Grumpy

The lightning damage to the signal system is what KJP was talking about.

The only negative I have about the Shaker Square area is the property taxes are higher than anywhere else in the area. Not outrageous, but higher, so something to keep in mind when comparing prices there to prices elsewhere.

I work at the VA hospital and am considering moving closer to work in a few years if I can convince the wife. I've actually walked past each of the houses you have listed as possibilities, though have only seen the inside of the one on E108th. (not quite as pretty or well maintained as the realtor's pictures let on, but that's to be expected) Note that the picture listed online for the house on Ashbury is a picture of a completely different house (I'm too lazy to email the realtor, even though it annoys me.) That said, I'll warn you that the further north you travel from University Circle the neighborhood quickly goes downhill. It's got a little bit of positive momentum, a lot of potential and 10-20 years from now this might be a great neighborhood, but if your top priorities are "Good schools", "Good family atmosphere" and "Safe area" anything north of Ashbury might not be what you're looking for.

They're going for LEED Silver not Platinum.

^^ The "controversy" of Clevelanders booing a man in death will probably make great TV.

^He'll probably make it now that he's gone. While alive I think too many people viewed his election to the HOF as controversial. I'm guessing it'll make Clevelanders look bad when his bust is revealed and gets booed.

As a former resident of Savannah and current Ohioan, if you want to call it the most beautiful go ahead, but I'll continue to keep the opinion that Savannah is a steaming pile of crap that just happens to have one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the country at its core. Calling Savannah beautiful because the old town is pretty is about as logical as calling Cleveland ugly because Glenville run down.

^Here, Here. Amen and such.

^easier to ride the WFL than walk? of course. Faster? Probably not. Easier to ride the WFL than one of the Trolleys? Highly doubtful.

^I'm well aware of the program, I'm not disagreeing with your taking advantage of it. Whatever keeps the busses running.

So RTA is hoping that a bunch of downtown workers have their bus passes paid for by work and so will choose to continue taking the 47 instead of, god forbid, walking a block to catch a trolley. Good for RTA I guess.

Is the 47 loop bus going to be discontinued? It's now going to be duplicated with the 9/12 route for everyone except people on/near public square that can take the Waterfront Line instead.

I was hoping for either an evening bus or a UC bus, but I imagine a midday bus would get enough riders to justify itself. As far as evenings go, I'd think that a bus to get people home from evening Indians games, Night classes at CSU/CCC, or a few too many in the warehouse district would probably generate a few riders, but the cost of keeping a dispatcher/maintenance guy on the clock might be the reason they don't consider this. As for University Circle, offering transfers to RTA isn't good enough: If I have to take Laketran to downtown and then transfer to the Healthline, why not just take RTA the whole way and save myself the hassle of getting transfers?

^BS. No actual new service, they're just changing the way they market the existing service to downtown.

Ok, Can we get back to RTA please and leave alone the arguments about money grabs and what constitutes them?

They could just replace the Amtrak station. :-D

She was a legal Montana driver. In Ohio you can get a learners permit at 15 and a half.

Did it just open? Over the summer there was almost nothing open on campus.

No, no, no. Beer goes stale if the power goes out and the fridge gets warm. Liqour is how you ride out an extended blackout. Plus then if you have too much you can have your own blackout which is far more fun than picking up tree branches, shingles, and litter from your yard after the hurricane. My wife always made fun of me when we lived in GA because as soon as the Hurricane watches started I'd go buy a few bottles for me to drink, an extra tank of propane for the grill, and whatever the butcher had on sale. I figured if I can't have power I might as well get drunk and play with fire. The longer we lived there the more common this became to the point where she started hiding my keys when there was a 25% chance of showers. In more recent years I've continued the tradition with snowstorms here in Ohio. If I'm going to be snowed in I'm going to have fun. For that matter if there's snow on the road, I'm declaring it unsafe to drive and staying home. I've cut down on the drinking, but my kids now associate grilling with terrible weather instead of sunny saturday afternoons.

The "drinky bird" style was pretty common even in NE Ohio 30 years ago. I'm pretty sure as a kid I just assumed they were a part of every farm. You mean every farm doesn't come with a barn, a silo, a chicken coop, a dog that won't shut up, a rusty tractor in the front yard that hasn't run since the hoover administration and an oil well in the back acre?

Interesting idea. I wish Ohio had this. On the bicycle there's a few intersections where I know to just pull onto the sidewalk and cross on foot as a pedestrian, but there's times on the motorcycle where I'm just stuck for a while.

All I know is there was a for rent sign in the front yard when I took a walk this morning.

Is it sad that the PNC smarthome that the natural history museum built is up for rent already?

Yeah, I can agree with that, especially if part of that meant cleaning up the local income tax code and it eliminates this situation where certain municipalities are able to sit back and rake in money from non-residents who spend ~40 hours a week in office buildings. But in general I don't think it's a terrible idea to try to put more money in the hands of local governments and less in the hands of the state government. I'm not sure we do agree. If I work in one city and live in another, why shouldn't both receive some of my tax money? Both provide roads that I travel on, water that I drink, pick up my trash, parks for me to walk through, provide police fire and ambulances for emergencies for me. I work in Cleveland but live in Willoughby, why shouldn't Cleveland get a bit of my taxes? Obviously this is an issue that would have to be discussed and negotiated if we were to adjust our current local income tax system as part of a regionalism plan. I don't know of a good solution, but the current situation is a mess and yet just paying taxes to the city where one lives seems to screw the city in favor of the suburbs while just paying taxes to the city where one works seems to screw the suburbs and intensifies the taxation without representation situation.

Personally the local income tax system is a big enough pain as it is. If local taxes were collected regionally or by county rather than by each city I'd be much more in favor of shifting taxes from the state to the localities. With cities as small geographically as ours are, it just doesn't make sense for each to set it's own rates. We should collect at a single rate for the whole county and then if a city needs/wants additional income it should come from property taxes IMO.