mu2010

Not sure exactly what you mean, but I think Jackson was a good fiscal steward and deserves credit for the fact that the city isn't hurting for cash. It's just that towards the end, as the city's finances improved, the place still had a culture of extreme cheapness to the point of being detrimental.

The city isn't hurting for cash. It's just that under Jackson, they always had to act like they were.

Didn't realize Cincinnati Bell changed their name. That's a shame as it was one of the last remnants of the Bell System. Not sure why these historic companies always feel the need to ditch their history for some generic BS like "altafiber."

The Decade of Cheap Rides Is Over How American life was changed by a subsidy Uber and Lyft can no longer afford. BY HENRY GRABAR MAY 18, 2022 11:09 AM https://slate.com/business/2022/05/uber-subsidy-lyft-cheap-rides.html

On vacation June 17-July 5 but will try to make any meetup if it doesn't occur in those dates!

I would say I'm anti-sprawl, not anti-rural. I like rural areas. I just think rural life should be revolving around rural things... like farming and living with the land... instead of driving into the city for work. Personally my fantasy when I get sick of office life is to run away and be a farmer. Granted, there are issues with modern farming methods, but historically agriculture was about a certain symbiosis with the land, and hopefully we can get back to that. Then of course there is an urban/rural political divide in the USA today which creates a certain... antagonism... but that's not an issue with being rural or rural life in general.

Vance seems like a truly awful candidate and I actually think Ryan has a chance, by following the Sherrod Brown playbook and focusing on calling out Vance's ridiculous and transparent hypocrisy. Vance still slight favorite unfortunately.

I got a Gibbons mailer yesterday and was surprised it didn't have "Tr**p*" written anywhere on it. It seemed like some of the unhinged stuff was even toned down a little bit. Trying to pivot to the general? 🤦‍♂️ Contrarily, Timken's mailer actually had the former guy all over it.

Yes, this times a thousand. That is why I thought they should be giving Baker another year. It's all about consistency and gradual improvement. Terry Pluto's column today says this move reeks of desperation and I couldn't agree more.

So there goes the front office.

Sickening

I'm familiar with the 920 reduction but as I understand it that applies to a jurisdiction as a whole. I'm talking about the individual tax value of your own house going up based on the purchase price. I guess the answer is no it seems? They do it all at the same time every 3 years and then adjust the 920 reduction at the same time as well?

If the county has a house appraised at $150k and you buy it for $250k, do they update their tax value based on the sale price (seems logical), or do they still not touch it until the next triennial appraisal? Trying to get an idea of how to accurately estimate property taxes when house hunting. Seems mostly like a crapshoot. There are literally houses on MyPlace that just sold and the county value is $200k less than they sold for. (This is before the 35% assessed value calculation is taken)

They definitely shouldn't sign him this year. Let him play next year on the one year option and then evaluate. If he doesn't take that well then that could be an issue.

Baker deserves some loyalty IMO after he has given us loyalty. Let him get healthy and see what happens next year. Getting rid of him would only lead us back to the neverending QB carousel. Same with Stefanski. Getting rid of him would bring us back to the era of new coaches every year. Chalk this year up to a sophomore slump and see what we can fix for next year.

I'm not saying that I'm blaming RTA's decline on a "lack of government funding" as in "transit subsidies are too low" - that's missing my point and missing the big picture. I'm blaming RTA's decline on everything else the government and society does do. All levels of government, through both funding and regulatory action, for the past 50-60 years, have prioritized building out a country in a such way that is not conducive to successful public transit operations. Zoning codes, building codes, fire codes, highway subsidies, oil & gas subsidies, parking minimums, the Obama auto bailout and many other subsidies to American car manufacturers, public tastes, redlining, lack of environmental cleanup funding in urban areas. Literally everything that society has done for the better part of a century has been done in such a way to undo a built environment conducive to public transit. Yes, RTA should have gotten air conditioning and done this better or that better, they're a completely stagnant and awfully-run organization, I don't dispute it. I ride the buses all the time and I understand the neglect, even contempt, for its customers the organization has and it makes me angry. But running the organization better would have only had a small impact in the face of headwinds that have been ruinous to public transit pretty much everywhere outside of the largest and densest cities. As far of the slashing of suburban routes, yeah, more and more suburban families have started to have 2, 3, 4, 5 cars in the past 40 years, and more and more of them have moved out of county. Ridership starts to decline and so they cut the route and then they lose more riders, that's why it's called a death spiral. Do you really think if Maple Heights and North Olmsted kept their independent suburban systems, they would be the same in 2021 as they were in the 1970s? They likely would not have even survived. Now let's touch on Laketran and the Allegheny County Port Authority. Given what we know about those areas' geographic characteristics, it's not surprising at all that they have weathered these conditions a little better than RTA. Lake County has not had to deal with a massive exodus as has Cuyahoga County and has had a mostly stable population. And then there's Pittsburgh, which is built a little more densely than Cleveland in the first place, and of course its manufacturing decline, as has been mentioned many times on UO, took place mostly outside of the city proper, leaving less of a population decline in the urban core, and therefore less of a transit decline.

