Foraker

Downtown is noticeably quieter. It's been long enough, I don't see it coming back quickly. A lot of businesses seem to be working remotely two or more days a week. We'll have to grow businesses to get more feet on the street again during the day. SW completion will help in the center.

I like it. But my #1 priority is a downtown loop. I think it needs to go up E17/E18/E21 and connect Cleveland State, St. Vincent Hospital, and Tri-C (and a Gateway station by the ballpark/arena). Suddenly a lot more destinations are connected to rail, making all the feeder lines into downtown more useful as well.

Perhaps those strikes are coming, but generally I think teachers are just eager for a "normal" (non-COVID-interrupted) school year. The Columbus strike wasn't about pay as much as it was about support staff and building conditions.

I'm all for private schools, having put kids through several myself, clearly. What I'm against is using public dollars to fund education without public oversight of the use of those public dollars. [And requiring public schools to do more with less (testing requirements, busing both private school kids and public school kids, preparing IEPs for both private school kids and public school kids, and having to deal with all the "problem" kids that the private schools can just kick to the curb or block from admissions at their whim, whether the school claims to be "christian" or not).] You can opt out if you want, but if you want public dollars you should play by public rules including the same kind of public oversight of expenditures. (If the public rules are too restrictive, then maybe we shouldn't have them in the first place.)

And very-white gold standard St. Ignatius is over $17,000. I forget what the cost is at University School, but it's way more. Some schools are less expensive, but private schools are not inherently cheaper than public schools. "Competition" by itself does not lead to lower costs and higher quality. Now they are, that's true. But ECOT's audit problems were allowed to drag on until $117M (or more) was misspent. The fact that they are going after ECOT now is not evidence of adequate oversight to prevent the problem from growing so large. https://innovationohio.org/education/k12education/ecot-warning-signs/ Competition does not automatically mean we get higher quality (see: manufacturing in China) any more than government organizations are inherently inefficient (no one is arguing that we need a parallel military to make it more efficient; and there isn't always a market to provide competition -- rural mail delivery, for example). People often enter public SERVICE, and teaching in particular, to SERVE -- they generally want to do a good job for their community. It's their kids, and their friends' kids, and their neighbors' kids -- they want quality for the community and they don't need competition to "incentivize" them to provide it. The lack of competition may mean that we need to be diligent about oversight, however. And public schools have that with local school board oversight as well as state oversight to ensure that the schools are run well. Public schools are incentivized to be as good as they can be due to community involvement in the schools. Private schools lack that local oversight (the priest of our parish is the head of our school and has final say on everything -- he has no education or finance background -- so what kind of oversight is that? Surely that is not the kind of oversight that improves educational quality and fiscal responsibility! And due to the low salaries, teacher turnover is high, which arguably reduces quality.) And I don't think the quality of a Catholic education is better or worse because of the existence of other schools -- a large percentage of the people sending their kids to Catholic schools do so for religious rather than educational reasons. Do you really think that "competition" forces University School to be more efficient with their spending or to hold costs down for families? Or does the high cost of a US education ensure that primarily only wealthy families apply (and we know that wealth generally means higher test scores)? Not every aspect of life is improved by competition. Let's also remember that private and charter schools are not required to educate students with disabilities, or students with behavior problems. How do you propose that competition is going to improve education for those students? Even if you have two schools of equal quality, the same number of kids in each classroom and the same number of teachers and classrooms as you would have in a single school, you have to duplicate non-classroom facilities and administrators. No amount of competition is going to change that.

Except studies show that it is not low income parents that are using vouchers to attend private schools in Ohio. It's mostly middle-class families who are using vouchers to take their kids out of community schools. (And Catholic schools are not what they once were -- primarily staffed by the religious at near-poverty wages. The cost of a Catholic education has risen dramatically with the need to hire lay teachers and staff.) But putting that aside, I think that the public and our government have a "fiduciary" duty to oversee the expenditure of public money, and the state's oversight of charter schools has been demonstrably lacking. True fiscal conservatives would be concerned -- the "fiscal conservatives" in charge in Ohio are not. Why? Has ECOT sufficiently funded their campaign chests? True "local control is best" conservatives should be alarmed at the amount of school regulations imposed by the state on local community schools (and not on private schools that don't have community oversight). If government shouldn't be tilting the playing field, the same restrictions should follow with the money. And if there are too many regulations, we should remove the regulations across the board. But more importantly, the Ohio Constitution requires the state to “secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state.” That's "a" system, not plural systems -- public + charter + vouchers-for-private-enterprises. If our leaders were "strict constructionist" conservatives, perhaps they would oppose vouchers until a constitutional amendment could be passed. (Are there any constitutional amendments proposed on this point?) (Plus creating parallel school systems increases cost -- which also should concern our fiscal conservatives.) I suggest that today's Republican Party is no longer fiscally conservative, wants to consolidate power in the state government to the detriment of local control, and wants to intervene in education to favor private schools over public schools -- judging by their actions rather than their words.

