Brutus_buckeye

What I think Unions will need to move toward in order to survive in the era of Right To Work and Janus is that they will become more benefit management and apprenticeship training programs. If you are in the Union and on furlough, you will be able to get your skills current and be able to slide into open positions with a company before a non-union employee would, you would have a higher level of training (value to the employee). You would also be part of collectives to manage benefits and pools resources to get better pensions, etc which would nto be available to non members. Collective bargaining would become much less important and the benefit will be the pooling of resources on the benefits side.

^ Unions issue is they insulated themselves too much and did not need their people. THey quit listening to the rank and file and the rank and file became just a revenue stream for leadership and their activities. It is not the bottom up approach that allowed them to thrive in their early days. They did not have to listen to their members because, after all, everyone had to join anyway to work for that employer. If you want to teach in the public schools, you have no choice to be in the Union. While the Union feels the offer a ton of value to the employee, the employee quit seeing the value and Unions did not care. The AFSME case arose because there were lots of Union members who tried speaking out to leadership about the Union not taking care of their needs and no one was listening.

^ PreCourt selling the team to a local group of investors

Mt Adams will be fine. There are too many bars there now, and many of them opened in the last 10 years. Throughout most of the 80s and 90s it was a mix of young bar goers and the upper crusty people who frequented the wine bar and places like the Fish House. Longworths leaving created a void in the scene, but what will happen it that it will eventually revert to more of a sleepy arts, bar community where people go to the neighborhood bars and more restaurants to cater to Playhouse patrons, etc. It will be a smaller bar district focused more on food and art than it has become lately. There will still be the corner watering holes like Crowleys and Yesterdays but less places like Monks and Next Chapter.

I think they are a waste of tax payer resources too. It depends on the case though. If it is something restrictive that has not been tested before or done within the scope of the Casey decision, I am fine with that. BUt when it is clearly in violation of the law and would clearly be overturned, then I have a problem with such governmental overreach and waste of tax payer resources. The bump stock law was a waste of resources because prior established law said otherwise. Plus, I think bump stocks do nothing to solve the problem of mass shootings anyway. It is a red herring issue designed to look like something is being done while at the same time not doing anything.

It was not Bryan Price. It is just the statistical numbers are playing out. Also, at the beginning of the year, 3 of their starters were on the DL so losing that pitching production and given the offense started slowly is why they started the way they did. The experts were predicting them to win around 70 games this year and they are likely to do that still. Chances are they may even exceed their wins from the last couple of years this year, which is statistically where they are expected to be based on beginning of the year numbers. The biggest problem is the Reds decided to suck at the beginning of the year instead of August so that fans lost interest early.

^ this is why you don't pass the resolution to begin with. You have a clear lawsuit you need to defend and use city resources to do so. This tax money could be better spent on other endeavors. Why buy a lawsuit when you don't have too.

^ From an urban planning side, it is an ideal thing. If we were Philly or Chicago or DC, then this makes sense. We are not. Seelbach wants to be this, but you need to encourage downtown investment. Without a stable bus system or rail system, doing this now is like cutting your nose to spite your face. I know in your ideal world, this makes sense, but you have to relate it to realsville here. Seelbach lives in a dream world. He comes from a well heeled family so this would not effect him anyway. It is the rest of the people who actually need to worry about working for a living and figuring out how they can afford to live downtown that have to suffer his quixotic vision.

Parking tax is a bad idea at this time. Until we can get a critical mass of residents downtown we need to keep subsidizing parking. I just got back from a market forecast meeting and the downtown growth rate is slowing in the CBD. Reason is because construction costs are going up and interest rates are rising. It is not the time to add additional costs if you want to keep the development going in the cities. Unlike the larger coastal cities, Cincinnati does not attract a ton of institutional money and therefore the buildings do not sell as readily. THis keeps construction down. Seelbach is the king of all the clowns on council because he does not care about any of this. He is just a little rich boy who enjoys his little power trip.

Seelbach is a such a clown.

Did not mean to imply either or. Just wish someone would take on that project

^ Instead of trying to convert this building to a hotel, why not renovate the Terrace Plaza back into a functional hotel

^Sounds like it is not leveraging Columbus and Austin per PSV anymore, it is Austin and other places. It appears like Precourt is determined to leave Columbus no matter what, which was probably his endgame when he bought the team 5 years ago.

