Category: Politics

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Arts & Entertainment News Politics

Barack Obama packs Downtown and delivers historic speech

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee – Barack Obama – addressed the NAACP Convention at 8pm, July 14th, 2008. People started waiting at the Duke Energy Center about 6 hours earlier at 2pm hoping to get into the convention center to be a part of a movement and history in the making. Obama did not disappoint as he dazzled the crowd with a wonderful speech (full text).

Those who weren’t lucky enough to get inside, and others looking for different atmosphere, gathered on Fountain Square – packing it to the gills. Local organizations put together some entertainment for the expected crowd that started gathering en mass around 5pm. Others who wanted to stay at home could do so thanks to the live coverage by local NBC affiliate, WLWT-Cincinnati.

The presumptive Republican nominee – John McCain – will speak Wednesday at 11:30am. You will also be able to catch this on WLWT, Fountain Square, or in person at the Conference. It’s great to see the level of excitement about politics this year. It’s even better to see it first-hand right here in Cincinnati.

Fountain Square Scene – Photo by 5chw4r7z

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News Politics

Quit pandering, do what’s right

City Council appears poised to not roll back the millage rate for Cincinnatians for the first time since 2000. The current millage rate (4.53) generates roughly $29-million a year for city coffers. The roll back essentially keeps that number flat from year to year.

Last year’s roll back saved the average homeowner $1.39, while it would have collectively generated millions for the City. These millions of extra dollars could be used to help stabilize the City’s budget and improve its credit rating. Additionally the City could look into providing more services to its citizens ranging from public safety to neighborhood improvements.

Interestingly enough there are still four members, on City Council (Monzel-R, Ghiz-R, Berding-D, Cranley-D), who believe it is a better idea (politically I’m sure) to roll back the millage rate and possibly even freeze it where it stands. Interestingly enough John Cranley (one of two Democrats in favor of the roll back) has also made repeated statements about the importance of investing in our neighborhoods and public safety. Chris Monzel is the most outspoken on this topic (only council member not on the Finance Committee) and describes the five others on council as, “hungry wolves at the public trough.”

It would seem to be a better strategy, for the politicians, to look at what is ultimately in the best interest of its citizens rather than pandering for future votes. The City’s finance department, City Manager Milton Dohoney, and five members of council seem to agree. Lets take the $1.39 hit for what is ultimately best for our city.

For some reason this issue reminds me a lot of the proposed Gas Tax Holiday – may score up some new votes, but ultimately it is not in the best interest of the public.


City Hall image (by Greg Hume) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License

Categories
News Politics Transportation

I’m confused…someone please clarify

Here is an email I received from Millvalley…

No surprise: we’re driving less — about 4.3% fewer miles than last year, the first annual decline since 1979and the largest yearly decline on record.

On the other hand, public transportation use is now at its highest level in fifty years, with rail systems showing 6% year-over-year gains.

Our region is not reacting to these trends aggressively enough.

Let me explain. The Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments is now updating its 2030 Plan, a document that guides investment in transportation projects here. Ohio and Kentucky will be spending about $4.4 billion over the next couple decades on new and improved roadways, transit, bike and pedestrian programs, freight and information technology systems. Another $2.5 billion will be spent on the operations and maintenance of our mobility systems.

Kentucky expects to invest $1.4 billion on roadway projects compared to only $22 million on transit — fully 63 as much on a mode of travel that is declining nationwide compared to one that is growing. Ohio’s program is a little more balanced. Projected spending for roadways is $2.3 billion. While transit is nominally slated to receive $509 million, about $410 million of this sum is for the Eastern Corridor rail project which, in my view, has little chance of ever getting built. If it does get built, the numbers show that it will be a very poor performer. So that leaves about $99 million for all other transit projects for the next couple of decades. It’s still heavily lopsided in favor of roads — in Ohio, we’ll $23 for highways for every $1 spent on transit.

I’m just wondering if this would fly in the private sector? I tend to say no, but I am confused as to why this is accepted from our government?

If you would like to hear more and subscribe to the Millvalley listserve you can do so by emailing Millvalley@aol.com.

Categories
News Politics Transportation

Let’s talk tax structure and streetcars

There is no doubt that residents and businesses, in Downtown/OTR/Uptown, see the value in the proposed streetcar system. It is also quite understandable that community leaders in neighborhoods like Westwood, Price Hill, and Mt. Washington may not exactly see the benefits to their respective communities.

Every community would like to have more amenities and improved services. These are the things that help make neighborhoods successful and great places to live. At the same time they understandably don’t want to see their taxes rise. So lets break down the tax structure and how the streetcar will play into this whole situation…

Residential properties are accepted losers when it comes to taxes. They simply demand far more services than they pay for in taxes. Those services (i.e. trash, police, fire, schools, etc) are made possible by those that pay exceedingly more than they demand (i.e. office, industrial).

Therefore the commercial and industrial bases are the most important tax bases to preserve and grow in order to maintain service levels for your residential base. Of the Top Ten taxpayers, in 2006, 9 were based out of Downtown* (for what I could find).

With that said, residential properties can get close to offsetting their service demands. The best opportunity for this to occur is in the most densely populated (or built) areas where economies of scale factor in big time. In Cincinnati’s case there is no other residential neighborhood that has a potentially better return on taxes than Over-the-Rhine.

Chart illustrating the functionality of Economies of Scale

These most densely built areas need to be focused on first and foremost, and need to be populated with as many people as possible. This allows you to grow your residential base without significantly growing the demand for services (in OTR’s case you may actually decrease demand for services like police and fire by repopulating the neighborhood).

So while a streetcar line only serving Downtown, OTR, and Uptown seems to only benefit those 3 neighborhoods…it is really affecting the financial stability of the entire city, and allows for a growth in tax base without a significantly higher demand for services. This means extra tax revenues can then be used for increased services and funding for the other 49 great Cincinnati neighborhoods.

*Tax data from City of Cincinnati’s 2006 Annual Financial Report (pdf 5mb)

Related reading on UrbanCincy:
Keep the heart strong

Categories
Business Development News Politics

The retail over-saturation problem

When can you tell enough is enough? Is there any hope for our nation if there isn’t constant growth? These are the questions I find myself asking when I read stories like this.

Cincinnati Mills, one of the largest retail centers in the region, has seen store after store shutter. This comes after millions of dollars of reinvestment into a massive mall sandwiched in between two others along a mall interstate of sorts.

It really makes you wonder (at least me), do we really need all of this retail space. The same can even be said for urban environments where seemingly every new renovation project, in a mixed-use built area, seems to call for street-level retail with residential or office space above. I suggest that we return the area, where Cincinnati Mills sits, to a natural state. That is obviously an extreme proposal, but at the very least tear down that mall (said in my best Ronald Reagan voice) for some other/better use.

This region is growing much slower than our retail space is expanding…and it seems obvious that the retail locally (and nationally) can not sustain itself by the free market alone. It seems to me that the best alternative would be to let struggling retail space ride off into the sunset. This would allow for values to rise at other retail locations, and we could begin the process of ridding ourselves of our excessive retail space…and who knows, maybe even our over-consumerism.