Tag: opinion

Categories
Development News

“Lead, Learn, Serve” in the Queen City

Cincinnati is definitely one of the most charitably giving cities I’ve lived. Maybe it’s because this is a community with strong religious ties, or the immigrant history of our town, but people here LOVE to give!

Having formerly worked in a non-profit here, I appreciate the value of volunteers and donations in accomplishing a non-profit’s goals. That being said, it’s no secret that economic times are tough. People have to rein in spending, and it’s starting to show. According to the Cincinnati Business Courier, giving has dropped nationally:

“Giving USA Foundation found that charitable giving fell 2 percent from 2007 to 2008. The decline was the first since 1987 and the second in the 40-year history of the study. Adjusted for inflation, the decline was 5.7 percent.”

Not all organizations are seeing a drop in funds, but the typical donor is being a little more savvy about where and who they want to donate. For some people, giving to large umbrella aid organizations makes them feel like they’re covering a lot of ground with their dollars. For others, they worry about the overhead taking some of the money away from trickling down to smaller organizations.

There are so many options for organizations to donate to that it can be a little confusing. As a donor, do you want to go local or international with your charitable giving? Do you want to do a micro loan or give to an organization that screens candidates but may have overhead costs? Or do you just want to get together with friends and make a collective decision on where to donate your money? More and more charity organizations will be targeting “millennials” – YP’s who have expendable income and a sense of altruism, so if you fit that bill, get ready to be targeted!

In all this talk about giving dollars, remember charitable giving isn’t only about money. A great way to really get to better know your community is by going out and doing work to make it better. After living Downtown for 2 years, I had never been in Washington Park until I did a park clean up one morning with Keep Cincinnati Beautiful.

It is such a beautiful park, and seeing how mistreated it was by people in my community, it really reignited my desire to see it revitalized. No matter where you live, there are always opportunities to give in your community. You can literally get your hands dirty bettering the area around you and at the same time, get to know people in your community. In Cincinnati there are endless organizations that cater to different needs so there’s no reason to not find something that appeals to you!

Below are some links to groups that can direct you to opportunities, national and international organizations that are working to help our community and beyond. I have also included a request for volunteers through the local library if you want to really start in your backyard and work with the kids in your neighborhood. The motto of my alma mater was “Lead, Learn, Serve” and these days they are words we could all live by.

Volunteer Organizations (just a few of many):
Give Back Cincinnati | People Working Cooperatively | Keep Cincinnati Beautiful | Volunteer Match | Kiva

Local call for volunteers:
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED AT SUMMER ARTS – THROUGH JULY 29

The Downtown Residents Council is seeking volunteers to assist with programs at the Children’s Learning Center at the Main Public Library. The Summer Arts programs are for kids ages 6-12. Please consider participating on one or more Wednesday evenings this month. Arrive at the Children’s Learning Center at 800 Vine Street at 6:45 p.m. for about 90 minutes. For more information, contact Carolyn Janssen at (513) 369-6922.

Categories
News

Our Poor American Suburbs

The other day I was reading metropolitan policy briefings on the Brookings Institution site (It’s OK, you can say it: “Wow, David. You are a huge nerd.”) when I stumbled on this dinner party fun fact: more Americans who live below the poverty line live in suburbs than in cities.

Fascinating, right? Here’s the troubling part. The article goes on to say:

“America can’t ensure its leading place in the global economy unless we grapple with the problems and opportunities of our suburbs. Nonprofits, long focused on inner cities, need to reach out to poor families and immigrants in the suburbs. The federal government should support the production and preservation of affordable housing there.” (my emphasis added)

I respect the research the Brookings Institution conducts more than almost any other source out there, but they are dead wrong on this one.

Our public policy from approximately the end of WWII through now-ish encouraged suburban development. To say that it was the will of the people that drove suburbanization is to ignore how large of a role our public policies played in encouraging that notion.

Federally subsidized home loans allowed young families to live the “American Dream” (whatever that means…look for a post on that very topic sometime down the road). We the taxpayers funded the infrastructure that made living in the suburbs possible – the roads and highways, schools and sewers, water lines, power lines, garbage collection, police and fire protection, new parks, city halls, local government employees…all these things cost money.

