Tag: Politics

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Uptown neighborhoods endorse Cincinnati’s streetcar project

Today the Uptown Consortium Board of Directors voted unanimously to endorse the proposed Cincinnati Streetcar project. The consortium represents Uptown’s largest employers including Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, The Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, TriHealth Inc. and the University of Cincinnati that combined represent close to 50,000 employees, a payroll of $1.4 billion and an annual economic impact of more than $3 billion.

The Board of Directors stated that the Cincinnati Streetcar represents “an important economic development tool that will connect the city’s two largest employment centers – Uptown and Downtown.”

The newly formed Neighborhoods of Uptown (NOU) represents seven city neighborhoods including Corryville, Clifton, Clifton Heights, University Heights, Fairview, Mt. Auburn and Avondale, and has also unanimously extended its support for the streetcar project and see it as an exciting prospect to link their neighborhoods with Downtown.

“The streetcar project is the kind of bold initiative the neighborhoods are looking for from City Hall,” said Neel, who is president of the CUF Community Council and an assistant professor at UC’s College of Medicine. “We think the streetcar will bring a welcome dose of vitality to our neighborhoods.”

Phase 1 of the proposed Cincinnati Streetcar will run from Cincinnati’s riverfront, through downtown Cincinnati and historic Over-the-Rhine, and up the hill into the Uptown neighborhoods and business districts.

“We believe the streetcar will help attract talent to our city’s key economic centers,” said John Prout, president and CEO of TriHealth, Inc. and the consortium’s board chairman. “The project will also stimulate job growth and serve to revitalize our neighborhoods.”

The announcement comes just months after the unprecedented unanimous vote by University of Cincinnati Student Government Association to support the streetcar project as well. Once complete, the Cincinnati Streetcar will introduce modern streetcar service to the Midwest and will connect the region’s two largest employment centers and many major attractions.

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Census meeting today on hard to count populations

U.S. Representative Steve Driehaus (D-OH) will be in Cincinnati today for a field hearing on hard to count populations on the University of Cincinnati’s Main Campus at 2pm. The hearing will take place at UC’s Main Street Cinema in the lower level of the Tangeman University Center (map).

Representative Driehaus will be joined by a host of local officials including Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory, Thomas L. Mesenbourg who is the Acting Deputy Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Representative Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO), Dave Scharfenberger who is the Director of Training for Working in Neighborhoods, Jason Riviero with the Leauge of Latin American Citizens of Ohio, Suzanne Hopkins with the Center for Independent Living Options, Josh Spring with the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, and Todd Duncan with UC’s Department of Housing & Food Services.

The hearing will include testimony from the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The intent is to better understand how to count historically under-counted populations in the U.S. Census. Recently a Census District including part of Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine and West End neighborhoods was identified as the 6th most difficult to count Census District in the nation.

In Cincinnati, Mayor Mallory has championed efforts over the last several years to ensure that Cincinnati is fully counted and represented in the U.S. Census with the Cincinnati Counts campaign. The U.S. Census helps determine how to distribute $300 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year, and during the last full count in 2000, the U.S. Census Monitoring Board estimated that the United States’ population was under-counted by over 3 million people who are often either minorities, children, the poor, and people in large urban areas like Cincinnati.

Officials now estimate that Cincinnati’s population is currently uncounted by approximately 45,000 people which results in the loss of $2,263 per year, per person in federal funding for schools, public safety and more. Over a ten year period, Cincinnati officials estimated that this cost Cincinnati about $104 million in terms of lost funds.

Tangeman University Center photograph by fusion-of-horizons.

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Political kickbacks land Cleveland major transit dollars

Vice President Joe Biden announced over $600 million in new awards for transit projects across the United States. The funding went to 191 different transit projects in 42 different states and Puerto Rico.

Ohio walked away with more than $24.5 million worth of transit funding, of which the overwhelming majority went to northeast Ohio, where the state’s two Senators are from, with $6 of transit funding going to each of the 2,088,291 people in the Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). Cincinnati meanwhile ranks as Ohio’s most populous MSA with 2,155,137 people who received $0.13 each for transit funding (view full list of recipients).

The $6 per person transit funding for Cleveland equates to roughly half of Ohio’s total funding received and more than $12.5 million. The Cincinnati MSA barely made the list at all as Middletown, on the far northern reaches of Cincinnati’s metropolitan area, received the MSA’s only funding of just under $281,000.

Cleveland MSA received $6/person while Ohio’s most populous metropolitan area received just $0.13/person. Click chart to open large version in new window.

In a press release received from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Vice President Biden stated that, “Investing in these transit upgrades not only puts construction workers on the job at project sites, but supports American manufacturing jobs all the way down the supply chain. At a time when jobs are priority number one, that means twice the employment bang for the Recovery Act buck.”

One could make the argument that the Cleveland metropolitan area received the most money to help create and retain jobs in arguably Ohio’s most devastated market in terms of jobs and foreclosures. The evidence further supports this when you see that Columbus and Cincinnati, the state’s two strongest job markets, received the smallest per-capita funding. That is where the connections stop though, as Dayton, ranking close to Cleveland as one of Ohio’s worst economic performers, received a measly $0.84 per person for transit funding.

“Investing in modern, efficient transit systems will mean safe, reliable travel and clean air in our communities” said FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff. “These projects are putting thousands of Americans to work right now while improving the lives of millions of Americans for years to come”

Unfortunately while this is true, it seems that at least in Ohio that these funds were distributed based on political ties than anything else. Both Senator Sherrod Brown and Senator George Voinovich hail from northeast Ohio Maybe not shocking, but certainly disappointing especially if you are one of the hundreds of thousands living in Hamilton County that voted for Senator Brown in 2006 and in turn saw $0 of this transit funding.

