Foraker

In no way am I suggesting that we need services instead of more police or that some people don't need to be off the street. In fact, I think police ought to be well paid and be eligible for early retirement because we are asking them to do a difficult, s**tty, and sometimes dangerous job, and that is all the more reason that we need to make sure we fully staff the police force. Thank you for stepping up.

Looks like the shack is going to have a large atrium in the middle (currently occupied by a crane) that we'll only be able to see by pressing our noses against the glass...

It is true that random acts of violence, amplified by the press, make suburbanites afraid of coming downtown. That and "traffic." But per capita downtown is as safe or safer than perceived "safe" suburban areas like Crocker Park. Plus we have scary black people. And homeless people are scary too. This would be a good start, but probably insufficient. KFM44107 would surely appreciate it, and would have some ideas about what needs to be done. I think we all want to see violent crime severely punished. But crime in general follows poverty -- Cleveland has that in spades and no number of police will be sufficient to prevent crime. More aid for the poor, mental health services, drug treatment programs, homeless housing programs, better transit from areas of poverty to areas with jobs, more job training, cheaper childcare and after-school care, more locals from the neighborhoods in the police force -- all are things that I think would help and yet are beyond the resources of Cleveland alone to tackle. (but god forbid we suburbanites actually help those people -- they should Just Get A Job -- and move to the suburbs where they'll be safe.)

I think they look hokey, but then again I thought that the giant chandelier and gateway arches looked awful when installed and they've kind of grown on me. I'm guessing that in a year or so we won't notice the marquees so much. But the good thing is that we probably won't be noticing constant burnt-out light bulbs like we saw on the old ones either.

I don't see why it would be any worse than it is now, or that it is where I-490 drops down to the Opportunity Corridor boulevard. And in softening Dead Man's Curve I think the shoreway will split from I-90 further east than it does now.

No idea, but it's not a bad plan. Even better, I like KJP's proposal of turning all of I-90 into a boulevard and routing the interstate down I-271 to I-480 -- send the high-speed traffic around the city rather than through the middle of it. I suspect that there is even less support for that at this time, however.

And what happens when this $22.5M "investment" fails to prevent the tournament from moving to a sunnier locale?

I think you're mixing my comments with someone else's. I'm not saying that we need to go back to burning wood for energy, and I wouldn't want to. In fact, I think energy use is going to continue to increase (probably at a slower rate for the US than for the developing world). And solar and wind aren't going to fill even the current need for a long time -- at least not in the US where we are resisting adoption. (We're giving Europe a big leg up by letting them transition most of their energy needs away from fossil fuels first.) I'm not saying we should ban cars or that EVs are not a great technological improvement. Rather, I'm saying that everyone needing a car for every trip from home in the US's car-centered transportation system is very energy inefficient -- from the energy used to produce and operate so many cars to the wear on our roads that we have to maintain. We know that streetcars are more efficient than cars -- but rather than run a system of streetcars around the core of the 3Cs we worry about whether there's enough parking (and yeah, it makes no sense to build a streetcar out to Huntington, Ohio any time soon) -- or whether apartment owners should be required to have EV-charging hookups. We should both embrace EVs, encourage their improvement, and find ways to reduce the need for individual vehicles in dense urban areas -- to make the most efficient use of our transportation energy budget. That energy would be put to better use in other ways, and cities in Asia and Europe have demonstrated that you can have a high quality of life without everyone needing to have a car for every trip. Those lessons might not apply to every place in the US, but there are certainly lessons to be learned for our dense urban cores. Cars still have their place, and EVs are the future of cars and getting better all the time (thank you technology!) Lighter would be better, and that may come over time. My comment also was meant to convey that Americans never seem to think that there could be better ways to live their lives than in a car-dependent lifestyle. In part because so few Americans get out and see the world. As for relying on technology, my point was that most Americans are content to sit back and wait for someone else to solve their problems so that they don't have to change how they live their lives. 120F temperatures? Surely some engineer will come up with an A/C solution so I can still live here in the desert and continue to grill on my back patio, right? I'm not an anti-technology luddite, I just don't see the US adopting different forms of energy fast enough for climate change to not devastate large parts of the US. I don't see fusion energy as a near-term success story, and last summer's shutdown of many of France's nuclear plants due to high water temperatures seemed to validate my concerns about our current nuclear plants. I do foresee better cars, better A/C units, better communication networks, better insulation, better robotics for all kinds of things, better solar and other electrical generation and storage solutions (distributed storage will be important for renewables and I'm a proponent of home-based or neighborhood-based energy storage (flow cells are an interesting technology) -- no more widespread blackouts!), better wind energy and wave energy and on an on -- technology has done a lot to improve our quality of life and will continue to do so. Mostly slowly, incrementally, over a long time horizon. But sometimes quickly, as computers and the internet have done in my lifetime (although development of the computer was pretty slow pre-1990). Sadly, none of us will live long enough to live in the dyson sphere. That would be cool.