‘Suburbia’ by David Shankbone

When people spread out over a large area, the cost to implement and sustain all new versions of these tax-backed services skyrockets. Furthermore, in many cases they become redundant. As has been said somewhere else, it costs the same to plow a street whether 10 people live on it or 100 people do. The only difference is the number of people paying into the system that pays for the maintenance of that road – the more people paying in, the less expensive per tax-payer. Multiply that same scenario out for everything else our taxes pay for, and well, you can see how expensive sprawl can be.

Nevertheless, for the past 60 years or so, our public policy has made it easy to move out of the scary, dangerous city into the prosperous, safe, “good life” in the suburbs because we the taxpayer have funded the infrastructure necessary to do so.

I agree with the Brookings writers’ assertion that the social services to support those who have fallen on desperate times ought to be available in the suburbs, but it’s a mentality that’s like treating a gunshot wound with a Hello Kitty Band-Aid – it might make you feel better momentarily, but you’re probably still gonna die.

Brookings’ solution to six decades of bad public policy that incentivizes living in an inefficient and unsustainable way is to … um … bolster the public policy that incentivizes living in an inefficient and unsustainable way. Throwing money and social services at this problem will help those who need it temporarily, but, we need to look at how our policies encourage and discourage where people live.

Instead of incentivizing sprawl, our local, state, and federal governments need to incentivize filling in the existing beautiful housing stock we have here already. We need to find ways to incentivize healthy density and strong neighborhoods with a local focus. When we do, the development that occurs as a result will grow the tax base. The new-found efficiencies will allow us to provide the same or better services, but with less money. Doing more with less – that’s what will reverse our economic downturn.

So how do we do incentivize density? Tax incentives to those who revamp existing housing within a particular radius of downtown, maybe? A reexamination of our existing federal subsidies for first-time home buyers? Build the Cincinnati Streetcar? Reexamining zoning laws to allow or encourage higher density mixed-use buildings in areas? I’m all ears.

Categories
Business News

‘Black Wednesday’ hits Cincinnati hard

Black Wednesday brought massive cutbacks at Cincinnati’s last “local” daily newspaper. The reason I put “local” in quotations is because following each one of these waves the newspaper becomes less local, less intimate and more out of touch with reality as the industry deals with cutbacks in a corporate manner.

There is an estimated 100 people being laid off at the Enquirer with 30 of those being reporters. CiN Weekly is going away, but being “rebranded” into Metromix. Enquirer Editor Tom Callinan tweeted, “Need to clarify: CiN in print and online will continue with Metromix as dominant brand…”

While that is true the CiN Weekly folks are still out of a job, and Cincinnati is seeing one of its weekly entertainment guides be replaced by a template-style national entertainment guide known as Metromix in 37 different cities/regions nationwide.

These layoffs are extraordinarily sad, but at the same time seem to be reflective of an industry that is slowly dying. Yesterday Paul Wilham commented,

Blogs will replace newspapers in the next 10 years. I think you will see a growing professionalism especially among bloggers who cover specific areas.

Currently you can get the vast majority of what is “really” going on in Cincinnnati by folowing 20 or so bloggers, Business news, zoning issues, sports, restaurant reviews, neighborhood news and more.

The first person who can consolidate all that content into a daily digest and can find a way to monetize it with local advertisement and pay the bloggers for their content will put the Enquirer out of business. The Enquirer knows this too!

The thing is that I have never considered myself or my blog as being in competition with a news source like the Enquirer, but what seemed to happen over the years is that newspapers have grown more towards the blog end of things to try to keep up – this is the problem.

People like myself and others are not full-time reporters…heck that’s not even my professional training. Many of the bloggers are doing this as a passion and can not afford to pay themselves to do investigative reporting, extended feature stories and so on. This is where the newspapers should have focused. Instead they went to smaller stories, republication of press releases and a reduced grassroots/local emphasis. It’s not the physical form, but rather then reduced content that has damned the newspaper industry.

We saw the first wave of amazing bloggers born when newspapers began laying off Dining/Food review sections. We now have amazing food bloggers all across the nation and the amazing urbanspoon site that ties it all together in a way the newspapers will never be able to compete with again.

The Enquirer barely boasts a business section as is, and the local urban-focused blog scene is as strong as it is because the Enquirer fails on that front as well. These niches open up as a result of the newspaper letting it happen…they reduce their content and that content goes elsewhere.

