February 25, 200817 yr I wish I wasn't working to be there and hear all this. Thanks for the updates! :clap:
February 25, 200817 yr Yeah, I ended up getting stuck at work today too. Thanks for the updates cramer, keep 'em coming. I'm interested in hearing about the public comments. Hopefully enough supporters were able to make it to outnumber the critics, although I find that critics usually mobilize better than supporters on issues like this. Really sorry I couldn't make it. Stupid job.
February 25, 200817 yr So far, all the commenters are positive. Really nice job by mcmicken and the guy from Mercy Housing. Here's our first opponent, questioning operating costs, ridership, and overruns. Nice job, Brad. You should move to OTR before the streetcar. Now the owner of of Kroeger and Sons at Findlay gives us the family argument. Pols eat that up. Interesting to note that Cranley said "interesting" when the critic spoke, rather than his usual "thank you." Real estate agent attests that his transplant clients want a streetcar, even if they don't live in the neighborhoods it serves. More comment encouraging a doable first step and no delay.
February 25, 200817 yr Jmeck points out that Cole has been texting for about 45 minutes. I think she's done now. Crowley adopts an intent reading strategy to these meetings. Berding looks like he's taking notes. Qualls nods and smiles quite a bit. Lot's of forward leans and thoughtful, I'm listening poses. Hey, Ghiz is back, after about 30 minutes.
February 25, 200817 yr haha. that's all a front. All stuff you can learn in a public discourse class or an interpersonal comm class. Or as a greasy politician. lol
February 25, 200817 yr I missed a bit to feed a meter, barely dodging a ticket. Nice. Cranley is getting a bit hardnosed in asking some questions, each framed so that Dohoney has to first say no, before he can elaborate.
February 25, 200817 yr Good to know Laketa is so concerned about the goings-on of her city. She's probably texting about which of her boyfriend's ex-girlfriends to fight next. (Too mean?) Qualls sounds like your proto-typical politician. And it's also nice to know that Leslie Ghiz found the meeting important enough to show up for various parts of it. Hopefully Bortz and company will find the support to push this through. Any conclusions yet?
February 25, 200817 yr Everyone is adopting this strange "The Uptown" phrase. The attorney in Cranley is loving this cross.
February 25, 200817 yr Cranley raises the point that the Banks will need that south TIF money... Deftly counters by Mr Gray. Now questions use of Uptown TIF. Clearly, this is his main argument, that we are bleeding TIFs to pay for this. Crowd was good. No room downstairs, maybe 20 people upstairs at peak.
February 25, 200817 yr I was looking through the previous post on this thread and saw some of the old pictures of the previous streetline. Does anybody have any construction costs of what this took? Any blueprints? News clipings? Any history of those lines and what it took for construction?
February 25, 200817 yr Cranley is now essentially claiming that projects that are not using TIFs will in fact need them. He feels it in his gut, I guess. He keeps stating that he does not mean to insinuate aything negative. He is.
February 25, 200817 yr We're starting out with the Manager and Mr Moore explaining the alignment and bribing things up to speed. Why didn't we think of that earlier!? :-D Thanks for the updates, cramer. Sounds like it is going fairly well thus far.
February 25, 200817 yr Cranley is now essentially claiming that projects that are not using TIFs will in fact need them. He feels it in his gut, I guess. He keeps stating that he does not mean to insinuate aything negative. He is. Yeah, right. Is there anything about Cranley that's not negative? He's been trying to sabatoge this project from the beginning, simply because it doesn't agree with his preferred uptown alignment YET. Wasn't the argument for using the riverbank TIFF financing that the Banks wasn't using it? Thus leaving the OTR TIFF for more redevelopment within the district? This sounds perfectly reasonable to me, if it is the case. Sounds like Cranley is just being a stubborn jackass as usual.
February 25, 200817 yr Cranley tactic seems to be to bring up any concern that spring to mind. For instance, might Parsons Brinkerhoff not be objective in their study since they hope to be awarded a contract on the project? Qualls up now. Wants a schedule of future study.
