Dear fellow tax hikers, we are still in shock that the normally reliable Blue Ash City Council has rejected efforts to build a huge new apartment complex. This plan was foiled on a 4-3 vote which denied the zoning change necessary for the complex.
The only three Yes votes were Blue Ash Councilmen Stephanie "Steph" Stoller, Jim Sumner, and Tax Hikin' Rick Bryan - also known as The Three Mustaches. By rejecting this, Blue Ash rejected the new tax revenues these residents would have brought, which is undoubtedly why our 2011 Tax Hiker of the Year Rick Bryan voted for it. We applaud Rick for his tireless efforts to bring more apartments to Blue Ash.
These wouldn't have been just regular apartments - the developer stressed that these would have been LUXURY apartments. These luxury apartments would have started at $900 per month and included things like appliances, high ceilings, and beautiful counters.
Councilman Stephanie Stoller, now in her 80th year on Council, highlighted another key reason for this vote. "The businesses in Blue Ash need more residents - we need more people with money to help restaurants and other businesses." This is a woman who gets it! Blue Ash Council's role is to serve the businesses, not the residents. The only reason residents are needed is to support the local businesses. We applaud Mrs. Stoller for having her priorities straight.
We condemn this vote. These luxury $900/month units would have brought higher taxes and more apartments to Blue Ash, along with providing more revenues to nearby businesses. And as we stressed in our previous editorial, there is nothing more valuable than apartment rental units to make a suburban community thrive. This is a tragic decision by a group of tax-and-spend Republicans who almost always get it right.
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4 comments:
The Council members got 80-90 emails and phones calls from residents, all of which were against it. Council Chambers were packed for the meeting, with every person there except for the developers and the 3 Council members , against the proposal.
How can Rick Bryan, Jim Sumner, and Steph Stoller vote for something that their entire city opposed? I'm finally coming around to thinking Rick Bryan might be as bad as this blog makes him out to be.
Can't wait to see Rick Bryan at the "Republicans Rising" event Friday night in OTR. Nothing says hip like a 60-year-old white-haired white dude getting down with his stuffed-shirt campaign manager. All the OTR hipsters will turn out to mock the GOP.
While I am thrilled to see this apartment complex shot down I am surprised my good friends Rick, Jim and Stephanie were in favor of it. Hello???? Those apartment buildings would have attracted a bunch of fat, smelly, disgusting, inbred west siders to Blue Ash and made Kenwood Mall and Kenwood Towne Centre even more overrun than they already are with the great unwashed masses who are nowhere near as cool as me. Ugh!
Since we're running unopposed again, we have a big war chest to play with. With so many of our former recipients like Jean Schmidt and Si Leis out of office, we need to find good tax-hiking candidates to contribute to.
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