Ram23

Inglorious decay? I think it has an understated romantic beauty myself, but that could just be me... and those darned "urban explorers." It's like the Parthenon of Industry.

I think you summed it up well. It will take 3 losses, but crazier things have happened. The next few weeks I see myself being not only a fan of UC, but of LSU, OSU, and South Carolina. ESPN put the odds at UC in the BCS title game at 15 - 1.

People aren't stupid, they'll read the amendment text (probably for the first time) before they fill in the box. We'll get what the people want here. That said, I voted in Corryville at about 10:30 this morning and was only the 4th person to vote there. At least we know my "no on 9 vote" carries a lot of weight...

"Study for the stadium expansion is slated to be complete in mid-October, while HNTB is expected to complete the design by end of 2009." http://stadium.worldinteriordesignnetwork.com/news/university_of_cincinnati_plans_stadium_expansion_090902 Anybody see/hear anything about this yet? Right now, they are probably overfilling the stadium by at least 1000 people (plenty of students manage to get in without tickets, and people with standing room tickets cram into the student section). 10,000 more seats would be very, very welcome.

OSU has nothing to lose playing Iowa in the C'bus. It will be a good game, but it's realistic to say OSU will beat them. They may even be a favorite, at home. Florida and Alabama have both already played games they should have lost. Florida has had some major help from the guys in stripes to be perfect right now. It's a very real possibility for both of those teams to end the season with a loss. I think Texas is the best team in football right now. I don't see them losing. It's not likely both SEC teams will lose, but it's a real possibility. Any loss this late in the season will throw any team out of the mix.

It is possible for the city council to put a measure on the ballot by a super-majority, 6 of the 9 (I don't think there will be 6 streetcar supporters elected, based on the polling I've seen). I think this would depend on next years economic outlook, and the margin that 9 would have failed by. It would also be possible for them to just follow suit and ask specifically about the streetcar plan. That just gets ugly though.. My personal opinion is that both I-71 and I-75 future construction projects would need to go to popular vote before they could be undertaken. All future designs for the interstates in Cincy are mandated to preserve right of way for future light rail. In fact every single option that's been designed so far preserves ROW. Thanks to the all-encompassing wording of Issue 9, that probably falls under its scope. We'd either have to vote, or completely re-design these places. Or, just call them "landscape medians" or something, I suppose....

Iowa is going to get creamed by OSU, and the SEC will self implode like it always does. Pasadena is a real possibility... Cincy v. Texas anyone?

Citizen referendum is the final "check and balance," both on a national and state level. I've campaigned against 9 for the past few weekends, and I don't like that I have to do it, but I would campaign against any move to eliminate citizen referendum just as adamantly. It's the only facet of government that isn't almost exclusively oligarchical. California is the way it is not because of the referendum process, but because people there only have a choice of electing an ® or a (D) and neither of them did a good job of representing their electorate.

If it really were a yea or nea on the streetcar, I don't know how adamantly "no on 9" I would be... I hope COAST makes note of that. If they only wanted to stop the streetcar, the amendment should have made it clean and simple.. the city cannot build streetcars of any type, even if it's light rail running on street. However when they wrote it to include rail of any type, and specifically made it so it had to be voted on again... it made my mind up for me. I'm not anti-COAST at all, in fact on principal I agree with them completely on most issues of gov't spending. I just don't like the way they wrote their charter amendment. The same goes for Issue 8.

Ha, I still call it Bald Knob. Home of the Hamilton County Emergency Response & Communications Center:

^The guy in 1 and 9 is Bobby Maly, co-chairman of CFP. I have no clue who any of the COAST people are.

But it's a bus made to look like an old streetcar. I think it's more that COAST couldn't find anyone with any graphic ability, so they used a piece of clip art or something, rather than a mistake or intent of some kind.

Why are people making a big deal out of "it's a bus not a streetcar?" It's looks like an old fashioned streetcar to me, but not a bus.

