Cincinnati Provides Clean Water--For a $5,000+ Price Tag.
Avondale is a neighborhood in central Cincinnati. Once prosperous, it has fallen on hard times in the past half century or so. Even with both the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden as well as the University of Cincinnati Hospital system as major employers, residents are not wealthy. With a median income at $16,655 which is less than half the median income of Cincinnati and about 1/3 the median income in Ohio, those living in Avondale are mostly at or below the poverty line.
Cincinnati itself is an old city, and it deserves credit for taking a proactive approach to replacing some aging infrastructure, especially the lead pipes that serve the municipal water line. Unlike Flint, MI where residents have been poisoned for years by lead contaminated water, Cincinnati is slowly requiring residents to replace the lead pipes that connect their homes to main water lines of the Greater Cincinnati Water Works. Unfortunately, that requirement places an undue financial burden on homeowners. One resident, Melanie Carlson, received a bill from GCWW for $5,563.00 total, though GCWW generously offered $1500.00 in "cost-sharing" so Ms. Carlson would only be out $4,063.50. The statement does give a phone number for low income home-owners to call, if they need additional assistance, but otherwise home-owners have forty-five days to either pay GCWW directly or choose to pay over time on their water bill for a five to ten year period.
While this "ask" from GCWW is large, it might not be so egregious to low-income residents if all Cincinnati property owners were required to pay for their infrastructure updates, but as seen recently with the FC Cincinnati attempt to put a professional soccer stadium in the Oakley neighborhood of Cincinnati, the city and county are willing to pay millions of dollars to billionaires to help them with stadium "infrastructure." There's some truth to the statement that "risk is socialized and reward is privatized", but when homeowners on a fixed income receive bills from a city municipality that is around 25% of their annual income, the question becomes, "What are we paying for with our property tax dollars?"
