Protests greet Pittsburgh's plan to tax college tuition

[The Northerner]

Source: The Columbus Dispatch

PITTSBURGH -- Dozens of people are expected to have their say over a proposal in Pittsburgh to tax college tuition.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has proposed a 1 percent tuition tax. The City Council is expected to take up the issue today, and dozens of students and others have already signed up to speak.

Aaron Gross is chair of the Undergraduate Student Senate at Carnegie Mellon University.

Student leaders are considering parlaying campus anger into a voter registration drive.

Gross says many college students volunteered for the 29-year-old Ravenstahl during his election campaign. He says this issue is so big that it will definitely be remembered when Ravenstahl comes up for re-election.

About 65,000 students attend colleges and universities in Pittsburgh.

Read more: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/national_world/stories/2009/11/30/protests-pittsburgh-tuition-tax.html?sid=101

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From California to Pennsylvania, it's likely coming to a community near you.

[bluestateguy]

1. Dumb idea

A lot of sharp kids go to Pitt and Carnegie Mellon. They have the brains and the means to just pack up and go elsewhere to school.

[barbtries]

2. tax tuition?

like a sales tax?? that's wrong. damn. my 17-year-old is graduating in June and somehow or other he has got to go to college. it just seems like it gets worse and harder and harder and worse. just end the wars, and put the money into jobs, education, health care, infrastructure. this world could be so much better than it is. dammit.

[twitomy]

3. Ah yes, nothing like creating new Republicans

who got that way due to yet another freaking new tax....

"Taxes; they arent just for the Rich anymore" with apologies to the Florida Orange Juice Growers Association.

[napi21]

4. The Mayor is trying anything to sabe the City! A 1% tax on

$5,000 is $50.00! Is that really insane? I'm not sure it is and you have to try to understand the dire situation Pgh. is in. Their population has aged to the point where there are few (in comparrison to the population)working and most are on SS and paying little in taxes. The City's businesses have gone from a booming steel industry to Medical & Universities with some Tech thrown in.

[dred654321]

5. get rid of

the jail population, The non-violent jail pop. Get RID of The police force...Get RID of the Correction Officers and Probation Officers....will save this city millions....never will happen though....we love ourselves a police state

[tabasco]

6. Taxing education is not the answer.

The mayor needs to put his thinking cap back on.

[groundloop]

7. True, 1% doesn't seem like much, HOWEVER...

I was once a college student who had to work my own way through school. After paying for tuition, fees, room, books, and a meal ticket I was broke. I'd have been camped out in someone's office if they'd have tried squeezing even such a small tax out of me. This just sounds like a really bad idea.

[malakai2]

8. So a question then

I know Pittsburgh is desperate for an infusion of youth, for a good many reasons, not least of which is rebuilding the tax base. How is this going to help? It seems to me it will be another factor keeping young people away...now not only do you have to sell them on moving to the oldest county in America, downwind of a couple of West Virginia's older power plants, under the season-long overcast skies, but you've got to sell them on paying extra for the privilege.

[Leftist Agitator]

9. "...downwind of a couple of West Virginia's older power plants..."

Um, what?

:shurg:

[malakai2]

10. The air quality issue

A couple of the worst emitting PPs in the nation are in that little arm of WV to the west of Pennsylvania. They impact Pitt's air quality.

[Leftist Agitator]

13. I'm from that "little arm of WV to the west of Pennsylvania".

And there are no power plants there. There is one, in Eastern Ohio along the Ohio river, the Cardinal Plant, that within the past decade installed sulfur scrubbers, which is in that region and "downwind" of Pittsburgh.

Now on the other hand, there is a coke plant in the Northern Panhandle that emits voluminous amounts of pollution. I should know, I grew up a mile from it. And a few miles north of that is Weirton Steel, though they produce nowhere near the amount of pollutants that they did in years past. Wheeling-Pitt Steel (I don't know who owns them now, if they even exist anymore) also has various industrial installations throughout the region, though they too have greatly reduced production over the last two decades.

In days past, pollution from the Upper Ohio Valley might have been an issue for the residents of Western Pennsylvania, but today, Pittsburgh is one of the cleanest formerly heavily industrialized cities in the world. Though I still wouldn't eat fish, especially catfish, out of the rivers in the area.

:)

[OhioChick]

11. Dumb ass idea. n/t

[LiberalFighter]

12. Municipalities should not be allowed to tax college tuition.

[Freddie Stubbs]

14. Colleges could cut tuition and increse fees

[pundaint]

15. I couldn't believe how much my buddy is paying for his daughters tuition.

So what I'm understanding the trend here is that only colleges can unreasonably gouge students, not the cities accommodating those visitors. Maybe if all those previous college kids hadn't figured out how to ship Pittsburgh's industrial base overseas, there would be some money available to run things without the tax.

[Algorem]

16. if we need edumacated people we can import them