Did Smitherman finally come out against Issue 9? I'm about to hear Smitherman come present to a class I'm in at UC in 30 minutes. There's always Q&A time, and I'll have a question or two about his issue 9 stance.. here is his reponse: "what is wrong with voting? we just want the people of this great city to have a chance to vote...especially when it comes to boondoggles like a choo choo to nowhere when , in tough times like this, we need more police on the street, and help for our neighborhoods..blah blah blah..." Smitherman made points along the lines of what he usually says, he repeated that he wants a vote on this (and that he's already satisfied, even if 9 fails, because all he wants is a vote). He went on to say the NAACP and himself support rail, but not the streetcar. He talked about gentrification in OTR pretty emotionally, and the huge unemployment rate amongst blacks in Cincinnati. He continued by discussing the huge amount of SORTA cuts that SORTA recently aproved and is awaiting until after the election for a vote by city council; he cited the $3.5 million operating deficit of the streetcar in comparison to the $6-9 million dollar cut in Cincinnati's contribution to metro for next year. His counterpoint to the "two pots" argument was legitimate, he said capital budget is seperate, but is still derived from income and property tax. To finish, he really didn't say anything new. But a side point I'd like to make is that I wish people against issue 9 would stop using the "two pots" argument so much. People understand the difference, but whatever pot it is - it's still a big pot of taxpayer dollars that could be spent on any other number of projects.

Did Smitherman finally come out against Issue 9? I'm about to hear Smitherman come present to a class I'm in at UC in 30 minutes. There's always Q&A time, and I'll have a question or two about his issue 9 stance..

Detroit definitely needs some landscaped medians, the population density there has shrunk so much that 6 lanes aren't needed, hell they probably don't even need 4 in most places. Signals wouldn't fix the problems there, though, much like they may compound the situation around UC's campus. around UC there's density and high numbers of pedestrians and cars, whereas Detroit has no density, and few peds and cars. Of course, pedestrian crossings aren't really the biggest urban problems facing Detroit right now, so I understand if nothing is done about it.

They also appear to be putting up a stoplight at the corner of Clifton and College Court, which will make it more difficult for pedestrians, in my opinion. (I use that crosswalk 4 times a day, at least). A signal at Ohio seems necessary, because both traffic and pedestrian access is bad. Neither of these things are ever a problem at Clifton and College Court.

It does extremely upset me that a certain consistent group of 5 City Council Members refused to have a vote on the property tax hike, and Mayor Mallory was more than happy to see that the other 4 members of council had no say in things. Doesn't change my opinion on the streetcar or Issue 9, but it definitely makes me reconsider who I'm voting for (IE I will vote for council members who oppose the streetcar because of the way Mallory and 5 of the current council members have acted the past few months). Calling it a "trolley tax hike" is bologna though.

In my completely subjective opinion, I would say it's the fact that 8mph is about the fastest I've ever been able to drive in New York City, and short of driving off a cliff no wreck is going to be fatal. Aside from that, there seem to be way less morons on the road, which I guess one could attribute to mass transit. People that know they are bad drivers may just stay off the road completely?

^ I've seen the University of Cincinnati Police ticket plenty of people for not stopping for pedestrians around campus. Being both a frequent driver and pedestrian, I'm on the fence here. I do think it should be the responsibility of the pedestrian to make sure the driver see's you before stepping out into the street though. When you're moving at 25MPH and paying attention to other cars, signals, etc. it can be difficult to spot pedestrians.

I've recently had the opportunity to hear both of them speak, and my conclusion is Cole is the instigator. Not to mention, she clearly had her mind set on just using this term as a segway into bigger things in 2 years, since (thankfully) she is term limited. I also find it interesting that Ghiz was strongly opposed to Issue 9, and essentially called it stupid (specifically, the wording and concept of referendum for decisions council should be making). Cole seems to be on the fence with it and hasn't made a clear statement about it, because she doesn't want to lose the support of the NAACP and some other interests of hers. The truth is they're both likely to be back, though.

That is interesting. There are completely different architectural depictions of what one could call corporate/economic power, and political/government power.

^ In my opinion, they oversold by a few thousand. I've never seen in that crowded in the 5 years I've been going to every home game. I think 35,099 is the attendance they settled at for fire-code reasons. They have extremely lax student ticket scanning, and they let anyone in staring at halftime. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 37,000 - 38,000 there.

^ Skyscrapers are "power" expressed architecturally. There are few places in the world where demand actually merits construction of skyscrapers.

I would just like to point out that the flag pole atop Carew Tower is almost 50 feet high. This even further complicates things.