Category: Politics

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Opinion Politics

Will the passage of Issue 4 pave the way for a future ward-based council?

Cincinnati’s sweeping 1924 voter-approved charter reforms were designed to enable the ouster of the Boss Cox Machine, and continue to form the framework of today’s municipal government. Although the new charter’s proponents, especially Murray Seasongood, celebrated the supposed perfection of their replacement City Manager System, the new city government was not designed for the long-term benefit of the citizenry so much as to keep the Cox Machine from returning to power in the 1927 or 1929 elections.

Since being implemented, the city manager and a nine-member council have remained a constant, but important features of the 1924 reforms have since been eliminated or replaced one-by-one by periodic voter-approved charter amendments.

Proportional representation ended in 1957, eight-year council term limits were introduced in 1991, and an independently elected mayor began in 1999.


Will the passage of Issue 4 pave the way for even more political reforms at City Hall?

The charter reforms destroyed the Cox Machine by changing nearly every feature of municipal government with the notable exception of council’s two-year term. Under Cox, an executive mayor reigned over a 32-seat council that was under machine control – although there might be significant turnover in a particular council election, new personnel had no real effect on the city’s direction.

With two-year terms, Cincinnati’s reform charter “good government” become chronically susceptible to flip-flopping and obstructionism due to at-large elections, the disappearance of the executive mayor, and tying the hands of a political machine that controlled who could run for council and how they voted once installed.

Issue 4, which is prominently discussed with Terry Grundy during Episode 11 of The UrbanCincy Podcast, promises to stabilize and therefore improve the effectiveness of city government by replacing the chaotic two-year election cycle with four-year terms held in the same years as mayoral elections. This arrangement will enable a mayor to set a four-year agenda he or she determines practical given the makeup of council. The charter language reads:

“Shall the Charter of the City of Cincinnati be amended to provide that the members of City Council shall be elected at-large for four-year terms by amending existing Sections 4, 5 and 5a of Article II, “Legislative Power”, existing Section 3 of Article III, “Mayor”, existing Sections 1, 2a and 2b of Article IX, “Nominations and Elections”, and existing Sections 1, 4 and 7 of Article XIII, “Campaign Finance”?”

The current eight-year term limits, enacted in 1991, will remain in effect. However, those new councilmen elected in 2011 including Yvette Simpson (D), Christopher Smitherman (I), P.G. Sittenfeld (D), Chris Seelbach (D), and Wendell Young (D) will be able to keep seats for a total of ten years if they are reelected in 2013 and 2017. While Roxanne Qualls (C) is eligible for a four-year term following three two-year terms, it is expected that she will run for mayor rather than council in 2013.

Opposing Arguments
Opponents have cast Issue 4 as a “power grab” by those currently holding seats on council. They also claim that council members should have to “face the voters” every two years, insinuating that council is inherently susceptible to corruption while ignoring the obstructionism that is enflamed by the two-year election cycle. Opponents also claim that short terms force council members to engage the city’s neighborhoods every two years as part of their reelection efforts.

Other opponents, including The Cincinnati Herald, argue that Cincinnati City Council should serve two-year terms because the U.S. and Ohio House of Representatives serve two-year terms. However, the U.S. and Ohio House are each one arm of bicameral legislatures – Everett, MA is the only remaining U.S. municipality with a bicameral city council.

Reappearance of Wards?
Issue 4 opponents have also argued against four-year terms by suggesting that switching City Council to a ward system will lead to better neighborhood representation and better city governance overall.

Under the current at-large system, many of Cincinnati’s 52 neighborhoods are being ignored in favor of Downtown and Over-the-Rhine, ward system advocates claim. The true motivation for wards, however, appears to be an attempt to break up the current Democrat majority, several of whom reside Downtown and in Over-the-Rhine.

If Issue 4 passes this November, we might see an effort in 2013 for sweeping charter reforms, including wards, intended to disrupt the potential eight-year tenure of Roxanne Qualls as mayor and a majority Democrat-led city council.