I think it would be important to add that this is a lot less pavement to maintain than the alternative, and probably a lot cheaper to build.

If we could predict the future we'd all be rich (or at least the wealth would be more evenly distributed than it is with the current 1%). As I see it, our near-complete-reliance on personal vehicles that weigh thousands of pounds is a truly wasteful use of energy and materials, and I don't see it as being sustainable. But the US will continue on that path until it can't. We will continue to use more and more energy, no matter how stupid or wasteful that is, and we will continue to assume that technology will solve our problems (I remain skeptical of the promises of fusion power, and I am skeptical of nuclear power being helpful in a far warmer world than our nuclear plants were built for). Europe and Asia will continue to outpace us in energy efficiency and most Americans will continue not to care as long as THEIR lifestyle doesn't have to change. That will likely mean that great investments that should have happened two decades ago (Brightline in Florida, greater reliance on rail) will be underwater or melted in the heat the American failure to understand climate change is going to be hugely expensive (thankfully we have a huge economy but it's going to hurt). Europe and Asia will likely fair better (and worse, particularly in less wealthy countries that will struggle to adapt). We'll see -- Norway, a big oil producer, has really gone all-in on electric vehicles and big on wind power -- how will that work out for them?

Also worth noting: lots of people are aware of that and think it is problematic. So there is a lot of research into batteries that are more energy dense (requiring less material) and that use more abundant materials than cobalt or lithium. https://builtin.com/hardware/new-battery-technologies

I disagree but let's compromise -- send the WFL down E18 to form a downtown loop.

Why is the "E. 18th" extension crossing the tracks so far to the east of E.18th? and do we really need so many lanes onto E. 18th? If you were looking to design first for pedestrians, then cyclists, then cars (or someone looking to build the "15-minute city" this should look ridiculous. This is not the best we can do to bring the lakefront closer to the people.

What happens in 10-15 years when the Boomers aren't driving? (Or, scarier thought -- they're still driving! 😄)

I'm sure that sprawl contributes, because by its very nature spreads people out. But sprawl has been with us for a while (as have air-conditioning and cable or internet TV -- things that encourage people to stay inside). What has changed? Perhaps the expanding ubiquity of internet access and interactive electronic entertainment, combined with the post-COVID hangover of reluctance to regularly join large groups of people on a regular basis (probably encouraged by regular media reports on mass shootings). It's probably not just churches suffering, but any in-person group activity in clubs or civic organizations. People's "community" is an online gaming community, an online gardening forum, online video conferencing, or more people who are happy to be entertained by the internet without the drama of actual human relationships. I suspect that is far easier to "disappear" from a community in a sprawling neighborhood compared to a higher-density neighborhood like Lakewood.

I don't think that's true any more -- I think that may have been the case under an old funding model. Now the state is funding both vouchers and public schools but they are essentially separately pots of money. Of course, my local school system is funded almost 70% by local property taxes, not the state -- and that includes taxes paid by neighbors who use vouchers to send their kids to private schools. So the state is funding $8k for the local high school student to use a voucher, and that entire amount follows that student to her private school and there is zero impact on the local public high school's funding (other than that they now have fewer students and that will impact the funding formula the state uses). LOL. My public school education included the International Baccalaureate curriculum, tons of AP classes, college credit classes, and a long list of successful graduates. I would say it was by far the best public or private school district in that area. I suggest that the sense of "must take all applicants" applies to both terms, and not to most private schools (not to any that I know of). So yes, the state could create a system of "common" schools that include a mix of public and private schools that are all run under the same rules, including fiscal reporting and take-all-comers requirements. I highly doubt a private school could be run successfully under the state's requirements for public schools. One conservative approach mentioned above was to allow public schools to expel them. That is the only "solution" I've seen from the conservative side of the aisle. That and defunding the schools trying to educate those "behavioral distractions" for their low success rate (test scores).

