LincolnKennedy

I think the old Showcase Cinemas lot and adjoining properties that front Norwood Lateral would be a good location, and part of it is technically in Bond Hill. Good point. I just don't know how you keep a passenger train on schedule through the Mill Creek Valley, and that's the fatal flaw of trying to locate it downtown. Norwood is a good idea.

So... is there are formal group working to get the message across? Also: 1) A fare must be charged. 2) Saying that it won't cost us any taxes may help, but I suspect that most people will respond with, "Yeah right". A lot of folks don't really get that Downtown and Clifton bring in the vast majority of the City's revenue. Whoever is selling this thing need to sell it by getting people to want it. I also think that people are looking for people to ask questions about the issue, which is why personal voter contact is so crucial. Registering UC students to vote in the City may help and is not a bad idea.

Pro-streetcar groups need to: 1) Identify how many votes they need to make sure the ordinance doesn't pass (probably somewhere around 30,000); 2) Identify voters who routinely vote in Council Elections, since that will be who people are going to the polls for in Novemeber; 3) Come up with a pitch that canvassers can use to talk to folks door-to-door; 4) Get funding from the part of the business community that is pro-streetcar. This issue wins on personal voter contact by dedicated volunteers canvassing door-to-door.

If anyone is organizing a campaign in favor of the streetcar, they need to begin the process of going out and selling the idea. I have to say that I'm am starting to believe that if Smitherman/Finney's charter amendment gets on the ballot, it will pass (thereby banishing streetcars). Older, relatively liberal folks that I would suspect would be in favor of such a powerful economic development tool don't seem to understand what it would do, find the cost extreme, and the route confusing. So pro-streetcar folks need to address the following: 1) Emphasizing that the streetcar is a modern, new technology, nothing like the old trolleys, and part of a natural progression (superbuses for high density routes that are easier to enter and exit, carry more people and are more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly); 2) Showing a route map that would include prospective lines to other core neighborhoods such as Price Hill and Walnut Hills; 3) Comparisons to the City's contributions to other large capital projects (FWW rebuilding, the Banks, Stadiums [Riverfront, PBS, GAPB], the Convention Center) to give people a sense of scale about the streetcar's cost. Without doing something like this, and without making personal voter contact, I suspect that the charter amendment will pass if it is on the ballot.

I'm not trying to get on your case, but there are a lot of people on the west side who realize what a streetcar connection could do for their neighborhoods, particularly a connection to Clifton/UC, where there currently isn't a direct connection to Price Hill. I'm curious if, rather than going up Vine, the streetcar could move from Elm west along McMicken and then up Marshall to this dead end street called DeVotie, and thence up the hill to that new Stratford development. Then a west side connection across Western Hills Viaduct, down Queen City Ave., then up Quebec to Warsaw might be viable in the future.

I think it is pretty clear that people place different values on a single, executive office than one seat on a best of nine member board. I see your point, but I don't think it would play out on a executive level the way it does in a legislature. Even the Kaufmann pick in lieu of Biden doesn't really play out the way in which you imply. Kaufmann doesn't inherit any of Biden's committee seats, let alone his seniority, and neither would his son. The same thing happens in City Council. The executive, be it the mayor, governor or president, is a different story. In those places, the things that make a legislator effective aren't as relevant. Look at the current Governor of New York. I'd say that the Governor/Lieutenant Governor system is as bad or worse than legislative appointments.

Dmerkow's right. We need to think where the high growth areas in the County are going to be, both in terms of employment areas and living areas, because most of this county is built out. That's why traditional development is following the highways north. The streetcar should be the focus for the time being because 1) It is the only project with real legs, and it has the only government in the region (the City) with any real capability behind it; and 2) if we re-densify our core neighborhoods and connect them to the employment areas outlined in the GO Cincinnati plan, the City is much better positioned for potential regional transit routes. My biggest problem with the MetroMoves plan was that it seemed to be focused on the suburban business areas and viewed the City almost as something of an afterthought.

^Okay.

Does anyone know if it would be possible for the Streetcar to climb Straight Street safely or not?