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How Cincinnati could benefit from greater use of new media

A recent article written by Christian Madera in Next American City discussed what role new media plays in local government, and more particularly, in small local governments. Madera’s article examined what a couple of small local governments are doing around the nation to better engage their citizens while doing it on a tight budget.

While Cincinnati does not fit the bill of a “small local government,” the city does have the opportunity to enhance residents’ experience with local government with little to no extra costs. Over this past winter, the City of Cincinnati started operating a Twitter account (@CincinnatiSnow) where anyone interested could follow along and stay informed on the latest snow emergency levels, procedures, status of snow clearing efforts and more. This joins a small group of other City departments/agencies that have joined the Twitter fold to further share their information with the public at-large, but what else could be done?

The City currently has a phone number that people can call to report overflowing City trash cans among other things. This system could be enhanced to allow people to tweet, text or email these reports to the City which would then be handled by an analyst – presumably the same person now answering the phone and handling the calls – so that the City could dispatch crews accordingly. If Cincinnati can not afford the upfront capital expenditure associated with solar-powered trash cans that automatically notify crews when they approach a certain fill level, then this could be the next best option.

Public meetings are currently broadcast on CitiCable, Cincinnati’s local access television station, but why not turn the audio recordings already done into podcasts or broadcast them on UStream? Those interested in Planning Commission or City Council meetings, for example, could subscribe to those podcasts and listen to the meetings at their convenience. Broadcasting the meetings on UStream would create another means in which the public could stay connected with City Hall while adding no additional costs to the City’s budget.

The City already has the ability to record the audio and video for all of its public meetings, so all it would take is the initial effort and maintenance of operating the new media outlets. Young talent already possesses the ability to do this and could be managed on a department by department basis where existing staff takes on the minor work increase, or a singular employee could manage the entire system from the dissemination of information to its collection from those engaged in the process.

The beauty of new media is that it allows for instant exchange of information and ideas. Effectively taking advantage of this at the local government level could improve services, make public information more available, and allow for an interaction between citizen and government that is not currently seen.

Cincinnati City Hall photograph by Thadd Fiala.

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News Politics

Public safety spending consumes Cincinnati’s strained budget

As Cincinnati faces a $51 million operating budget deficit for 2010, with the chance of the deficit worsening in 2011, many Cincinnatians and local leaders are looking for ways to close the gap without further cutting into already slim programs elsewhere.

Cincinnati’s 2010 General Fund Operating Budget totals $393.8 million of which public safety departments make up $181.9 million or 63 percent of the annual operating costs. A large chunk of that $181.9 million is made up in payroll costs for 1,135 police officers (3.4 officers per 1,000 residents). The question that must be asked is if other operations have continually been cut over recent years, then how can we close a $51 million budget deficit?

For comparison purposes, the City of Columbus has more than twice the population of the City of Cincinnati with 773,277 residents spread out over a much larger land area. Compared to Cincinnati though, Columbus has only 1,876 police officers (2.43 officers per 1,000 residents) and a Part 1 crime rate 4 percent lower than Cincinnati.

The objective data seems to indicate that a more robust police force alone is not necessarily the path to lower crime rates. But since 1974 while Cincinnati’s population has decreased 26 percent the police presence has increased 36 percent. Over that same time period public safety’s portion of the annual General Fund Operating budget has increased from 31 to 63 percent, and has seen spending increase 124 percent while non-public safety spending has decreased 43 percent.

The data is alarming. While the City continues to cut essential programs in order to balance a budget in a shrinking city, public safety programs continue to see expenditures increase with virtually no public opposition or discussion about the need for these expenditures. Of the more than 1,100 police officers only 698 are used for patrol purposes. The Cincinnati Fire Department meanwhile saw 86 percent of all fire runs in 2009 go to non-fire events.

“Police visibility in crime hot spots and enforcement of nuisance properties actually prevent crime, but in Cincinnati much of our approach is responding to crime in a defensive manner,” said former City Council member Greg Harris. “This reactive approach will never lessen crime and we will never have enough cops to make it effective. As a result, we have to implement proven crime fighting strategies built on greater police visibility.”

Public Safety related spending has risen 124% since 1974 while non-Public Safety spending has decreased 43% [LEFT]. In 2010, Public Safety related spending accounts for 63% of Cincinnati’s 2010 General Fund Operating Budget [RIGHT].

In Cleveland, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) have begun rejecting calls for minor ailments such as toothaches or hemorrhoids, and as a result has been able to reduce its ambulance fleet by three vehicles in an effort to help close their own glaring budget deficit. The difference between Cincinnati is even greater as Cincinnati EMS also sends fire trucks on these calls.

Reductions in Cincinnati’s public safety budgets could very easily help close the budget deficit for 2010 and offer long-term cost savings for the city. The comparisons to Columbus and Cleveland are only so useful as each city is unique, but they do offer an interesting insight into Cincinnati’s budget discussions especially when current budgets are examined with past budgets.

The answer for Cincinnati seems to lie in more efficient public safety operations, as with Los Angeles’ or New York’s high-tech crime mapping strategy, where the police force is managed to operate in a proactive way that helps reduce violence long-term and fire fighters are used to fight fires and not to respond to 911 calls for toothaches. The question now is whether or not our political leaders will have the courage to stand up to the police and fire unions and make these decisions.

Cincinnati Police photograph by Ronny Salerno.