The print newspapers around the nation need to start focusing on a new business model that is reflective of the changes taking place in our society…things are more local, more cutting-edge, more focused and more timely. I hope they get it together, because I love reading the newspaper every day. That will not happen by continuing to make cuts and get rid of those who make the newspaper the information source that it once was.

Image (source): Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein from the Washington Post who helped break the Watergate Scandal to the public.
Categories
News

Is the Cincinnati Enquirer being controlled?

Is it possible that our local newspaper is being controlled in their coverage and commentary? Your first reaction would be to think absolutely not, but one must wonder given the recent trend of the Cincinnati Enquirer and its editorial board.

It is no secret that the newspaper industry is struggling and that a struggling enterprise will do just about anything to stay relevant. So when the majority of your consumers are those that live in suburbia you might just “tell them the stories they want to hear” as a former editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer described to me and my class at the University of Cincinnati.

The response was to a question of mine about their negative slant towards inner-city stories and their positive slant towards suburban stories. I asked why the most mundane stories about suburbia are portrayed as being the next greatest thing for the region, and how stories of greater magnitude are not even covered when they are located in the city.

This was several years ago and at the time I was somewhat shocked to hear the candid response that took little to no effort to regurgitate, and as I have continued my involvement I have seen this trend develop even further.

The most recent and obvious examples have to deal with the modern Cincinnati Streetcar proposal and the Anti-Passenger Rail Amendment that has been put forth by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Citizens Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST).

Within the past week the Enquirer ran a story announcing that the NAACP/COAST coalition had gained enough signatures to put the Anti-Passenger Rail Amendment on the ballot (nothing wrong there). As a result of the campaign kicking off to a certain degree, several individuals and organizations opposed to that Anti-Passenger Rail Amendment requested that the Enquirer use correct terminology and data in their articles relating to the issue.

Two items in particular were the cost/scope of the proposed streetcar project, and the scope and terminology of the proposed City Charter amendment. While reporters had consistently referred to the project as being $185 million (which would be far beyond a streetcar running through Downtown and OTR, and is not what was approved by City Council for the streetcars funding plan – that number is $128 million for a Downtown/OTR circulator with an Uptown connector), it seemed as though some of the Enquirer’s columnists did not get the memo as $200 million (a number made up by those pushing the Anti-Passenger Rail Amendment) was cited in a recent column.

Furthermore, the Enquirer was consistently referring to the proposed amendment that would prohibit the City from spending “any monies for right-of-way, acquisition or construction of improvements for passenger rail transportation” as the “streetcar issue” or “streetcar amendment.” As Brad Thomas pointed out:

“It is inaccurate and misleading for the Enquirer to call the ballot initiative the “Streetcar Issue” when it would permanently affect all passenger rail. A ballot initiative that affected all highways would not be called the “Norwood Lateral Issue,” nor would an initiative that affected all parks be called the “Eden Park Issue.”

The response from the Enquirer was deafening. Over the weekend the editorial board decided to run a story on the Riverfront Transit Center as being a “waste of money” (an item first brought up by Anti-Passenger Rail Amendment backer Tom Luken). In the story the Enquirer spoke with someone from COAST and Metro. In a non-subjective article they should have also requested comment from someone with a pro-transit agenda to counterbalance the opinions of COAST who also opposed the 2002 regional transit plan. Metro was able to provide the raw data on the matter and correct the false numbers that COAST was using to define the capital costs of the Transit Center (sound familiar).

This was followed up by a piece that incorrectly cited the streetcar would operate with a $3.5 million annual deficit. This number is of course assuming that there would be zero dollars in fares generated and is also a talking point used by the NAACP/COAST coalition to spread falsehoods and mislead people about this one project that would be affected by the all-encompassing Anti-Passenger Rail Amendment.

Normally I would not draw a correlation here given my “viciously optimistic” outlook on life, but a couple recent Cincinnati Enquirer actions made me feel differently.

On Thursday, July 3 I tweeted that Enquirer Editor & Vice President of Content and Audience Development, Tom Callinan, blocked me from following his account – a move specifically taken towards me and specifically initiated by Callinan or whoever he has running his Twitter account. But why?

Well earlier in the week I responded to what I considered a column that used reckless disregard for the truth regarding the streetcar proposal. I sent an email to Mr. Peter Bronson and pointed out what I found to be intentionally false and asked him to adhere to Gannett’s (owner of Cincinnati Enquirer) stated Code of Ethics when it comes to writing columns. His response was rather callous and it was obvious that I struck a chord.

