in Toledo because he lives in the region.
First Published March 10, 2020, 9:44 p.m.