Very happy to see that they are starting to pour the walkways and put down the roadway at Top of the Hill! Any word on groundbreaking for Cedar-Lee-Meadowbrook?

I think it is valid to fear that the anti-rail folks will find every reason under the sun to attack and defund any rail system we manage to start. But I don't think that the fear of that happening justifies not starting the rail line. Because even if we STARTED with high speed rail and superior transit systems around each station the same anti-rail fervor would exist. And I think we could all agree that we're going to start with slow rail and imperfect local transit. Slow rail is how all rail systems start. Then they improve over time. Just look at the Detroit-Chicago line, or the Chicago-St. Louis line. First there was a slow train, and both routes have been improving frequency and speed over several decades. Ohio is being left in the dust and shouldn't delay any longer. I propose that slow rail could have a different outcome than you fear -- that riders will appreciate the rail line so much that they advocate for faster, more frequent service, and upgrades to local transit to enable better connections. (And maybe that is what the anti-rail crowd fears.)

That all sounds wonderful, and what intra-city public transit ought to be. But high quality (local, intra-ctiy) public transit not a prerequisite for inter-city transit. The state and probably federal governments are probably going to have to get involved in getting the 3C rail line started, but it's the destination cities that are going to need to define their own quality public transit systems. Your critiques are particularly relevant to a tourist who wants to experience everything a city has to offer -- and there are a lot of other kinds of travelers, for business, family, to see friends, to go to a concert or a convention -- where you might need a way to get from the station to the place you're going, but once you're there you stay within walking distance of your destination. Better transit is ideal, but not essential for those travelers.

Long-term, yes. But the sooner we get any service between the3Cs I will take it.. Family can pick me up, I can bring a foldable bike, or there's Uber --- just spare me that drive between cities! Don't let the absence of "perfect" block progress to "better."

If VA continues to be successful, I am confident that the city will be able to convince the owners to redevelop that site. But I think the city is focusing on the properties it controls first. Now that the Phase 2 towers have been greenlighted, I'm looking forward to what the city has planned for Phase 3.

The GRC's efforts to expand the study area west are to be applauded, heartily, because connection to the lakefront can't be done well without rethinking the Shoreway and how it connects to the west. While I wasn't a fan of the Opportunity Corridor, now that it's built I wonder whether it might be an experienceable-example of what the Shoreway could become -- still connected to I-90 on the east, still a major roadway, but a boulevard with slower speeds, trees, gentle curves, and pedestrian access. The elevation change from downtown to the Rock Hall may make the design of the land bridge and street connections more difficult, but not impossible. Thank you GRC for pushing for including the west side access into this conversation.

Yeah, I don't think this is the "aesthetic" that we would miss, but in fact really needs to be improved.

You can download the full report here: http://friendsofbigcreek.org/Landbridge-Shoreway/

I completely agree; a residential project (like a jail) is far from ideal here -- but no private developer is ever going to take on the cleanup, it will have to be a government project of some kind on this site. Hopefully some of the new federal superfund dollars could come here.

It's becoming more and more common at all kinds of schools. Lower maintenance, tougher, and can be used by more teams with no end-of-season bare spots on the field are some of the justifications given.

I can't tell whether she doesn't get it, she's been too distracted by multiple maternity leaves to get her plan in place, or she's being stymied by entrenched interests within RTA, but I really want Birdsong and RTA to succeed, dmmit. We don't seem to appreciate the value of our existing rail network and how it could be leveraged to make Cleveland transit really great. Will Ronayne make a difference as county exec? Will he be able to work with Bibb and transit advocates to nudge RTA forward?! <pounds head on wall>

From City News August 13, 2022 https://www.clevelandheights.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=596

I don't think there are any large employers left in EC. The school district might be the second largest employer after what's left at Nela Park. There are some small industrial outfits, but nothing big. Despite the crime and reputation that comes with it, there are good people still living in EC and they have a lot of pride in their city. What it was, what it could become again. EC is not all "thugs" and "druggies" -- and the residents generally are not desperate to merge with anyone. (See the East Cleveland CDC, NOAH, and their executive director, Trevelle Harp, as a group that should be supported in their efforts to improve their city). https://noahorganizing.org/ In my opinion, East Cleveland isn't big enough to get out of this hole on their own. And as long as Cleveland has other problems to deal with, it will have to be the county or the state or private foundations (or a combination) to give them the boost they need to become a better place to live and work. We already know that the Republicans in state government don't understand why East Cleveland can't just "pull itself up by its own bootstraps," so I wouldn't expect any help there. It might take the county and private foundations, working together with the people in EC who want to see improvements, to pull EC back from the brink. Doing so would benefit the wider community of Cuyahoga County.

