JustRalph
02-09-2009, 01:05 PM
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090209/NEWS01/902090346
This is scary............ if Cincy does this.......... all bets are off...........
Restaurant owner wants city help
BOND HILL BAILOUT
By Jane Prendergast
jprendergast@enquirer.com
BOND HILL - She's 82, she makes some serious macaroni and cheese - and she wants a bailout from the city of Cincinnati.
Rachel Lewis is no banking conglomerate or big automaker. She runs Rachel's Bar-B-Que & Soul restaurant, started 13 years ago with her daughter and her own recipes. Things were good, to the tune of at least $12,000 a week.
"It wasn't so much that we liked to cook," she says, "but we knew people liked to eat."
But that was before the nearby Huntington Meadows public housing complex was razed and turned into single-family homes, with fewer residents - and fewer customers for her. And before it got more difficult to find reliable help for less than $10 to $12 an hour, which she can't afford. Before she learned the city's Empowerment Zone, which offers federal funds to help struggling neighborhoods, stops just short of her property. Before she borrowed $250,000 from her home equity and got behind on her income and real estate taxes. Before the economic downturn.
Now, she says her income has dropped to about $5,000 a week, just 40 percent of what it was in the good old days. She wants help.
more at the link including this:
I doubt that there is much we can do, but I'm not going to close her out of any opportunity just because of my ignorance," said Vice Mayor David Crowley, who asked the city manager to research any possible options for helping Lewis. "I commend her for having the guts to stand up and say, 'Hey, where's mine?' "
Lewis figures when President Barack Obama talks about bailing out people on Main Street, he's talking about her.
Check out some of the comments
This is scary............ if Cincy does this.......... all bets are off...........
Restaurant owner wants city help
BOND HILL BAILOUT
By Jane Prendergast
jprendergast@enquirer.com
BOND HILL - She's 82, she makes some serious macaroni and cheese - and she wants a bailout from the city of Cincinnati.
Rachel Lewis is no banking conglomerate or big automaker. She runs Rachel's Bar-B-Que & Soul restaurant, started 13 years ago with her daughter and her own recipes. Things were good, to the tune of at least $12,000 a week.
"It wasn't so much that we liked to cook," she says, "but we knew people liked to eat."
But that was before the nearby Huntington Meadows public housing complex was razed and turned into single-family homes, with fewer residents - and fewer customers for her. And before it got more difficult to find reliable help for less than $10 to $12 an hour, which she can't afford. Before she learned the city's Empowerment Zone, which offers federal funds to help struggling neighborhoods, stops just short of her property. Before she borrowed $250,000 from her home equity and got behind on her income and real estate taxes. Before the economic downturn.
Now, she says her income has dropped to about $5,000 a week, just 40 percent of what it was in the good old days. She wants help.
more at the link including this:
I doubt that there is much we can do, but I'm not going to close her out of any opportunity just because of my ignorance," said Vice Mayor David Crowley, who asked the city manager to research any possible options for helping Lewis. "I commend her for having the guts to stand up and say, 'Hey, where's mine?' "
Lewis figures when President Barack Obama talks about bailing out people on Main Street, he's talking about her.
Check out some of the comments