The small Village of Elmwood Place, Ohio is still reaping the benefits of the ‘quality’ council that was elected to serve the community. Although most members of this village’s council forget that they were elected to serve the people not the other way around, it is hard to remember which members of the council were really ‘voted’ into office.

The 6^th mayor, (he has been mayor twice just in this term); has taken office and is asking that a 10 Mill levy be supported by the community and passed in the upcoming May election.

Problem is that this is a general operating levy which will support all the services that are already cut or are not enforced in the small community.

In a letter passed out to residents, this months mayor points out that ‘property values have gone up’ since this levy was first passed in 1990. This is a replacement levy to replace a levy, that thru councils own fault, expired Dec. 31, 2004. Property values are really down because the citizens are leaving in numbers.

The little village has been plagued by many set backs, but most are caused by the so called leaders of the small community.

From problems with the police dept. to having so many mayors’, that it is hard to remember who was voted into the office; the village officials seem not to care what direction the small village goes in.

It seems this little village has caused their own problems and the so called leaders have not cared about the citizens for so long and now they are asking for the citizens to support all there misgivings as leaders and vote to pass this tax levy.

Mayor Ellison told the Cincinnati Enquirer that the reason the levy expired and was not on the last ballot was because of ‘technical issues’. Those ‘technical issues’ being a council member who supposedly voted to place the levy renewal on the ballot, when that council member was not even present at the meeting when the vote was taken.

Elmwood Place has no one to blame except the leadership for the small community’s problems. It is unfair to ask the citizens to ‘bail’ them out of a mess they created.

Council elections are in November and maybe then things can change, that is if they can elect people that will stay in office for a full term.

Commitment to community is needed when electing any official. If the officials only have commitment to themselves; that is where you get situations like this one in the Village of Elmwood Place.

This tax levy would be hard to vote for knowing the past performance of the council of Elmwood Place. We will let you know how it all turns out. The election is May 3rd.

*The Village of Elmwood Place is just outside the City of Cincinnati, Ohio (USA)