Wally

Kevin Osborne ‏@kevinwcpo 1m Things happening: Eric Avner of Haile Foundation is meeting privately with Kevin Flynn in his office right now @wcpo

Local reporters on Twitter are now starting to report that there are 6 votes in favor of re-starting construction. Kevin Osborne just tweeted this.

I think this would have been a fair "compromise" if $0 had been spent to date on this project. However, when you consider all the $$$ that Cranley is willing to throw away on this project by cancelling it, it doesn't seem like a fair compromise at all. I appreciate Cranley/Flynn/etc., in finally putting aside their differences and are willing to work on some sort of compromise, but I don't know if this is the exact deal that is fair to all parties. However, you would also think that if everyone (supporters and opponents) set aside their differences and are were willing to work toward solving the operating cost issues, this CAN be worked out.

If it's true that Cranely wants private donations to cover nearly 100% of the operating costs, then it only seems fair that these donors are entitled to the money the city will get from the ROI of the system.

Recessed until 1pm.

Poor little Cranley sounds so aggitated talking about the streetcar topic over and over.

He basically said that he wants to take a seconnd look at the financial numbers to cancel versus complete and will then make his decision. He said that he still wants a short pause (30-45 days) on the construction while this review is done.

Smitherman, Winburn, and Cranley all absent? What a frickin' joke those guys are. It's not like today's meeting was important or what not.

That is a question that I would hope every single council member would ask before voting to pause construction and reconsider. Even Winburn, Slitherman, and Murray should want to know that. I would imagine the "standby" costs are over $10,000 a day, if not $15,000. Council would be wasting almost as much as the average Cincinnatians annual income every day they halt construction to “reconsider.” I don't know how anyone could think the streetcar is a waste of money but that isn't. This is a very good question. And the thing is, it's not like the companies (M-P-D and their subs) are just going to have their employees that are currently working on this project sit on the sidelines until this thing plays out. Each company is going to have to move these employees to other jobs, and depending on how long a delay drags out, it's going to become a burden to remove that employee from their relocated job to come back onto the streetcar project. If I'm one of M-P-D's subs, you can darn well bet I'm going to be asking for additional fees to compensate me for the inefficiencies of having to re-assign employees to other projects and then back. And for any of you familiar with the construction business, in change order situations like this, all power is in the hands of the contractor, and the city should brace themselves for getting the raw end of this deal. And the same goes for the steel makers and other vendors. If you're the steel fabricator and you've planned on "X" hours per week for the next 18 months of steel fabrication for this project, it if goes on hold, the steel fabricator is going to have to find other work to fill the void. If this project is delayed by 4-6 weeks and then re-started, good luck trying to get the steel fabricator back on sale (or else be prepared to pay $$$ to cover their overtime).

I've never voted for PG, but I at least give him credit for at least giving this decision serious consideration rather than just automatically be against it (a la Winburn, Smitherman, etc.). I do agree that PG is the key piece in holding this project together. Each council member is welcome to form their own decision, but hopefully each member will consider the response to each of these questions before voting yes/no.

Like, say, right-sizing public safety spending? She is the only councilmember advocating for this, and it's the only logical way to get the city's financial house in order. This more than makes up for any flakiness. This is why I supported Quinlivan. She was the only one brave enough to fight this issue. And it probably ultimately led to her not winning re-election this week.

Right Jake. I'm trying to understand the federal money left in the project. Cranley seems to think you just ask and the money moves wherever you like. I'm hoping we don't live in that world. Roughly: $25MM from FTA Urban Circulator grant, as mentioned above. $4 MM from FTA passthrough to OKI CMAQ $16MM from TIGER3 from USDOT My very limited understanding suggests only that $16 mil could be easily reassigned. If that's the case, the city is getting a raw deal in any cancellation. The only money that can be reassigned is the CMAQ. Tiger and Urban Circulator Grants are subject to intense competition and environmental analysis. The Hop-On people would have to issue an RFP for consultants under a Federally-approved procurement. The environmental analysis would not be transferrable even it it used the identical route. And if they received Federal funds, they would have to have union drivers from Local 12 of the ATU. Their proposed costs would be much, much higher than what they have been talking about. All together now: "$41 million of the $45 million in Federal funds for the Cincinnati Streetcar will just go to another city if it's not used here in Cincinnati." Thanks for the clarification and input on this. So if $41 million of the $45 million cannot be re-assigned, then what's the purpose of inviting Cranley to DC for discussion? Any insight that you've heard regarding this that you could share?

Never cared for his schtick on the radio. I feel bad for a person when they lose their job, but I sure as hell won't miss hearing him on the radio.