I'm surprised that he's faded away without more discussion/comments, but Reyes is now a Cub. https://www.cubshq.com/cubs-baseball/story/cubs-trade-for-outfielder-franmil-reyes-with-guardians-19713

An interesting idea, and I certainly see a resemblance to a "traditional" conservative position that the states and local governments are better judges of where money should be spent. But I also think that true interstate highway routes need federal regulation and funding to ensure interstate connections and consistent standards on interstate highways. I agree, however, that the slush fund of federal highway dollars has led to an overbuilt highway system. For example, do we really need all of I-90, I-480, and I-271 in the Cleveland area as "interstate" routes governed by and funded by federal dollars? But just transferring those federal dollars to the states won't change the current spending pattern. We're a car-centric society and almost our entire built environment is centered around having a personal car to get around -- and people think that that is what they want and the way things should be, because very few people have ever experienced anything different or really understood the true cost. Ohio Republicans have shown a distinct lack of interest in finding and funding transportation alternatives, and they look likely to control the legislature for the foreseeable future. So just giving them more money won't change anything. If we're going to see transportation funding go to something other than highways and states are going to try to maximize the value from their transportation dollars, the federal government is going to have to use their funding and regulatory powers to encourage alternative investments. I'd start by redefining the federal highway system and cut some of the spurs from the federal funding system, and I'd redirect some funding to a planned interstate rail system and Amtrak. Unfortunately, I also think that alternative investments in local transportation systems might lack sufficient ties to interstate commerce to justify federal interference.

That's the south end of Taylor Road dead-ending into Fairmount (looking south). Other end of Taylor? East Cleveland and Euclid Avenue? Goes past Severance and the old Warner & Swasey observatory.

Thanks for the image. The homeowner has a large sign on those reflectors now. I don't recall the exact wording, but basically asking the city "where's my guardrail?!" As you can see, the tree lawn isn't that deep here either. Even if you moved the crosswalk over I don't know what ODOT's minimum-effective-length of guardrail would be. Here's a Google 3D view of the intersection. That crosswalk SHOULD be moved to cross the median and provide a pedestrian refuge. The most recent crash into this guys' house completely destroyed the garage to the left of the house. When I drove by this morning it was a pile of debris awaiting a dumpster. No word on whether that vehicle was in the driveway and also damaged in the crash. *Update* the errant car apparently crushed both the truck in the driveway and the garage. The car was stopped as part of a routine traffic stop, and the car took off as soon as the officer got out of his car. The police did not chase. No word on whether the driver was caught at the scene. At Monday's city council meeting, the Mayor said that he has been meeting with the homeowner to find a solution. Apparently another problem is that the tree lawn isn't DEEP ENOUGH at only 2 feet to fit a guard rail. The homeowner doesn't like the idea of a guardrail in his yard. Discussions are ongoing, but the Mayor is hoping to find a solution (and it sounds like the city is going to at least help pay for it). Stay tuned....

The Cleveland.com article says that ODOT requires guardrails to have a particular length, which length is impossible here because of a neighbor's driveway. Guardrails spread an impact with the metal barrier across multiple posts in the ground to absorb the force. Maybe with too few posts in the ground a car would blow through the guardrail. The most recent crash seemed to go up the guy's driveway and destroyed his garage. A guardrail wouldn't have prevented that if that is in fact what happened. Is it the city's obligation to protect every homeowner from drivers breaking the law? The city was partially at fault in a high-speed chase, but is that what was happening in each of these (three? four?) crashes into his house/garage? Regardless of how we answer that question, I'd like to see the city share the cost with the guy since at least one of those accidents occurred during a police chase. A guardrail would be pretty ugly. I'd consider putting some large boulders on that tree lawn. Not as crash-friendly for bad drivers, but more attractive for the neighborhood.. Neither a guardrail nor a bunch of boulders is likely to be the best solution by themselves. IN ADDITION, the city should look at reducing the long, straight sight lines on Taylor heading south to Fairmount. It's this runway that speeding drivers are using to launch their cars into this guy's house. This might be more important for better quality of life on that section of Taylor anyway. It might be difficult, however, as the lanes in this stretch of Taylor are already narrow (the street is about 20 feet wide, with one lane in each direction). Any street parking on Taylor should be on the southbound side, but I don't remember whether there is any on-street parking permitted. Sadly, it might be cheaper to buy the guy's house, knock it down for a green space that is easily remediated and with less risk of loss-of-life (either a driver or an occupant of a house).

What would be your spending priorities be?