Brewed Fresh Daily

The Monday Plain Dealer Tipoff column a Monday ago regaled us with the "news" that Forest City Enterprise's big cheese Sam Miller, the charitable wonder, was putting together a $50,000 gift basket for Cleveland safety workers... Sam, why not just pay your taxes? Then there will be no need for Cleveland city workers being tossed the payroll at Christmas. Sam told Tipoff, "I read about the layoffs in the paper, and my heart went out to these people who are going to be laid off right before Christmas. How can someone go home for Christmas with no pay envelop." What a guy... If Sam were really interested in the police and firefighters and in the City of Cleveland, he wouldn't have sought tax abatements and deductions in the value of his buildings (while the city, county and federal governments were building everything around his Tower City). Sam's Ritz Hotel got a $7,663,000 UDAG (urban development action grant) with no interest for 20 years. His old Post Office Building received the same deal on $9.2 million. The Tower concourse section of Tower City got $9.7 million and another portion of Tower City got $1,921,258. The payment dates on all these interest-free loans have not been reached yet. Sam's Ritz Hotel also was 100 percent tax abated for 20 years, ending in 2009. By 1995, it was being abated at a value of $9.7 million, costing $623,000 a year, $340,000 from the Cleveland schools. At that average for 20 years it would be $12 million diverted from the schools, city, county and city libraries. Diverted into Sam's pockets. I guess he can afford the $50,000, most of which likely will come from others and for gifts from his Tower City businesses. This is not to mention the tax abatement Miller's interest have at the Halle building, other Tower City buildings. That's to say nothing of the building of the $176-million federal court building constructed behind Tower City and on Miller land. One can't help notice that after his retirement Cong. Louis Stokes, who must have had a say in where a federal building would go, was added to Miller's Forest City Enterprise board of directors. Further, might it not have been less propagandistic to say that Sam, the guy who wants the $400-million Convention Center be built on land to be bought from him, as part of Tower City, owned by him, and to be paid for by all of us, firefighters and police families together.