Why do these companies want you to pay more property taxes?

I've written previously about where Toledo Public Schools gets the money to support their campaigns to raise our property taxes via additional school levies.

Apparently, they filed campaign reports under the name of Committee for Schools PAC which included other contributions to their levy campaigns that I missed in my original post.

Here's what I found...

VENDORS:

* Squire, Sanders & Dempsey gave a total of $3,000. I had reported their $1,500 donation but found another $1,500 in an earlier report.

* Riley Law Firm in Westlake, Ohio, gave a total of $550 - again, an earlier donation of $250.

* Moser Construction gave $1,000.

* Kellerymeyer gave $1,500.

* Mannik & Smith gave $500.

* Buckeye Cablesystem gave $3,500. They also made an in-kind contribution of $5,725 in airtime. For those of you not familiar with in-kinds, this means that they aired $5,725 worth of commercials without charging TPS for them.

* Spengler Nathanson, the attorney for TPS, made the largest contribution of $10,000.

Additionally, while it is clear that the 2010 TPS Board members liked to get money from their vendors, some were not inclined to donate very much of their own funds - if at all.

Friends of Lisa Sobecki, the campaign committee for school board member Lisa Sobecki, made a donation of $200. While I didn't go through her campaign finance reports to see if she ever donated her own money to her campaign, it is likely that the money she donated to the levy campaign came from other donors.

Brenda Hill made a $100 donation. Larry Sykes donated a total of $200. Bob Vasquez made a $20 cash donation. I've found nothing, so far, to indicate that Jack Ford contributed to the levy campaign.

The finance reports are very interesting. There are numerous smaller donations of less than $100 but they come from all over the region. I've not verified all the donors, but a sampling showed that many of the contributions are from employees of the system.

What is remarkable in this is the number of people who don't live in the TPS district who are contributing to a campaign to raise the property taxes of those who do live here. They're not going to pay the tax, but they're helping to pass a levy so you can pay more in taxes..

The same goes for the companies who are forking over a ton of money the campaign. While many of them are in the district and will pay the increased property taxes, a lot of them are not. But even those who will pay the tax are corporations that will only pass along their increased costs to you in the form of increased prices. So if the levy is passed, not only will you pay more in property taxes, you'll pay more for the services you purchase from these companies - like Buckeye Cablesystem.

What's worse is that with the TPS vendors, the price their charge their customers - in this case, TPS - will be raised which means that TPS will need even MORE money to cover their costs, so they'll need ANOTHER levy which they'll help fund through contributions from their vendors who will raise their prices... It's a vicious and never-ending cycle.

I'm still going over the reports and awaiting clarification on a few items - so stay tuned!