Cant they get the Bengals to approve the lot by making the event to their advantage. For example, let the Bengals have use of the center for free on game days for tailgate and pregame parties to their fans with tix. maybe the city can create another lot someplace else around the stadium that is good for tailgaters I thought there was not supposed to be a lot in the long term Banks vision anyway, so I cant see why the Bengals will have a beef.

^ 1) I think is purchase contract allows him to void the lease early should an option to move to Austin and only Austin become viable 2) If he wanted to go to Sac he would need more approvals from the league and would either have to wait until his lease in Columbus ran out (not a good option), or buy out the lease (not a good option either) 3) Sacramento has their favored ownership group in place already and they could make things difficult or try and extract a pound of flesh or additional influence he may not be willing to give up at this time. While Sacramento would make sense at one level, and if Austin fails, I am sure it will be used for leverage, it is not as good of a option as Austin for Precourt for some of the above reasons.

The bigger challenge for PreCourt is what is Plan B if the city of Austin does not want the team. Given the bad will he has created with Columbus, I cant see him salvaging the relationship if the Crew does not move to Austin. That would mean he either sells or moves some other place. Then the issue becomes if the contracts he has will let him go anywhere besides Austin without significant additional costs. However, staying in Columbus with him as owner does not seem like the likely conclusion here. Something is going to have to give one way or another.

That wont affect funding. The issue was that the estate tax was repealed when Kasich came to power. This was an issue he championed and the GOP legislature also strongly pushed. The estate tax was used to primarily fund local government and that is where the shortfalls stem. Even if Cordray wins, this funding is not coming back because the legislature is not going to turn over to Dem control. The GOP has too large of a majority for that to happen. This local funding issue is not going away by just putting a Dem in the governors mansion.

No way people approve .7% tax hike and no way they approve a .5% for anything. The last .5% was the stadium tax and you see how that still resonates. It has become a dirty word now. That amount is doomed to fail for many reasons. The .2% will also go down at the polls because it is not typically what sales taxes are designed to fund. Voters loathe sales taxes more than anything so it better be a compelling story to get them to vote for it. Balancing the county books is not compelling enough.

^ I doubt the SORTA tax is going to be on the ballot now anyway. What the Commissioners did on Monday was ensure that the SORTA tax does not see the light of day. If SORTA goes through with it, it is giving a big F you to the county and ensuring that the .2% tax goes down too. No way the voters go for .7% in sales taxes. Go back to the music Hall/Union Terminal tax a few years ago. Didn't it take stripping Music Hall from the tax to get the Union Terminal one passed?

Not to be a Debbie Downer on the whole Moddell Law, but it really does have no teeth. I wont be surprised if it gets thrown out, and even if it doesn't, a court is pretty loathe to require specific performance on something and almost never does. They really cant force PSV to sell because of his property rights. The only thing that would come from this law is a bigger settlement with the city on a buyout.

If only Columbus had such a prime piece of Urban land like McKalla place they could have built the stadium on PSV would not be moving the team. As MLS states, they want an urban environment next to warehouses, light industrial buildings, chemical companies along with street level retail like tire stores and auto parts stores and food amenities like McDonalds and Taco Bell for its fans to be able to visit before and after the games. IF only.

County commissioners really screwed SORTA and even themselves by doing this. Sales taxes never go over well and this one will go over like a lead balloon because residents cant see the tangible value. It is not like Union Terminal or a stadium or something in return for it. SORTA was at least something of tangible value. But voters will not go for a .5 or higher sales tax increase on top of an additional .2 sales tax increase. If SORTA moves ahead on it now, they are just going into the firing squad. Of course, the Commissioners had advised them not to move ahead, which maybe their action yesterday was another action to keep SORTA from putting their increase on the ballot.

That is not the influencer on the high end apartments. People are renting here as a lifestyle choice. They don't want a crappy house in Westwood or Madisonville when they can pay $2000/month or more for a place in the Skyhouse. WHen you have a rise in material prices for a large project of say 10-15% that is a ton of money. Plus, your financing changes on the whole project. Interest on such a construction loan is now say 5.5% or more and then it takes a while to lease and perm financing is a lot higher now than a year ago at this time. A 50-100 basis point change makes a huge difference on a project of this size.

Steel and rising interest rates killed this project and it will be killing many more projects like this that are not already under construction.

Millenials have no wealth nor pay much in taxes so of course they don't. That doesn't explain why coastal cities attract so many businesses vs. e.g. Kansas. What comes first, the chicken or the egg. Do people come for the jobs or do the jobs come for the people?