This highlights the liberal-conservative divide. INDIVIDUAL freedom and INDIVIDUAL responsibility for conservatives, and COMMUNITY freedom and COMMUNITY responsibilities for liberals. The conservative view that the individual should be free to abandon schools they don't like (and well, the other kids in that school could make the same decision, amiright?). In contrast, the liberal view is that the school is a community asset and the community should work together to make schools better -- and in a way that benefits everyone in the community, not just "me, personally." Vouchers allow individuals to escape having to put in work to make their community schools better, they can just "abandon" the public school for a "better" school. The government-monopoly model is the most efficient way to spend the community (state) money to educate all of the kids in the community (state). And the state constitution (which I am shocked that the state's Republican's haven't amended since the DeRolph decisions) requires a system of public schools. Vouchers will require more school buildings, more administrators, and less local oversight (as in if you want to opine about whether the school cafeteria really needed a makeover more than the kids needed new laptops, the parish priest can just say no; he's the king and he decides what is best for the school, not the parents).

I just discovered another interesting fact that you will like -- there is no limit on the number of vouchers (other than that there are only about 1.8m total students in Ohio). If every eligible kid in Ohio wanted a voucher, they can get it (in decreasing amounts above a $135k family income, but guaranteed to be at least 10% of the voucher amount for everyone regardless of income). Public school funding for this coming biennium, however, is capped at around $19.5B. (Out of a state budget of $190.7B.) Ohio has about 1.6m public school students (and so the state is spending $12,200 per student, on average, over two years -- the bulk of the public school funding comes from local property taxes). About 13% of Ohio's 1.8m students are in private schools now (only about 240,000 students). The new vouchers are $6,165 for K to 8 students and $8,407 for high schoolers. If 1/4 are in high school, that's 60,000 high school students and 180,000 K8 students; and 1/4 of $8407 + 3/4 of $6,165 would give us an average cost of $6,725.50 per student per year -- or an average of $13,450 per student for the biennium. What percentage of students will be eligible for the full amount? That's a big unknown. The state has committed to spending at least 10% for each of those students (around $300m). If every kid were eligible for the full amount, $13,450 x 240,000 = ~$3.2B We'll have to wait and see what the voucher rate is like, but it seems likely that the voucher cost will be more than $300m and less than $3B -- but that's a big range. I think it is ironic that our fiscally-conservative state cannot "afford" to fully fund public schools under the Fair Funding Plan, but have to "ease" into it over six years (this budget brings us up to year four of the six-year phase-in) -- yet they authorized vouchers without a cap on the cost.

"Catholic-school advocate says we should just expel behaviorly-problematic kids from schools (and from society?)!" Really? -- WWJD?!? It's "someone else's" problem now? I disagree. I wouldn't argue that disciplinary problems should be ignored or that there shouldn't be consequences for bad behavior or that disruptive kids should be allowed to remain in the classroom and continue to disrupt the class. But I also wouldn't just toss the kid out on the street to become a problem in society. I don't know what the answer is, but I'm sure there are child psychologists and professional educators and social workers who could work together with the parents (if possible). But throwing up our hands and walking away -- FROM A KID -- should not be an option. I'm also in favor of structural reform. Really looking at what society's needs are and whether our current education system (created in an agriculture economy) is meeting those needs. That should be very informed by professional educators and peer-reviewed research, including reviews of what is done that works well in other countries to see what works here. To that end, I'm ok with more diversity in schools (*edit* diversity in the sense of different kinds of schools with different curricula and different teaching or organizational styles) and fewer top-down educational mandates.