That strikes me as totally unenforceable. And even if you could somehow do it legally, would you want to create a situation where someone just refuses to attend meetings or to the work at hand because they'd rather resign. With any political office you want two things: 1) a person who desires to be there (therefore it is in there interest to perform well so that they can maintain their seat), and 2) someone who is answerable to the entire constituency, not merely a portion of it (which is the essence of democracy). In my view, the appointment process does not impact either of those things.

^Cranley resigned early for personal reasons. The argument here is form vs. outcome. I'm more inclined to be concerned with the outcome; as a city resident, I want to see good people (like Greg Harris) making decisions that effect the City. My other point is that while the form of the election is important, it is also important to realize that the effective form changes with time and place. A special election will have less people voting than a regular election, just like a regular election in a presidential year will have more voters. The form remains the same, but since one election has more total voters than the others, does that, by definition, make it more democratic? Is leaving the seat vacant more democratic than appointing someone to fill it? Is allowing the vacator to chose his successor (not the process that is utilized) more Democratic than having Council choose the temporary member? All of these systems involve situations where people have to cultivate certain people (for money, endorsements, etc.) more than others. I don't see how the practical reality of politics is honestly compared to a non-existent ideal, and I don't view this appointment as being less representative of the will of the people than a snap special election would be, particularly because the people will have the opportunity to render judgment ten months from now.

Whoever said that has got to be joking that a beautiful old church with truncated steeples is more of an eyesore than a parking lot. That's absurd.

^All eminently reasonable, but Smitherman is all about gimmicks. He seems to desire prominence without responsibility. I seriously doubt that he has more support among African-Americans in Cincinnati than Mark Mallory does. Regarding the Streetcar specifically, I'd say that those on the fence might be wary of the plan in that it doesn't directly address how the streetcar is going to get up to Clifton. I think that if that were more explicit, some folks might feel more secure that it will actually end up there.

^Let's get serious. Is the cost of a special election, ten months before the actual election for a two-year term office really worth it? If the problem is that being appointed to council translates into a guarantee of re-election, then that doesn't say much for the voters now does it? If they can't be expected to vote for people beside the incumbents on Election Day, than what are we going to get during a special election, when turnout is typically far lower? Do we want someone who is able to garner 15,000 quick votes in January or February rather than just wait for the appointee to prove his or her ability to get the usual requisite number in November? If we had a special election I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up with a Charlie Winburn or a Chris Smitherman instead of a Greg Harris, simply because of their ability to quickly mobilize a small group of people and money in a short period of time. Every election favors the electorate/campaign most able to mobilize under its given rules (example: Obama winning the Idaho or Montana primaries). I'd rather have insiders with a long-term stake in the system making a conservative pick rather than outliers coming to power during a random point, unique in time and place (e.g. Bush's 2000 Florida win, or the present prominence of Avigdor Lieberman in Israel, or Le Pen winning the presidential runoff in France back in the day). The decision of a motivated few amongst an apathetic many doesn't strike me as being particularly democratic. Plus, Leslie Ghiz makes Chriz Monzel look charismatic.

^Agreed. Cincinnati/Hamilton County is what turned Ohio blue, and anyone who was involved or paying attention on election night knows that when Ohio was called for Obama, that's when the champagne corks started popping. We need to get paid.

^That's funny, because, the average citizen, when they had the chance to look at Christopher Smitherman closely after serving one two-year term in office, rejected him. Also, as a former councilman he should know that in fact there is not simply one checkbook or bucket that we put all our tax dollars in.

^I'm a lot more confident of the ability of the City voters to understand this as being a big ploy. In my opinion, the opponents overplayed their hand when they suggested a theme trolley/bus as an alternative. The key things to emphasize are: -Modern Streetcars are an entirely different technology, with faster embark/debark times, more carrying capacity, etc. -No city that has implemented the use of these modern streetcars have replaced them with bus service, because they work, and because buses serve different functions. -Cincinnati is better than all of those cities, therefore it will work even better here (and mention the expected 14 to 1 return on investment) -It is stupid that the neighborhood that lies between the two biggest employment zones in the City (Downtown and University/Pill Hill) is as depopulated as it is. The streetcar, unlike the buses that currently run through it, in addition to what else it will do, will address this problem specifcally. -For those who 'like' the mobility of buses, the fact that they can move base on population, ask them when they expect Findlay Market, Music Hall, the Courthouse, the Aronoff, the Contemporary Arts Center, etc to move from their locations? -