February 25, 200817 yr ^ I'm not crazy about that type of question. Fed funding is for Phase(s) 1B/2. These are the Phases that she clearly prefers, but I thought that the point of this meeting was whether or not to pursue Phase 1. If that's the case, who cares about the whether Federal funding is available for later phases? That's another topic for another meeting, IMO.
February 25, 200817 yr Just got back from the meeting, sitting here at DAAP waiting for class to start, thus the reason I had to leave early. But yea every person that spoke from the public spoke in favor of the streetcar. Only one woman actually didn't come out and say she was for it, but rather asked where the group was getting some of their ridership numbers, etc. But yea a very positive vibe for sure. I left when Cranley was quesitoning and I was getting SO annoyed...he was essentially answering his own questions. That leads me to believe he was just being a pain in the ass for the sake of being a pain in the ass.
February 25, 200817 yr That leads me to believe he was just being a pain in the ass for the sake of being a pain in the ass. Sounds about right...
February 25, 200817 yr Bortz had a compelling counter to Cranley's strawman argument that if subsidies are still required post-streetcar that it makes sense to just put even more money into subsidies instead. Sort of a buy everyone a Lexus anti transit argument. Bortz didn't really bring it home for the audience, unless his primary audience was Cranley.
February 25, 200817 yr How many people came out for the hearing? How does it compare to any other event like this?
February 25, 200817 yr Bortz has brought it back up and is making the case that we need this investment to create new markets and improve Cincinnati's competitiveness. He's talking about investment, risk and reward, rather than defending the status quo.
February 25, 200817 yr Cramer, I am truly impressed by your dedication. Nice job. Kick Cranley in the balls for me on your way out.
February 25, 200817 yr I saw Cranley this evening...he seemed to be in a good mood. He is such a sneaky conniving little fellow, all 4'11'' of him. He obviously got picked on a lot in his younger days and is using his position on city council to showcase his power.
February 25, 200817 yr ^There was to be no decision today, but I believe they did decide to have a vote on this at their next session - 2 weeks from now.
February 26, 200817 yr More studies are required for various purposes. If approved at the next meeting it allows the project to move forward with the next step. Meaning that city leaders can start going after private partnerships and other final details. That would then be the last set of items needed prior to construction.
February 26, 200817 yr Thats not my impression of what the vote will be in two weeks... Great turnout, went very well I think According to a friend "probably the best speech of councilman Thomas' career" Very positive crowd, fairly massive showing of political will (from perspective) Got to say my two cents, well worth it.
February 26, 200817 yr Chris from Boston, talked about MBTA, trying to bring Boston folks out here...
February 26, 200817 yr More studies are required for various purposes. If approved at the next meeting it allows the project to move forward with the next step. Meaning that city leaders can start going after private partnerships and other final details. That would then be the last set of items needed prior to construction. I think the good news on the "more studies" bit is that the administration got to say that many of the studies that Qualls was asking for were included in the original price tag (engineering studies, eviro studies, etc) Further, I think there was some understanding from the part of council that in order for the administration to go forward and get MOU's from private funding sources, he needs some commitment from council.
February 26, 200817 yr Great turnout and positive vibe! More poor local reporting. Mayor Says Critics Can Be Brought To Streetcars' Side POSTED: 7:28 am EST February 25, 2008 wlwt.com CINCINNATI -- Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory said proposed streetcar routes would help the city's economic development and hopes a committee report calms council members' fears. Mallory said Monday's finance committee report should win over skeptics of the plan, which could have streetcars linking downtown and nearby neighborhoods by late 2010. A second route could follow and be funded with federal grants. A majority of council members have expressed doubts about the cars, which are powered by overhead electrical wires. The proposed cars are shorter than traditional trains, weigh less and have stops every four or five blocks. City Council members support a resolution that would put the plan on hold while they look at the project's finances.
