Please consider these FACTS from the latest report that I could quickly find:

In January of 2006 (the earliest year that I could quickly find) Middletown had issued 1,461 Section 8 vouchers.  In December of 2008 that number had risen to 1,659.  This is an increase of 198 over a three year period.

 

This is NOT meant to be a reflection on people who require Section 8 assistance, but an illustration of Middletown's economic decline over that three year period.  One can only guess at the decline betwwen 2000 and 2006. 

 

Yet, all this time our myopic leaders insisted that we should CELEBRATE Middletown's "great things", believe that things are "BOOMING", turn a BLIND EYE to obvious problems, IGNORE possible solutions, pour MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of our scarce tax dollars down rat holes by following failed models, refuse to believe Forbes well-documented article that we are a dying city, and keep all discussions of public business as hidden from the public as possible while leaving the same small group of "insiders" at the helm of our ship of state!

 

You can send your THANK YOU note to Mr. Kohler at City Hall.
He takes full credit for bringing more Section 8 housing into our community.

 

Mr Adkins is taking this step based on the fact that in the 2000 Census 54% of the population is below Median income.  Can someone please provide a link to this info on the Census site?  This does not bode well for Middletown as the City has drastically increased the low income residents for the 2010 census with Section 8 and Public Housing.

 

Now the part I don't get is that this is supposedly so that more people can have access to $600,000.00 in CDBG grants.  What they can't spend $600,000.00 in the 40% of the city already designated for these funds, I find that hard to believe.

 

To put the $600,000.00 in perspective:

 

The city spends $250,000.00-300,000.00 each year in the spring filling pot holes. 

 

If you take 300 of the 2300 residents that got letters from the City about their property not being up to snuff and gave them a $2000.00 grant to fix their property you would be out of funds and help about .6% of the population.  What about the other 50700 people or 99.4% of the population?

 

$600,000.00 represents the salaries of the top 5-8 top people in the Admin downtown.

 

Folks we are not talking about enough money to warrant making this change and designating the whole city as Poverty Stricken and dragging down home values even further.  Even Mr, Adkins acknowledged this was a con to doing this.  If we were talking about $20,000,000.00 then it may be a different story..........hmmmm are we really talking about $20,000,000.00.

 

I also don't buy the we need to pave ally ways scenario.

 

This just doesn't make sense for $600,000.00 in grants for a city this size.