I find it hard to believe that "A re-introduction of partisan elections would provide a mechanism of accountability that is currently lacking…As an institution, the party has a larger stake in long term survival that does the individual candidate." The Hamilton County Republican Party is a perfect case. The party had a lock on local government, including City Government (though generally in coalition with the Charterites the case of the City) until the mid to late 1970s. Now they don't even have control over the County Commission. I'd argue that one of the main reasons for this is because the local Party at this time had virtually no influence over the platform of the nation Republican Committee, and that this platform was invariably anti-city. Firstly, my work is not a defense or condemnation of either party. Perhaps, "competitive" is a cleaner word than "partisan." At the local level, the national agenda's shouldn't hold much (if any) sway. Following that logic, usually leads people to say "what's political about paving roads and collecting refuse? We need managers, not politicians." Those who said that, like the early reformers in the Progressive era, would be both right and wrong. Cities need great management but contingent to great management is great leadership. I think the case can be made that leadership is at its strongest when it is embodied in an ambitious individual who is personally invested in outcomes. And those ambitious individuals (heroic leaders) seem to be more likely to enter the political fray out of a sense of urgency or duty and rarely out of a sense of entitlement or professional qualification. They are citizen leaders who know what the people want because they come from them, not from the academy, the party, the union or the management.

Once again, it is the local chapter of the NAACP that is opposed to the streetcar. And their opposition is a function of personality (i.e. local chapter leader Christopher Smitherman), not of any policy that emanates down from the national office. They teamed up with COAST to oppose the county-wide jail tax plan. It failed, so they considered this to be an effective tactic. They then teamed up with COAST to push charter changes for a ban on red-light cameras and to create proportional representation. They got the charter change for the red-light cameras, while they failed on prop rep. I suppose they think they can win on this. I doubt it. I would suggest that viewing this as a referendum on the streetcar is accepting the conceit of the people attempting to stop it. It seems to me that this proposal has been voted previously when councilmembers who supported it or opposed it were all re-elected. A group of lobbyists who take advantage of the public's understandably limited knowledge of how governmental budgets are crafted and executed doesn't strike me as being particularly democratic. There's no reason to suspect that a referendum or constitutional change is a more authentic expression of the popular will than a representative who is continually re-elected to office. I would suggest that a re-elected politician is in fact a better expression of it, since he or she must be elected at different periods in time whereas the referendum expresses the public mood only at one given time.

There's not an attempt to have it "voted on". The City doesn't have referenda to vote on various aspects of the capital budget. These are legal processes. The City is a corporation that is managed by a board, like every corporation. These men are trying to amend the charter to disallow the city to implement a specific technology. I repeat- before and after this attempted charter change, regardless of the outcome, the boardmembers (City Council) will remain the only people with the legal authority to vote on the allocation of the capital budget. The people won't ever be voting on how to spend capital funds. Smitherman & Finney represent two groups, the Cincinnati branch of the NAACP and COAST. These groups have legal standing as well. Just because these guys are quoted in the paper doesn't mean they represent anyone beyond their respective organizations. Legally, they sure don't. That is a key point. The will of the community is legally made manifest through the actions of our elected representatives. These schmucks are lobbyists who are trying to subscribe the ability of the community, through its elected representatives, not simply to make certain policy decisions, but essentially outlaw an extremely specific policy choice- essentially one technological choice from a specific policy option. It's pretty much the opposite of what the intention of the law is, and charter amendments in general are, designed to do. Make no mistake, these guys are looking for yet another issue to gain play in order to thrust themselves into a political arena they can't get into, because they either 1) had been kicked out of it (Smitherman) because they don't appeal to a big or broad enough constituency to get elected, or 2) the same + they don't live in the City (Finney). This gambit will fail because they are cheap and egocentric hucksters who don't care about the content of the issues. Basically every member of City Council except Cranley and Monzel are for this thing. The Mayor is for this thing. Do you really think that people who have to be responsive to public mood to maintain their position are, in general, going to be less able to gauge that mood then someone who has no need to be responsive to it, and has failed in cases similar to this (prop. rep.)? Or that the public cares enough about this issue to vote these folks out of office? Or that these folks would rather be voted out of office on the principle of building the streetcar if they think that would possibly happen rather than change their position? There is no need to give these Chris's any legitimacy. They legally represent no community except the members of their organizations- ergo they are lobbyists trying pull a gimmick to subvert the will of the people as expressed through their duly elected representatives.

