BlackOpsAmbassador

I did. Its the urbanohio rule. :-D

Connie Shultz wrote an article in today's paper basically bashing the Anti-Panhandling Campaign saying its just an attempt to ignore the homeless problem. I'm so sick of people like her saying stuff like when she's totally wrong. Its about getting rid of the dude who asks me for money everyday and then gets back in his BMW and drives back to Strongsville. If Connie is about helping the homeless so much how about she move back into the city and stop living in Avon. Its always the people who are never involved who make judgement. Its in my face 24/7. Or maybe I'm not aware of the growing panhandling problem in Avon. What are you doing to help the problem, Connie? A whole bunch of us moved back to the city to try to tackle all these problems. You sit on your lap top in sprawlville and judge us. That's my rant for the day.

Rock on, MayDay!

I stand corrected.... I meant bush as in your mentioning of the Savannah way...but I like the way you think!

I agree with your take on the "Ohio" appeal. I love Ohio, but the perception of Ohio is way different than what it actually is. Everyone thinks Ohio is full of farms and hillbillies, but they seem to forget about the five cities that top 300,000 and the three metros at over 500,000. Ohio's future for the next 50 years will be decided in the next five, we need to bring ourselves into the 21st century and start being innovative like we were 100 years ago. Oh and we did the bush thing 8-)

I grew up in Anthony Wayne, and let me tell you, I went to my parents this weekend and I almost threw up as soon as I pulled into their driveway. What was once a nice rural farming community, is nothing but sprawl and cheap manufactured construction housing. What they call vilas would be called trailers where I live now. I say this as an urban planner. Rural is great, Cities are amazing, uncontrolled sprawl is horrible. That being said, I went down to the Party in the Park this weekend. I was impressed by how well downtown looked. The park along the river has come along way since I moved away 5 years ago. We took our boat down to the docks and watched the concert and had a great time. That was until we tried to find a bathroom. Not one public bathroom for the whole concert unless you wanted to pay $8. We paid $15 to dock the boat but we were not allowed to use any of the services of the concert. This is why Toledo can't attract young professionals, and most of them are moving to larger urban areas. Who charges people to park their boats, and refuses to let them go to the bathroom? We spent a total of 110 just at the dock alone having drinks and food brought to the boat. How can Toledo get away with charging people for a concert and docking and not having restrooms? I would actually move back to Toledo if my cards played right, but if they can't even throw an event together without proper planning, why would I even bother? Some of my friends on the boat actually pissed in a parking garage. I've always told my friends in Cleveland that Toledo's water front is 10 or 15 years ahead of theirs, and that is true in terms of entertainment, but they don't seem to get the little things about urban planning, like public restrooms.

I agree with the suggestions being here, but if we were to increase the police force it needs to be in community policing. Police in patrol cars don't do anything but respond, police on foot and bikes stop crime before it happens. Once reason I don't think adding police to the Warehouse District does anything is that they all just stand and huddle in a group anyway talking to themselves. They need to do actual community policing...not hang out policing.

I agree with that...it would suck to live in a neighborhood where this is a nightly thing.

I hate to sound harsh, but let's be frank here: these crimes aren't random and they're happening in places where you can expect trouble. Spy Bar=trouble. Mirage=trouble. The guy who was killed in the Flats this weekend has a rap sheet taller than me and did four years for dealing cocaine and having a concealed weapon. The victim in the Warehouse District shooting was picked up for doing drug trafficking. I'm not an officer, and I'm not involved, but something tells me this wasn't some random act of violence. Its criminal on criminal. These incidents don't scare me as much as the high school thugs walking around in front of my building in the Warehouse District looking for trouble at 4 in the afternoon to prove they're men with low IQs. Violence in anyway shape or form is bad for a city and bad for its citizens, but let's not go all 19 Action News and start saying, "I'm going to get shot if I walk outside." I thought the mayor had announced last month that he was "untying" the hands of the cops. If so, I'd like to see a little bit more roughing up of these gang members and drug dealers. Maybe the police are letting them kill each other off. I have no idea.

MyTwoSense...sorry I didn't get back to you quicker on that, but it seems everyone else got the information. As far as I know, the guy just took some money and cut the victim using a box cutter. Nothing more than that, but still serious enough.

A Starbuck's employee was assaulted this morning in the atrium of the BP Building at 6:00 AM. Let me say that again: IN THE ATRIUM OF THE BUILDING! Is there anyway we can start that UrbanOhio Vigilante gang?

Always good to see yourself in a picture on urbanohio. :-D

Awesome

Ok I feel a bit better now...and I'm glad the signal timing system was already tested before all of this. MyTwoSense...I understand that they found the infrastructure was in worse shape than they thought, my simple reason for being concerned is that they can't keep the lights on. As a downtown resident, I have the pleasure of watching the rolling black outs caused by the contractors of CPP & RTA, and it caused me to be a bit anxious. Sunday morning there were no stop lights. For the city who invented the street lamp, its pretty sad that we can't even keep ours on. If they can't keep simple lights on, I wondered about their ability to get the rest of the more high-tech features in. Maybe that's more of a slam on CPP than on RTA, or the bureaucracy in general.

So I'm getting kind of nervous about the ECTP, and I need some UrbanOhio reassurance. Just seeing how these contractors can't even keep the lights on, fix the vaults, fix the sewers, I'm starting to question whether the things that make this project great: signal priority, the stations, are going to happen. Someone please make me feel better. I am really starting to worry that we're going to end up with a bricked sidewalk and some bus lanes.

I agree, I think we're going at a good pace. Although I think there are some areas of townthat haven't even seen a hint of it yet and need a shot in the arm.

Would it be possible for someone to post a picture? Not everyone is familiar with the structure.

How do we help Google put Cleveland on the Transit Planner?

Thanks FloridaGuy!

You really can't go wrong with either the Warehouse District, East 4th, and the Gateway areas. I live in the Warehouse District, so I tend to be a bit biased. Warehouse District is more of an established neighborhood while East 4th is emerging. Since you're going to reverse commute you may want to consider an area that is not totally blocked off due to construction.

X...good question. What are your thoughts? Is simply moving it to a different location do it or is that just moving the problem around?

I don't want this to turn into a pissing match about first amendment rights, but lately I'm having more and more problems with the churches that come down onto Public Square and hand out food and then pick up and leave. As a downtown resident, I'm sick of walking around and seeing all of the food and chicken bones lying around, and then having my dog choke on them. I find it to be highly hypocritical that these suburban churches come down to my front door (not literally, i.e. Public Square) and decide they can turn it into a gigantic soup kitchen. Then pick and leave all the trash. Something tells me they wouldn't be too happy if I rented a van, took all the homeless people to their house, and had a feeding on their lawn in Strongsville. Everyone wants to help the homeless, and I do believe they mean well, but in the end they are doing more harm than good. The homeless aren't being provided the services they can receive at conventional areas, i.e. Cosgrove. These church members can't provide the mental health medication they can get elsewhere. At the end of the day, I find it very UN-Christian that these people won't work out of conventional service areas just so they can preach their version of the gospel. Or maybe I'm just tired of pulling chicken bones out of my dogs throat?

MayDay, you didn't miss much. Stark didn't have anything about the Warehouse District Plan at his booth.

The last I heard the Cleveland Foundation was considering their proposal.

The DCA has a full time social worker out on the streets and the ambassadors are trained to call the social worker whenever they encounter someone who is homeless, but that doesn't help the victims since these crimes are happening outside of the BID.