Those who would like to learn more about the Boss Cox era of politics in Cincinnati can do so by reading Jake Mecklenborg’s book, Cincinnati’s Incomplete Subway: The Complete History, which profiles how the charter reform government, led by Murray Seasongood, smeared the subway project in its efforts to embarrass Boss Cox.

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Business News Politics

Cincinnati aims to revise plumbing code to allow for rainwater harvesting by November

In early 2011, Cincinnati City Council signed a motion to develop a task force that would oversee the creation of new building code standards to allow for rainwater harvesting throughout the city. The work of the Rainwater Harvesting Task Force, however, may now be jeopardy due to a lack of clarity about who is responsible for maintaining such systems.

The initial goal of Cincinnati’s Rainwater Harvesting Task Force was to develop a code to allow for the reuse of rainwater for non-potable uses such as flushing toilets. One of the concerns with such a system is the potential for backflow of non-potable water into potable water sources.

To that end, one of the biggest advances over the past year was the release of a new national standard in March 2012. And according to the Task Force, it is that national standard that is being used as a template for Cincinnati.


Dater Montessori 2009 renovation achieved LEED Gold standards, and also boasts the city’s first, and only, rainwater harvesting system. Photograph by Glaserworks.

“There is no community in Ohio that has a procedure in place to allow this [rainwater harvesting] to happen,” Bob Knight, Green Partnership for Greater Cincinnati and the Rainwater Harvesting Task Force, explained to Cincinnati’s Livable Communities Committee on September 25. “Significant hurdles have been resolved in Cincinnati, and we are working on eleven additional items now.”

Some of the eleven additional items that still need to be resolved include the finalization of water quality requirements, inspection processes, certified maintenance protocols, metering, and development of tailored language from the new national code that will work for Cincinnati. Knight, however, is optimistic that the task force will meet the goals of city council and have an amended plumbing code in place by late November.

To date, the only rainwater harvesting system in place in Cincinnati was installed in 2009 at Dater Montessori School on the city’s west side. The Dater system, however, has not yet been used due to lack of agreements between various agencies and institutions. Specifically, Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) is concerned about being responsible for maintaining the system once it is operational.

“I’m afraid the direction the Task Force is taking is not taking us in the direction we want to be,” Terry Elfers, Chief Operating Officer of CPS, exclaimed. “CPS does not want to be responsible for treating water.”

CPS is not alone in their hesitation to move forward, as Greater Cincinnati Water Works has also expressed concern about where responsibility will lie in these systems that are envisioned to help reduce water consumption while also helping Cincinnati reduce water runoff as is required by a federal consent decree.

“The heart of the problem is allowing the agencies that are responsible for this decision, to be able to point to a standard that they can defend,” Knight explained. “With this model code, the agencies can now point to it and can say that they will follow this direction.”

The Rainwater Harvesting Task Force hopes to have the language in place for Cincinnati’s plumbing code within 60 days so that they can meet their deadline. Absent that direction and approval from City Council, the activation of Dater’s rainwater harvesting system may have to continue to wait, along with other potential systems around the city.

“It would be wonderful for the City and CPS if we could resolve this so that we could support moving forward with this project,” Eflers stated as he reminded the committee that CPS has served as a leader in the community when it comes to environmental sustainability issues over the past decade.

Categories
Business News Politics

Art Modell’s passing stirs up history that brought Cincinnati an NFL franchise and political turbulence

Art Modell’s two most notorious business decisions – the 1963 firing of Paul Brown and the 1996 move of the Browns to Baltimore – each had profound unintended effects in Cincinnati. Upon Modell’s recent passing on September 6, Cincinnati media noted that Brown’s ouster led directly to his 1968 founding of the Bengals, but the story is much more complex.

In 1961 Modell bought Paul Brown’s minority share of the Cleveland Browns for $500,000, and was then contractually obligated to pay his head coach’s salary for several years after his firing. It was with this money that Brown and investor Austin Knowlton established the Bengals and resolved to beat the Browns on the field and Modell in the business of owning an NFL franchise.

But the greater issue missed by the local media was Mike Brown’s 1996 negotiation of a stadium lease that, in two ways, assures the Bengals franchise he inherited from his legendary father will avoid a similar fate to Modell’s Browns and Ravens.