Maybe my concerns about "oversight" are misinformed, but hopefully we are past the kind of scandals you cited. The state can and does audit the finances of public schools and requires public schools to prepare lots of financial reports that are forward-looking to ensure that the school is going to remain in the black for years -- and that is not required of private schools that are going to receive public money via vouchers. Requirements like this cost money and are not applied to all "schools" -- the public schools have more "unfunded mandates" than voucher schools and public schools aren't receiving enough funding (and not even as much per-pupil funding as is provided by vouchers). That is my objection. (The Ohio Supreme Court has repeatedly said that the state is shirking its funding obligations by relying too heavily on local property taxes, so I'm just talking about state funding and state regulations, not local share or local oversight.) I also question whether all "schools" licensed by the state should have the same requirements? If it's too burdensome to require it of a Catholic school receiving a voucher, why is it not too burdensome a rule for a public school? Or if it isn't efficient to provide a service in every school (like preparing IEPs), the state should fully fund that service rather than requiring public schools to fund it out of their per-pupil allocation. Maybe you would agree that we also should be looking reducing some of the state regulations if we don't want them applied to private schools that are receiving public money via vouchers. We also can agree that public schools are not going to become "all the bad kids and only the bad kids," but private schools can choose not to accept a kid (or to kick out a problem kid), and public schools cannot. That means that public schools must educate the students that the private schools refuse to accept. We should also be able to agree that getting those kids sufficient education will not be cheaper than the cost to educate the "average" kid. Society is better off -- we are all better off -- if we can get all kids to a point where they can be productive members of society -- have a job, pay taxes, and preferably have some sense of history and how our society works so that they can be civically involved. (Not that poor kids should be universally prepared for Harvard -- although that would be a huge economic advantage for Ohio if it could be achieved! -- we're talking "capable of community college or a trade shool" -- the starting point for most middle class jobs.) If the state thinks that the "average" kid costs $15,000 to educate, what does it actually takes to get poor kids up to the community college/tech school level? This is probably a question for professional educators. Pre-K seems to make a difference. As do smaller class sizes (more teachers and more classrooms, higher costs). What about after-school care, free meals (and better meals with more fresh fruit and vegetables),shorter summer breaks, or mental and physical health services on campus? What works and what does it cost? I don't know. But that should be the starting point for what the state should be providing to schools with large populations from poor families. A good education and addressing problems of poverty for the young will pay dividends down the line. We probably will disagree, but I think we should be spending more money to educate those kids. I'm ok with the state funding vouchers, as part of or all of its spending on education, if the state is achieving that goal. So far the results indicate that the state is not adequately funding education, and only increasing funding for vouchers isn't going to be the full solution.

I agree that in the abstract, and from a suburban viewpoint, it might seem that simple. But it isn't because not every family has the means or interest to help their kid find and get to a different school and the amount of money needed to get a rural kid or a suburban kid or an urban kid a college-ready education isn't the same. In many rural parts of this state kids with engaged families get a solid basic education for 1/4 of what is needed in some cities, but city kids from poor families with uneducated parents require not just basic education but food, social services, and more education to get up to that basic college-ready status -- all of which is way more expensive but of huge benefit to the state's future taxpaying workforce. That means that a public school in a rural community probably has no competition for vouchers -- there aren't enough students to make a private school possible. Public schools are not receiving enough funding from the state anyway, and not even the voucher amount per student -- so it's not a matter of the same dollars following the student whether they go public or voucher/private. The state is financially favoring private schools. And I disagree with the notion that the state is adequately funding the needs for most developmentally challenged students. Moreover, not all voucher recipients are leaving public schools -- the rapidly growing Orthodox jewish community in Cleveland Heights is one example. Many Catholic students as well. So the state is now "funding" more students than it did before, while continuing to underfund public schools, particularly schools with poorer student populations. As a result, "more kids receiving vouchers" is not equalling "fewer kids in public schools." Yes, there are already limited parallel school systems, but until recently the state was only funding the public system. Now the state is going to split its funding. If we are going to fund both private and public schools, we still have to pay for the public school buildings, try to guess how many students are going to enroll one year to the next and thus how many teachers you need, try to have enough building space, etc. Removing 100 kids doesn't automatically mean a district saves money if the kids removed are spread out over 13 grades and 3-10 buildings. The savings in removing 100 students might be very small, particularly compared to the loss in funding. Again, more voucher students does not equal more savings for public schools. The scrutiny from the state of how private schools spend their voucher money is not comparable to the scrutiny from the state in how public schools spend their money. Since private schools can choose NOT to enroll a child, they will choose not to enroll the problem children, leading to a concentration of problems in the public schools and encouraging more exodus to private schools. The "good students," who are infinitely easier to educate to college-ready status will be the ones leaving the public schools -- that's not going to "save" the public schools much in educational effort. Like emergency-room health care, the most-expensive-to-educate students will be the ones left in public schools. And even if a voucher theoretically can be used anywhere, it would be useless to the inner city kid interested in a ex-urban school like Hawken in the Cleveland area -- there's no public transit to get you there and there is no mandate for private schools to provide busing. So again, vouchers make it easier for wealthier families, but kids from poor will continue to have many fewer options. I'm not against private schools, and for some kids finding the right school makes a huge difference. The state constitution does not mandate that the state pay a portion of every student's education, but rather that the state fund a comprehensive system of public schools. And vouchers do not satisfy that constitutional requirement, but in fact detract from the funding necessary to meet that requirement.