Fellas, this whole NAACP/COAST thing is a joke. I'm not sure everyone on this forum understands the nature of this thing. I'm not a lawyer, but because Cincinnati is a city, i.e. and incorporated community, they can make decisions as a body, as a person. The City also has the power to raise discretionary spending funds through the payroll tax. That's what gives Cincinnati more flex than Hamilton County had, which had to create new sources of funding through a dedicated tax increase to build the stadia or MetroMoves plan. So the only way these guys can potentially get at the streetcar is by amending the Charter to include the language that Smitherman uses in the business courier article, 'Smitherman said the measure will prohibit the city from spending money to acquire rights-of-way for a new streetcar line or construct “improvements for passenger rail transportation” unless the matter receives a majority affirmative “vote of the electorate” in Cincinnati."' Now, they might get enough signatures to get put on the ballot. But we wouldn't vote on it until November. And if the City is able to start the project before then, there's really nothing that potential charter amendment can do. If the City sells one bond that exists with language written into it that requires the bond to mature only after the line has been completed, then that exists as a contract existing prior to the legislation and is guaranteed by the contract clause of the U.S. Constitution, which clearly pre-empts state law. They could also try to create bonds with language in them that allows for the partial redemption and reissuance that could theoretically allow that debt (and therefore contract to the creditors) to remain in existence, and thereby pre-empting the charter change, indefinitely. Also, since the charter language only affects the City, the City could simply create a new authority, or expand the power of an existing authority or public corporation, like SORTA or the Port or 3CDC or even the Corporation for Findlay Market, and authorize them to build and operate a streetcar system. But truly, if this thing gets on the ballot, it simply isn't going to pass. There is a reason why a large majority of council approves of this plan, because the people of Cincinnati in general approve of it. People simply aren't as stupid as Smitherman and Finney think they are. The red-light camera thing passed because people don't like those things, not because of anything that these choads did. These same guys just got crushed on proportional representation in the City, which required an actual thoughtful choice by the voters. There's simply no way it is going to pass. But if there are any lawyers on this forum who really want to stop these guys, you should find some people to get together and really go over the signatures they submit with a fine-toothed comb, and try to get as many thrown out as possible.

^I think $2 million for Mt. Lookout streetscaping in the middle of a recession is excessive. Mt. Lookout is doing fine right now. Spending that much money in Clifton school seems excessive as well.

^I'm inclined to agree with this statement. Frankly I think the value added is greater when this sort of planning is the priority. But ultimately, the way things get built are going to depend on what government is the primary source of funding. Even though the MetroMoves plan included a streetcar, it struck me that the purported aims of those routes serviced some conceit of the County, rather than the City, for example. Even the new Regional Rail map that John Schneider posted strikes me as ignoring two if not all three of the economic development corridors in the City outlined in the GO Cincinnati plan. If the City is the main economic driver for the region, and rail is a multiplier for economic development, it seems to me that it should at least try and be coordinated with the economic development plan of the City (not to mention a direct rail connection to Clifton, the second largest employment zone in the area).

Jmeck, or anyone who knows, for that matter- what is the possibility of bring it up the hill directly from the Elm/Race axis to Clifton Rd, taking out that little aparment complex at the 90 degree bend?

^You find the same sort of problem at the OTR Kroger. Nevertheless, I'd be less concerned with the message being sent by limited availability of items relative to other stores, and more enthusiastic with the message being sent by having two profitable downtown department stores. Also, I took a student of mine to shop by a coat at that Macy's two weeks ago. My uncle, who is a lawyer downtown, said that the key to finding good deals at Sak's is peruse it every so often on your lunch hour (obviously it helps to work downtown).