BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA…
0743 by Jeff Hess
Normally I would wait until next Wednesday to post this Wal-Mart story but because there wouldn’t be a Wal-Mart blog if it weren’t for Stealyard Commons, I had to cross post this piece. What I find amazing is this: if, as Susan Vinella writes: City officials said they discovered [the loss] late last year why the feck are we only reading about it now?
Cleveland is so screwed. Two years ago local despoiler Mitchell Schneider sold the former mayor a bill of goods that involved millions of dollars in tax revenues from yet another shopping eyesore in what is now known as Steelyard Commons.
Now they should change that to Stealyard Commons. Cleveland’s city council has found out that the big Big Box in the project — Wal-Mart, of course — has qualified for a 10-year tax abatement from the state.
From The Plain Dealer:
The state automatically grants the 10-year tax break to a property owner who successfully completes a voluntary environmental cleanup on his site and receives a document called a Covenant Not to Sue.
The document protects the property owner from legal action by the state if an environmental problem is discovered later.
Wal-Mart, well aware of the never-leave-money-on-the-table rule, did its homework.
Wal-Mart, scheduled to open in September, already has been approved for the tax break by the state. Home Depot, which opened last week, has applied for it. Target, set to open in four weeks, is also eligible.
[Snip…]
[Schneider] said he did not know that the Covenant Not to Sue would result in a tax break when he told the city about his plan to participate in the voluntary cleanup program in late 2005.
Greg Huth, the city’s economic development director at the time under former Mayor Jane Campbell, declined comment through a spokeswoman Wednesday because he now works for the law firm that represents Schneider.
Imagine that. Mitch didn’t know and the guy who should have known now works for Mitch. Can we re-elect Campbell just so we can impeach her?
The Plain Dealer focuses on a potential loss of $18 million to a yuppie green space project known as the Towpath Trail but doesn’t provide any information how much Cleveland’s school children are going to lose.
And the story gets better. Cleveland actually believes that it can drop to its knees (Again? No wait, it never gets off its knees) and beg Wal-Mart to please, please, please go ahead and pay the taxes anyway.
Schneider and Ken Silliman, Mayor Frank Jackson’s chief of staff, said they also will try to persuade Wal-Mart and the others to give up the tax break.
“There’s certainly no guarantee that we can get them to do [that],” Schneider said. “That’s the million-dollar question.”
Anybody want to bet the line on the happening?
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. 
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: 
I recall a piece of city poetry from the Ohio City neighborhood that might have been posted by either 
After watching 
My first heroes were the Mercury Seven astronauts: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., John H. Glenn, Jr., Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Alan B. Shepard, Jr., and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton. They were my knights and the Moon was their Holy Grail. I’m sure they had their flaws but today must be a sad day for those still alive.
And you thought the traffic cameras were annoying. How about 
