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At this point it feels like we have half a roster left. And not the good half. Once again we need everything, and in that context QB is still the most serious problem. Unless Goff and Wentz are both truly flawed, I would still take one of them at 2. How many times have we drafted a QB that high? Exactly once since 1999, and to this day we still haven't fielded a better QB than Tim Couch. We rose from garbage to playoffs in 3 years with him. Rest of the team was awful, probably worse than now. But we had a top-of-his-class QB and we made the playoffs. Can we please try that again?

Cleveland shouldn't do anything to make anything more difficult for residents. That's a surefire way to chase them off, which is the last thing we need. And though we have less traffic than some cities, if only through shrinkage, we still have traffic problems and we can't fix them by pretending otherwise. The best ways to increase transit ridership are to offer transit options that are useful, and to plan development in ways that increase transit's utility. Right now we offer minimal bus service, and no rail service, to suburban job centers. Meanwhile we are still suburbanizing the inner city, redesigning formerly walkable neighborhoods for cars. That won't help. Right now we are still treating downtown as another neighborhood. That won't help either, because it isn't and it can't be. Instead it's supposed to tie all the actual neighborhoods together into something greater. People who don't live or work downtown need more reasons to go there on a regular basis. Instead we have focused public investment on a park redesign that seeks to divide the rail system from the bus system. That's just plain counterproductive, if transit utilization is what we want.

Ohio probably needs to get in front of this issue. Make mergers easier and incentivize them more.

It's a very good thing for the majority of households already there, whose personal wealth rapidly increased. It's a bad thing for aspiring Portland homeowners who are now priced out, current renters who suffer from the ripple effects, and people who want to move to Portland. No mystery which constituency has the most sway. It may look or feel like a good thing but it's not, just like it wasn't nationally before the big crash. That gap between wages and housing prices is a bubble and it isn't sustainable. The question isn't whether those prices will crash down to wage levels, the question is how much damage will result when they do.

Cleveland can't afford to have a "failed state" on its border, particularly one so close to the burgeoning University Circle area. East Cleveland's problems are already holding Cleveland back, regardless of where the lines are drawn. Might as well take control of the situation.

Bad. This was a step backward. Unless it sparks a reform movement in city hall, in which case it might be the greatest thing ever.

Looks like they're building something.

What a ridiculous gauntlet of veto powers. Clean up the code, cut out the councilman and cut out the CDCs.

Places like Ohio City and Tremont definitely need more density and more rentals. Part of our problem is failing to leverage strong suits into growth. We have so much lakefront and so few people living on it. Opposition to density keeps the popular neighborhoods from expanding, and opposition to urbanity keeps the rougher ones from generating demand. Clark-Fulton has possibilities. Most locals don't even know there's such a large Spanish speaking part of town. Lorain Avenue is relatively intact and worth investing in. Glenville is tougher because its main streets are so battered. Still some good there but too many gaps. Lots of work to do. Neighborhoods around the Euclid Corridor were built on the assumption that it would be worth living near. If they're going to get any better, Euclid/Chester/Carnegie/Cedar need to get better first. Cedar Avenue is a mess, worse than Euclid, a showcase example of What Our Problem Is.

How is building a hotel in his ward different from "doing the right thing?" How is that not a plus for everyone? For half the cost of maintaining a "community center" you could just book meetings at the hotel. Because now there's a hotel.

There are factors within local control and others that aren't. I try to focus on the former. We've recently had major corruption and business-blocking stories on the front page. The lesson of sustained failure should be that the plan isn't working. We never learn that lesson, not enough to make any difference. Cleveland is still trying to suburbanize core neighborhoods... razing irreplaceable structures... attacking anyone who wants to build big... missing the point of downtown, of main street... blowing money on greenspace without programming... collecting live music taxes... allowing boarded up windows on Public Square and clocks that don't work... allowing slumlords to trash entire neighborhoods unscathed while permit trolls harass new businesses. The wrong people are in charge. They have been ages. We need a clean break.

Maybe the concept should include transit oriented toward existing development, like that line of industrial stuff from Solon to Hudson, or south from the airport past UPS into Strongsville's industrial sector. There's also Concord to the NE. And those aren't jobs for BRT at all. A region this sprawled needs commuter rail. Instead we're going to widen that 271/480 stretch till it reaches LA proportions.