First, Brown will never be burdened with unpredictable stadium maintenance costs or the loss of a tenant. Second, the terms of the Paul Brown Stadium lease are so favorable that in late 2011 the Brown family paid approximately $200 million in cash to buy out minority owner Austin Knowlton. With no significant minority owners remaining, the Brown family is invulnerable to the sort of hostile takeover that brought down Art Modell — twice.

“The Move”
On December 17, 1995, just weeks after Modell announced his decision to move the Browns to Baltimore, footage of Browns fans tearing apart Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium was broadcast nationwide:


Scenes of Browns fans tearing apart Municipal Stadium were shown across the United States in 1995.

The groundwork for this mob scene was laid decades earlier, when Modell negotiated control of Cleveland Municipal Stadium from the City of Cleveland during its infamous financial crisis. The terms of the deal gave Modell all revenues – including luxury box revenue – from the city-owned stadium in exchange for upkeep and nominal annual rent. For 20 years Modell was able to maintain the 1930s-era stadium in part with luxury box revenue collected from the Indians (this lack of revenue for the Indians helped make them perennial AL East basement dwellers).

Folklore surrounding The Move speculates that Art Modell failed to anticipate that luxury box owners would abandon the Browns entirely after the Indians moved to Jacobs Field in 1994. But more astute observers assert that Cleveland’s business community used The Gateway Project – which built Gund Arena for the Cavs and Jacobs Field for the Indians but made no provision for Modell’s Browns – as a way to strip Modell of his Indians luxury box revenue and send his finances into a tailspin.

Mike Trivassono, sports host for Cleveland’s WTAM, asserts that this trap was sprung in order to transfer ownership of the Browns from majority owner Art Modell to minority owner Al Lerner. In 1999 the NFL sold the new Cleveland Browns franchise to Lerner for $500 million, and in 2012 Lerner’s son sold the team to Jimmy Haslam III for $1 billion.

The Move’s Effect in Cincinnati
After Paul Brown died in 1991, his son Mike assumed control of the team. The younger Brown, a graduate of Harvard Law School, maneuvered to put the Bengals well ahead of the Reds in negotiations with Hamilton County for a new stadium and lease – he would not be cornered by Cincinnati’s other professional sports franchise in the way Modell allowed himself to be compromised by Cleveland’s Gateway Project.

Brown knew from his experience sharing county-owned Riverfront Stadium with the Reds, and Modell’s loss of the Indians, that the NFL’s financial structure cannot work in multi-purpose stadiums. He also knew that terms that removed Bengals ownership from any responsibility in maintaining or upgrading their future stadium were essential to eliminating unknowns from later years of the lease.

It is important to recognize that the lease is structured so that the Brown Family – Mike Brown will be in his 90s if he lives to negotiate a new lease –will enter negotiations in the mid-2020’s in a position of financial strength, rather than Modell’s state of desperation.

Political and Cultural Fallout
In the 12 years since the first game was played at Paul Brown Stadium, Hamilton County’s financial obligations to the Bengals have remained a current event. The media and serving Hamilton County Commissioners are correct in placing some blame on the Commissioners who structured the stadium fund around an expected 3% annual increase in tax receipts. The source of the ongoing stadium controversy, however, is largely the creation of Hamilton County’s current commissioners who continue to play politics with the residential property tax rollback enacted in 1996.


The deal cut to fund the construction of Paul Brown Stadium has plagued Hamilton County since its passage. Photograph by Jayson Gomes.

By refusing to budge (except in 2010) on the inconsequential amount of money the rollback saves county homeowners, they are able keep the county in a perpetual state of crisis. They have then used this artificial crisis to justify shady activities, such as the recent sale of Drake Hospital.

The Long-Term Future of Paul Brown Stadium
Part of the 1990s effort to fund construction of two new stadiums in Cincinnati involved smearing Riverfront Stadium. A stadium celebrated as “The Jungle” during the 1988 Superbowl year was suddenly derided as “sterile”. Images of exposed parking garage rebar convinced the public that the stadium was too costly to repair. And other cities –notably Cleveland and Pittsburgh – had already started on new stadiums.