In the end what we are dealing with here is an amendment to the City Charter (City’s equivalent to the Constitution) that would prohibit the City from spending any money on ANY passenger rail project. That would include the proposed 3-C Corridor high-speed rail plan that would have Ohioans riding from Cincinnati, to Dayton, to Columbus, to Cleveland with stops in between at 110mph within 5 years and the larger Midwest Rail Initiative that would do the same but also connect Cincinnati to Indianapolis, Chicago and beyond. It would also include the proposed Eastern Corridor Project that would provide a rail link between Cincinnati’s eastern suburbs with the Central Business District.

You do not have to like the Cincinnati Streetcar project to dislike this Anti-Passenger Rail Amendment for several reasons, and that is why it has a bipartisan coalition of opponents including 16 of 18 endorsed candidates running for City Council (Democrats, Republicans and Charterites), the Mayor, the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Alliance for Regional Transit, Cincinnatians For Progress and All Aboard Ohio to name a few.

I do not have a problem with dissent, what I have a problem with is misleading the public. The Enquirer has a responsibility to cover the news subjectively and to provide the most accurate information possible to their roughly 200,000+ daily readers and nearly 300,000 Sunday readers. When disregard for the truth is employed by the media, then we have very little else to rely on when it comes to informing the electorate. It is not a fair game when you have the cards stacked against you like that and I hope that the Enquirer takes this opportunity to right the ship and start using accurate information with equal representation from both parties revolving around this Anti-Passenger Rail Amendment Cincinnatians will be voting on this November.

Additional reading:
More lies from Jason Gloyd and COAST by The Phony Coney

Categories
News

Government by referendum in Cincinnati

Is this the future of Cincinnati and the way we run our government here? It certainly seems that way after a string of items that have changed the City’s Charter and began this form of governance. Those items include:

  • Photo-enforced red light cameras (Charter amendment)
  • 2007 Jail/Public Safety sales tax issue
  • Proportional representation election system
  • Passenger rail investment (November election, Charter amendment)
  • Sale of City’s Water Works Department (November election)

I’m all for the democratic process, but the trend that is forming here is not that. The way our government is supposed to work is by electing individuals to represent us. Those elected officials then make the calls on these specific and important issues. If you like the way they handle those issues, you reelect them, if you don’t, you elect someone else. This is the American way, this is democracy.

We have seen this “direct democracy” or “government by referendum” before in California and the results are in. What has happened is hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of issues are put on the ballot for the voters of California to decide. Often times these are items that trained policymakers should be examining, but are instead being politicized on the most minute level.

As Cincinnatians For Progress points out, this has resulted in a $27 billion budget gap, crumbling schools, the need for dramatic tax increases and the need for the state of California to start issuing I.O.U.’s because it can’t pay its own bills.

Image courtesy of California Society of Tax Consultants, San Diego Chapter

And contrary to what you might originally think, this style of governance is not benefiting ordinary citizens and empowering grassroots movements. The Economist reports that:

“It is not ordinary citizens but rich tycoons from Hollywood or Silicon Valley, or special interests such as unions for prison guards, teachers or nurses, that bankroll most initiatives onto the ballots.”

“Many others, however, now believe that California needs to start from scratch, with a fully-fledged constitutional convention. California’s current constitution rivals India’s and Alabama’s for being the longest and most convoluted in the world, and is several times longer than America’s. It has been amended or revised more than 500 times and now, with the cumulative dross of past voter initiatives incorporated, is a document that assures chaos.”

Surely this is not the form of governance that we want in Cincinnati. It would seem to me that what we actually want is a government with elected officials that are held accountable for their actions. A government that works efficiently and is responsive to the interests of the community and constituents that empowers and employs them.

I for one know I do not want a City Charter that “assures chaos,” or a local government that is constantly in gridlock unable to get anything done. If you feel the same way I would like to challenge you to take action…here’s what you can do:

  • Write to the Enquirer or Business Courier and share your thoughts.
  • Donate to Cincinnatians For Progress who are fighting this style of government in Cincinnati.
  • Tell your friends and family not to be fooled by the people at COAST and the WeDemandAVote campaign. Tell them that what these groups are doing is not simply trying to promote democracy, but rather, destroy it at its core level.
  • If you have a blog or participate in social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc then please share this link with them and encourage them to do the same.