You'd think with all these little wards there would be more age diversity. How long till we see a millennial mayoral candidate? Let alone mayor.

It's not incriminating on OCI but it's also not pretty. The allegations are that Cimperman steered a bunch of public funds toward himself. LAND should never have been considered for city contracts while Cimperman served. That's like something Boss Hogg or Sheriff Lobo would do. It's corruption on the obvious and cartoonish scale of a 1970s TV show.

The city tends to operate through these type of orgs, and this org has been ordered to turn over evidence. Why would their records contain evidence if they weren't involved? Don't let unnecessary layers of quasi-public admin confuse things-- that's one of their purposes, by the way. Do we really want the next councilman to be tied in with the one stepping down in disgrace? I'm sure there are other qualified people in this ward, who don't come from political families and who have nothing to do with the current mess. Cleveland's tolerance of corruption is like something from another era, or from another part of the world. This sort of thing happens in countries that "hold elections" but nobody believes they're democratic. Either you're in the establishment or you're not, from cradle to grave.

While it's unfair to tie this individual to Cimperman's ethics investigation, his ties with the org at the center of it make him a very questionable choice. I'm sure he has qualifications but this is a bit stinky. When someone is stepping down due to corruption issues, they should not have this kind of power. Council should not seat him and there should be an election held as soon as possible. Of course that won't happen, because Cleveland is outrageously corrupt.

So Johnson is backing Dow on this? Damn, I liked him. Can we get the feds in here again or something? Cleveland can't afford this blatant corruption and shouldn't tolerate it. Funny thing is, there are "community centers" run by various orgs all over Hough. Those are about the only things left in Hough.

Yes, land values are very granular. But we still have too many vacancies in relatively stable areas, and too much un- or under-utilized property in the core. And it's not like there's any shortage of vacant lots, so I don't believe demo will solve much. In the case of historic apartment or mixed-use stock, demo can be counterproductive. That's one of those harmful local policies I was referring to.

Mass abandonment suggests that a proper trough in prices was never reached. Upward movement while mass abandonment persists is a bubble. The pre-recession peak never had any validity to begin with, which is why everything crashed. A macro parallel would be Greece and the Euro. In a truly free market, prices for Greek goods/services/land/currency would drop until it becomes senseless not to buy them, and Greece recovers. But since there's now an artificial bottom, Greece can't recover. The supply and demand curves are prevented from meeting, because the true meeting point is beneath the artificial bottom that the Euro creates. Who benefits? Germany. Who's in charge? Germany. Not a coincidence.

These seem rather large, but in general I think it's hard to go wrong with concert venues. Akron has a rich musical history and might want to promote that more.

Why do we have anti-signage laws? Signage is part of commerce. We like commerce, don't we?

Local house prices should not be going up, and I would attribute any such gains to market manipulation by the banks. Job and wage growth should precede growth in housing prices. When it doesn't that indicates an outside force involved, most likely somebody trying to create a bubble. I do some foreclosure defense work. Bank lawyers always claim declining neighborhoods are actually gaining value. They also claim, without prompting, that they have no intentions of sitting on inventory. Perish the thought. But if that were true, they'd be better off not bringing it up. Regarding Pittsburgh, I think oil is a factor. But a healthy urban core is pretty valuable too, and most of our damage there is self-inflicted.

Retail space definitely has value in that area. But how much were they charging for rent in a building they refused to maintain? And what was the city doing to address the conditions and the vacancies?

But they don't play with the greenspace toys they already have! Time for a yard sale to clear some space. Then we can build something that looks like an urban core on that space. Active urban campuses don't typically have a lot of greenspace. Instead they're packed with buildings for pedestrians to go in and do stuff besides look at grass. They're integrated with the dense neighborhoods around them. There's usually a quad but not three or four of them, and aside from the quad, everything is built and sited in a recognizably urban fashion. It seems to work well everywhere else, so I don't understand why CSU insists on reinventing the wheel.

That's a better place to put open grass I guess. But we just don't need any more of it. If CSU can't bring itself to put a building in that space, a forest would be preferable to yet another lawn.