Save an unforeseeable change in the NFL’s revenue sharing arrangement, upon the expiration of the Bengals lease in 2026, Paul Brown Stadium should still be a profitable home for the Bengals or another NFL franchise. This means the motivation for a new football stadium will not come from the Brown family or the ownership of a replacement NFL franchise, but rather Hamilton County, should it determine that renovation and ongoing maintenance costs will approach the cost of debt service on a new stadium.

Lost in the never-ending stadium conversation in Cincinnati was the news that even after the epic drama and financial promise of The Move, Art Modell was forced to sell his majority ownership of the Baltimore Ravens in 2004 to a minority owner. As a result, just 1% of Ravens ownership will be passed onto his heirs.

In 2026 memories of Art Modell and The Move will have faded in Northeastern Ohio and his heirs might have completely exited Ravens ownership. But the grandchildren of the man Modell fired back in 1963 will still be in the football business, in complete command of a franchise worth well over $1 billion, and in negotiations for a new lease with Hamilton County or the ownership of a stadium elsewhere in the country.

Paul Brown and his son Mike without a doubt beat Art Modell in the business of running a professional football team. With the recent elimination of minority owners and the financial future of the Cincinnati Bengals rock solid, let’s pray Mike Brown turns his complete attention to events on the field.

Categories
Development News Politics Transportation

Funding questions loom while reconstruction of I-75 progresses

In the early 2000s the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) formulated plans to rebuild and widen Interstate 75 between the Ohio River and I-275. The overall plan was divided into three project areas: The Brent Spence Bridge, Millcreek Expressway (Downtown north to Paddock Road), and Thru the Valley (Paddock Road north to I-275).

Originally all fifteen miles of work were expected to be completed by 2020, but ODOT’s financial crisis has meant just three of the 17 phases comprising the Millcreek Expressway and Thru the Valley sections have commenced construction. The complex character of the planned reconstruction means some phases must be built before others but little benefit to safety and traffic capacity will be realized until nearly all sections are complete.


September 2012 I-75 reconstruction photographs by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

In short, work currently underway will build retaining walls and build new overpasses for an expanded highway, but the expressway itself cannot be widened in these areas until adjacent phases are completed.  So improvements currently under construction at Mitchell Ave. might be decades old before they are put to full use – or worse, these future phases might never be built.

Thus far, ODOT has only completed the $7.1 million second phase which rebuilt the Monmouth Street overpass in Camp Washington. Originally planned to be built as part of Phase 5 (Hopple Street to Mitchell Avenue), the Monmouth Street Overpass was deemed “shovel-ready” and funded through the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The $53 million reconstruction of the Mitchell Avenue Interchange (Phase 1) began in 2011. Construction crews are presently demolishing the 57-year-old Mitchell Avenue and Clifton Avenue overpasses and preparing the right-of-way necessary to widen I-75 from six to eight lanes.

ODOT has scheduled a summer 2014 completion for the Mitchell Avenue work.

Modification of the Colerain/Beekman/I-74 Interchange (Phase 3) also commenced in 2012. This $13 million project is also currently taking place, and is also scheduled for completion in 2014.


An ODOT official explains what led to the financial troubles of ODOT at a Transportation Review Advisory Council meeting in 2011. Video by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

Yesterday ODOT Director Jerry Wray announced funding for the first phase of the $467 million Thru The Valley project.  Although funding is now programmed for reconstruction of I-75 between Shepard Lane and Glendale-Milford Rd. beginning in 2021, there is still no definite timetable for the Thru the Valley’s other 7 phases.

These delays in work on I-75 in Cincinnati illustrate the central problems with state and federal gasoline taxes: the taxes are not automatically adjusted with inflation, causing revenues to drift downward over time, and proceeds fall when high gas prices motivate people to drive less. Until either or both gasoline taxes are raised, or ODOT identifies new funding sources, reconstruction and widening of I-75 will proceed at a glacial rate, and drivers will realize little benefit from completed early phases.

Categories
Development News Politics

Blue Ash poised to create legacy park at former airport site

On August 29, 2012 the Cincinnati-Blue Ash Airport (ISZ), better known as simply the Blue Ash Airport, was closed after 60 years of service.