February 26, 200817 yr I'd love for Cranley to question road projects the way he questions this project. It would be good for the a city where the residential modes of transportation happen only on rubber tires.
February 26, 200817 yr I was a bit disappointed with the way Dohoney seemed at times unprepared for Cranley's questions, but this is from the perspective of a law student, who is used to crafting such questions engineered to elicit specific responses. (You could almost see Dohoney thinking about how to answer the question in such a way to not answer the way Cranley was leading) Edit - that said, I was pleased that he didn't stray and his closing statements were spot on.
February 26, 200817 yr I think my perspective after the meeting today - cautiously optimistic. But I predict MANY MORE POLITICAL MOVES in the coming weeks :)
February 26, 200817 yr I thought everything went very well. John Schneider I believe won the best speech of the day award. Very well written, very well delivered. Another good point was made by Julie Faye who pointed out the number of studies that have been done on various transportation projects since 1990 and none of them had come to pass so lets treat this one differently and not study it 'to death'. It was a great showing, great energy, and a good mix of people with different perspectives.
February 26, 200817 yr I thought everything went very well. John Schneider I believe won the best speech of the day award. Very well written, very well delivered. Another good point was made by Julie Faye who pointed out the number of studies that have been done on various transportation projects since 1990 and none of them had come to pass so lets treat this one differently and not study it 'to death'. It was a great showing, great energy, and a good mix of people with different perspectives. I enjoyed John's speech, it was very well done (but I was more interested in the perspectives I had not yet heard) I really dug Julie Faye's points - twas well said. I also really liked the architects and developers who spoke, certainly lent a degree of credibility.
February 26, 200817 yr OH, also gotta love this garbage { this is not news } Streetcar Math: Funny numbers from the boondoggle Monday, February 25, 2008 New numbers show the sustainability of the Cincinnati Streetcar Proposal based on population densities and daily ridership totals that do not make any sense. Analyst Cheryl Crowell, who spoke before Tuesday’s Finance Committee Meeting at City Hall, wonders how Cincinnati’s system, at the same size as Portland’s, is going to cost about half the amount as Portland’s to operate yearly—especially since the Cincinnati plan estimates 4,600 average daily riders, when Portland’s 2007 average daily count was 2,763 with twice the population density. (from where else of course - and if you can't guess... heh) For those who weren't there, about 30+ people spoke to council, only 2 were vaguely negative, this Cheryl Crowell was one of them, and I don't quite know how they get to call her an "analyst" Anyhow, back on point, gotta love how the 2700 number was thrown around by Cranley even though the number is *cough* nearly 4 times that. (from a more reputable source) Portland Streetcar ridership, initially projected to be 3,500 passenger-trips a day, was reportedly exceeding 9,800 by the fall of 2007 – growing at about 17% a year.
February 26, 200817 yr Here's the kind of stuff Cheryl Crowell has developed in Clermont County. Does this seem like desirable product for OTR or Downtown?: http://www.thecrowellco.com/ Ms. Crowell tesified that the Portland Streetcar carried only 2,700 riders per day. More like four times that. See: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=pORTLAND+sTREETCAR+2007+RIDERSHIP&btnG=Google+Search Ms. Crowell's main conceptual problem is converting operating statistics from "track miles" to "route miles". Cheryl, give me a call at 579-1300, and I'll help you through the calculation.
February 26, 200817 yr Nice job to everybody who participated from UO. Your efforts are much appreciated from myself and many others on this site!!!!!!!!!!!!
February 26, 200817 yr I was a bit disappointed with the way Dohoney seemed at times unprepared for Cranley's questions, but this is from the perspective of a law student, who is used to crafting such questions engineered to elicit specific responses. (You could almost see Dohoney thinking about how to answer the question in such a way to not answer the way Cranley was leading) Edit - that said, I was pleased that he didn't stray and his closing statements were spot on. hohum -- just curious -- where are you going to law school? UC?
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