It is completely incorrect to assume that those suburban systems' ridership and quality would not have declined if the RTA merger didn't happen. It is also incorrect to blame RTA for decline. Was their leadership perfect, absolutely not. By many accounts completely dysfunctional. But transit has been up against state and federal governments for 50+ years who couldn't give a hoot about transit, and have shoveled trillions of dollars of government subsidy to transit's competitors, in addition to zoning and land use policies that favor transit's competitors. That is the reason for RTA's decline, not poor management.

Scene is insufferable, truly. Off topic but they were at it again yesterday, blaming the Cleveland Clinic for Tr**p's COVID antics at the debate vs Biden last year (as if anyone blames the Clinic for Tr**p's behavior). They will take any chance they can get for a dumbed down hit piece against their chosen villians. They think it makes them saintly crusaders for the disadvantaged. Though the actual community members and organizations have moved on and are trying to work to make the road a benefit for the community... And it's not like there's no nuanced arguments to be made but they always go for dumb, angry, and 'muh establishment bad.' I wonder how long it will take for them to turn on Bibb.

I live right on Clifton. The 55 is such an awesome bus line. I take it to work 90% of the time. I do love Edgewater though. In many ways, that is the better part of Clifton. Better road design, more commercial, closer to Edgewater Park, etc. The elementary there is not too bad either. The problem is that there are NEVER any homes for sale there, and if there are, they go very quickly. I've actually seen a fair amount of for sale signs on Clifton itself during later summer and fall which has made me more hopeful. There was 2 or 3 right in a one block area near the house with the crazy COVID Halloween decorations (around 104th I believe). Seems like the W. 100s between Baltic and Clifton are where I see the least listings in general.

I'm from the east side (Mayfield Hts, where I comfortable and know a lot of people and could be happy, and I'm very fond of the school system even though people are soon going to start talking about it the way they talk about Brush). But i moved West for Edgewater, proximity to downtown, restaurants, etc. My GF is born and raised in Lakewood. Anyways, yeah I'm thinking I'll have to give another look at Cleveland Heights/Shaker Heights. My first reaction the taxes you pay are tough to swallow for me when it's still hard to get downtown and you dont have much walkabilty... in SH anyways. Yay for the rapid tho. And tax rates are still relative to home values.

I am going to be facing this issue next year. I rent in Edgewater now and would like to buy either Lakewood or West Side Cleveland, with an eye on a family in less than 5 years. Originally i wanted to stay near Clifton so i could take the 55 downtown but i can already tell I'll have to expand that a bit. Would love to stay in Cleveland for loyalty's sake but ugh schools. On the other hand Lakewood prices are shooting to the moon. I could probably afford something decent, but do i want to afford it and stretch my budget/ savings, etc? Not sure.

You won't find 70s and 80s homes in a good location (by UO/urbanist standards) anywhere. The 70s and 80s had very little good urban development I'd say Columbus actually has a lot from that era, but not in glamorous areas. Area between UA and Dublin (Worthington Schools), anywhere that's in Columbus but Westerville schools, a little bit in Gahanna schools, etc. Northern Clintonville, the areas between Morse and 161, etc.

We'll see what the Bibb administration does in this. Pretty sure that selling naming rights was at least somewhat on the table at some point, and I know the issue of naming the road came up at least in periphery in public meetings and the like. Not sure if that ship has sailed or if Mayor Frank just wanted to let the next mayor deal with it.

After the success of the first Star Wars movie, the sequel was filmed under the code name "Blue Harvest" to avoid press attention and while George Lucas decided on what the final title would be. That eventually became The Empire Strikes Back. Meanwhile, in Cleveland, we are living with the Blue Harvest of boulevard names.

I went this morning as well. Can't add a ton to the discussion but it was a nice drive and I'm excited for the development potential on 75th and 79th. It's still not on Google maps, i wonder how long that'll take. I also wonder how long until people who don't pay attention to this stuff at all will discover that there's a new route.