Interesting theory (even if it is unlikely). Perhaps a more likely reason that Qualls was so calm last night was that her campaign's pre-election polls probably showed Cranley with a big enough lead that it would be nearly impossible to overcome. I think deep down inside, Qualls was already expecting the defeat, and the official results just confirmed the inevitable for her. I was really disappointed by the results last night. Going back closer to the primary, I had a feeling that Cranley was going to run away with this race, but I was getting excited reading the posting on here the last week or two, and I really did believe the postings on here that said the race was close enough that it was within the margin of error of the polls. I guess that data proved to not a very accurate reflection of the race.

Last Wednesday, Cranley was on 700 on Cunningham's show. I don't know if Qualls was on with Cunningham at the end of last week or not, but Cunningham made some sort of comment that Qualls would be coming on with him sometime between that time and tomorrow.

Agreed. I don't Smitherman is a shoo-in. Winburn and PG are about as close to "locks" as there are .

Enquirer is now carrying a story on the Cranley/Paycor issue: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/politics/2013/10/31/cranley-and-paycor-more-jobs-in-06-now-companys-leaving/

By the time he was assigned to work with Paycor, he darn well knew he was going to run for mayor. If this incident happened several years ago, I'd say this was a non-issue, but since this has happened since he has known he was running for mayor, this is a really big deal to me. He should have excused himself from this and he did not.

Just saw my first Qualls commercial in several weeks last night. I was a bit surprised that it had been several weeks since she had run a commercial (or at least one that I had heard). Cranley has been steadily running a couple commercials per hour during the WCPO evening news for the past couple weeks, as have several of the City Council candidates. I know that Cranley has raised more money that Qualls for the campaign, but I really do hope that the lack of TV commercials doesn't have a negative impact on the undecided voters.

Shuttle from Morristown is separate from your airline ticket. Shuttle will cost you $69.99 round trip in addition to your flight cost.

It's kind of scary to think that Messer essentially can singlehandedly decide if the City is going to move forward with public transit construction anytime soon. Messer holds all of the cards in this negotiation with the city. If Messer decides they're not going to honor their bid, the City is basically SOL on this issue. Like many have said on here previously, you would think that Dahoney and the Messer folks had ongoing talks over the past couple months or else Council wouldn't have gone through with approving additional funds. Messer is a very good (and profitable company). I had the benefit to co-op with them about 10 years ago. They have great leaders running that company. If they have any hesitation that they cannot make a profit based on their submitted bid, then there's no point in them taking on the liability/risk of this project. They were $10 million lower than the 2nd lowest bidder. You don't think that Messer hasn't been doing their homework over the past couple months to go over every single part of this contract to make sure they didn't miss anything? You don't think that Messer hasn't internally identified potential loopholes in the bid documents that could turn into change orders for them (resulting in additional money to them)? I kind of wonder if Messer is negotiating some sort of tax incentives with the city. Messer's headquarters is within the city limits (Bond Hill), so they do provide a fair amount of income tax revenue to the city. While Messer likely realizes they can't go to Dahoney and say that their bid is now $73 million instead of $70 million, I wonder if there's other ways that Messer can get some financial incentives to sign the streetcar contractor without the public outcry of revising their streetcar bid. I'm hoping the silence over the past couple weeks isn't anything to be alarmed about, but rather, I'm hoping everything is moving forward with the contract behind the scenes and that we'll hear good news very soon on this.

I was in the group shown in bold above. I was there for about 3 hours late afternoon/early evening yesterday (Sunday), but left just as Death Cab was taking the stage. hard to say how many others were similar to what I did.

We tried to go to the Lager House on Saturday evening, but even at 5:00pm, the wait for a party of 2 was 2.5 hours. We went elsewhere instead and will try back at the Lager House again once the hype dies down a bit.

Start-up Las Vegas airline targets Dayton airport By Randy Tucker, Staff Writer Updated 12:01 PM Wednesday, April 13, 2011 DAYTON — Dayton International Airport is among more than a dozen airports that start-up luxury airline, LV Air, has identified as a potential port for direct flights to and from Las Vegas. The charter carrier is signing leases for jetliners and raising capital to begin flying from at least three airports this fall, said Bryan Glazer, a spokesman for the company. LV plans to soon contact Dayton airport officials to gauge interest in the airline, which would offer Boeing 767 non-stop jet service between the local airport and McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Full article here: http://www.daytondailynews.com/business/start-up-las-vegas-airline-targets-dayton-airport-1135174.html

If Trader Joes or Whole Foods were to consider the IGA site, I'd have to imagine they'd be looking at some substantial renovations to the current IGA site. Taking these renovations into account, I'd have to imagine Trader Joe's or Whole Foods would be closed for renovations for at least a small chunk of the time the Corryville Kroger is being rebuilt.