This woman, who used to work for the City of Cleveland, says such a move only hurts local workers, "These companies come in, they get a local face and say we'll hire all the old employees...they don't.  And if they do...they hire them at reduced salaries, reduces benefits and reduced numbers."

 

Robert Thompson, Regional Director for AFSCME Local 8 which represents Akron city employees, says they've already had a meeting with Plusquellic.  "About his goal of creating these scholarships.  We've offered him some suggestions for some alternative means of doing that, but we absolutely made it very clear to him that it will not be on the backs of the sewer department in that sale," he says.  Thompson says 1.4 million members of AFSCME nationwide are working to save Akron city jobs.

 

 

Akron's Waste Water Treatment System employs about 120 people.

 

City Councilman Bruce Kilby says the sewers-for-scholarships proposal is a bunch of bologna, "This is about selling the sewer system and I think this proposal for scholarships is just a red herring thrown out there for everybody to go after and forget about what this really means."

 

 

According to Kilby, if this goes through the city's water supply will be next in line.  "The city of Akron owns 16, 000 acres of land in Portage, Summit and Geauga County.  That's worth a lot of money.  I'm concerned that this just might be the start because the real jewel that we own is our watershed," he says.

  

During his state of the city address in February Plusquellic proposed selling the city's wastewater treatment system to fund a trust that would provide college scholarships to city students, modeled after a similar program in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  He says the sale could generate up to $250 million.

 

 

John Wagner of the AFL-CIO's Tri-County Labor Council, which services Summit, Medina and Portage Counties, says they are behind the residents and employees who are against the proposal.  He says this sounds very familiar, "you know it wasn't long ago that the Republicans tried to privatize social security, Mr Bush.  I think we all remember that and what a fiasco that was and what it meant."

 

The documentary "Thirst" was played for those in attendance.  The film detailed some of the unsuccessful results when public utilities and interests are sold to private enterprise. Including Atlanta, who saw it as such a failure, that the city bought back the water utility and had to do it at three times the price with tax payer dollars.

 

About 150 to 200 residents and officials attended the community meeting to discuss the issue in East Akron Tuesday evening.

 

Previous coverage: Plusquellic: Keep Firestone Home, Sell Sewers