There are few people in Ohio with $500k "just sitting around" waiting for the next FB.... but good for Some Guy!

I've seen a lot of unions over the years, some truly awful, but overall Police and Fire are some of the best -- although maybe that's not saying a lot for your experience. I've got to stick up for the Parma Heights FD, however. The staffing levels issue was separate from the question of dispatch and absolutely necessary. (As a matter of fact, I don't remember any strong opposition from the PHFD for the merged dispatch at all.) Staffing was a real problem -- they barely had enough guys to run the ambulance and one fire engine safely and were wearing guys pretty ragged and falling behind on the mandated fire-safety inspections for commercial properties. COVID was awful for them and a couple of guys retired early. PH wanted to cut staffing even further to save money and the union's call for mandated staffing levels was ignored during negotiations -- until the referendum was put on the ballot. Thankfully, my understanding is that this was resolved in the contract negotiations and the FD positions were saved. If you only get one guy on an ambulance showing up at your house, or you get two guys who are totally exhausted and feeling rushed to get to a "next call" -- you may be in trouble. And if you're working your FD to death with ambulance runs, your safety is going to suffer and experienced FD personnel are going to go elsewhere (or retire as soon as they can). Both police and fire need ongoing training, fitness, alertness -- you can't work them to death or give them too big of an area of responsibility and expect good service. I do agree that consolidating services is a good practice, and there might be more of it going on than we all realize. There has been a lot of dispatch consolidation on both sides of town, more cities are turning over their sewer maintenance to the sewer district, more cities are happy to have the Metroparks managing larger parks, lots of cities have cooperation agreements for special fire trucks (ladders) and SWAT, many city service vehicles are purchased in cooperation with a state program to consolidate purchasing at the state level, and don't forget how much we all *LOVE* RITA.

I'll put the same questions to you: Should the expenditure of public money be transparent and should there be oversight of how public dollars are spent? How would you structure oversight over how schools spend public dollars? I don't think the State can afford parallel systems of private schools and public schools, and Gramarye seemed to be advocating for eliminating the public school system entirely. What do you propose for unruly kids of unruly parents? What about developmentally and physically disabled kids? How do we ensure that there are schools near where kids live?

What we ought to be doing, beyond finding ways to fund that $30m in needed maintenance, is talk about what the ongoing maintenance needs will be after the WSM is brought up to date. We need that $30m to reduce the annual expenses and to increase revenue. And we also need to continue to put money into the maintenance fund to minimize future maintenance costs. I suspect that occupancy and rents would go up if those maintenance needs and the $14m in improvements actually are made, and that would increase revenue as well. To fund the improvements (and maybe some small part of the outstanding maintenance bill), perhaps the WSM could sell development rights to the parking lots, with stipulations that the development must include a certain number of parking spots for the WSM.