After its official 8am closure, yellow X’s were painted across the runway and gates were installed to block any aircraft that might land from turning onto its taxiways. Throughout the day and into the early evening dozens of pilots and other friends of the airport drove their cars and motorcycles onto the taxiway and runway for one last look.

Over the past few weeks, the original hangar building became covered with farewell messages. While most were good-natured, several blamed The City of Cincinnati’s modern streetcar project for the airport’s demise. Additionally, people I spoke with at the airport Wednesday night, with anger in their voice, informed me that their airport was being closed because “Mayor Mallory wants to build a streetcar to nowhere.”

Smearing of the Blue Ash Airport sale
Pilots and other people associated with the Blue Ash Airport have been misled by Chris Finney, his anti-tax organization COAST, and sympathetic talk radio hosts into believing that Cincinnati’s sale of the airport to Blue Ash was motivated by Cincinnati’s streetcar project. Such claims do not recognize the fact that attempts to sell the airport date to the early 2000s, years before Mark Mallory became Cincinnati’s mayor or the streetcar plan first became an item on City Council’s agenda.

Specifically, sale of the Blue Ash Airport to the Blue Ash was not possible until the citizens of Blue Ash passed a .25% earnings tax increase in 2006. This funding source provided the City of Blue Ash sufficient funds to purchase and redevelop 130 acres of Cincinnati-owned airport land into a park. Blue Ash has already used funds from this tax to build a city recreation center and an event center at its municipally-owned golf course.

In early 2007 Cincinnati City Council authorized a streetcar study and proposed using $11 million of the airport’s $38.5 million sale price for construction of the streetcar’s first phase. Cincinnati never proposed using more than this $11 million sum – approximately 29% of the airport proceeds – for streetcar construction, yet Chris Finney has convinced streetcar opponents that the entirety of the proceeds have been programmed for the streetcar.

On August 7 of this year, after a week of talk radio hype, Finney brought his political circus to a Blue Ash City Council meeting and threatened the small city with a ballot referendum similar to those he had repeatedly placed before Cincinnati’s electorate over the past 20 years.

Finney has since backed away from his promise to cause trouble in Blue Ash — a move that was hardly covered by the local media — but much damage has been done. His smear tactics succeeded in villainizing Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory (D), the City of Cincinnati, and the streetcar project itself. And instead of work beginning on Blue Ash’s new airport park with a sense of optimism, it is instead clouded by suspicion.


The $13.5M Blue Ash Airport Park will transform the suburban city on Cincinnati’s north side. Rendering provided.

The New Airport Park
The planned Blue Ash Airport Park will be the first large new park in suburban Cincinnati since the Federal Government transferred the 435-acre Voice of America grounds to Butler County in the early 2000s. While the Voice of America Park has seen minimal physical improvements, and some of the land even sold off for a strip mall, Blue Ash boosters have announced that the new Airport Park will be “world class”.

Given the quality of the city’s new recreation center and event space, and the continuation of the .25% earnings tax voters approved in 2006, there is every reason to expect that it will be. Unlike Voice of America Park, which is nearly entirely devoid of trees, woods are present on some of the airport property including the triangular space between the taxiways and the runway. The $13.5 million park will include a multi-purpose pavilion, two new holes for the Blue Ash golf course, a driving range, and other features.

Remaining Cincinnati-owned Property
Cincinnati’s sale of the airport land it bought in the 1940s is not over, as the city still owns approximately 100 acres, including the airport’s newly abandoned 3,500-foot runway. In 2006, after selling the land occupied by the hangers and taxiways to Blue Ash for park purposes, Cincinnati planned to reconfigure the airport along the opposite side of the runway. This did not come to pass and presumably the City of Cincinnati will sell the property in the near future.

There has been no public mention of Cincinnati’s plans for this remaining land or if Blue Ash is able to afford its estimated $20 million sale price. But even if Blue Ash is unable to buy the property and expand its new park, the small city has demonstrated that it recognizes that the quality of its built environment improves and maintains residential and commercial property values.