Good morning all. Here’s what’s up today.
Well, it was enlightening while it lasted. Cincinnati city administration yesterday released, then quickly pulled, a study on safety issues surrounding the Central Parkway Bikeway requested by City Councilman Christopher Smitherman. Smitherman recently introduced a motion to remove the lanes, citing safety concerns.
The study, completed by the city’s department of transportation and signed by City Manager Harry Black, found that that the stretch of Central Parkway with the bike lane does not have any more accidents than comparable streets without lanes. It concluded with a recommendation that the lanes remain. The city quickly pulled the study from its website, however, saying it had not been completely reviewed and approved. You can read our story on the erstwhile study here.
• Speaking of contentious projects that move people from one place to another… yeah, that’s right, it’s more about the streetcar. Here’s a story about the way other cities with streetcars handle big downtown events, in the wake of Council’s move passing an ordinance that will shut ours down for seven events a year until at least 2018. Here’s a hint: Other cities don’t do that usually, at least not to the extent that Cincinnati will.
• Things continue to get real-er around the Cincinnati Parks Board. The city has halted construction on a $1 million project on Cincinnati’s riverfront Serpentine Wall following revelations that the board carried over preexisting maintenance contracts instead of putting tens of millions of dollars of construction work out to public bid on Smale Riverfront Park. Those preexisting “master contracts” aren’t bonded or insured for the work being done, putting the city at financial risk, city officials say. Meanwhile, park board chair Otto M. Budig, a prominent philanthropist and civic leader, has said that things could and should have been done differently with those contracts, but also pointed out the time-sensitive nature of getting the park ready for prime-time by last summer’s MLB All-Star Game.
• Have you seen this depressing Twitter war between the two corporate behemoths that comprise Cincinnati’s major media outlets? TV news station WCPO recently began adding the hashtag #dropthepaper to its marketing campaigns for its so-called “Insiders” program, where you pay them to get like, more stories about the streetcar or something? Unclear. Anyway, we don’t think they were talking about us (we’re like those kids in your high school who were too uncool to even get picked on. It’s a good place to be really). Instead, it seems this was a less-than-passive aggressive swipe at The Cincinnati Enquirer. Enquirer reporters and other print news types have taken umbrage at the campaign, which some have called unprofessional (and worse). Anyway, national journalism commentators like Jim Romanesko and Nieman Lab have picked up the story. Cincinnati: the city where everyone argues about everything, all the time, and where trying too hard on social media is part of building your media brand.
• More signs our state’s economy is lagging behind the rest of the U.S.: Ohio ranks 38th in the country for personal income growth and is last in the Great Lakes region. Even Michigan, home of Detroit and Flint, has beaten us — in fact, they were the best in the region. What’s more, Ohio’s income growth rate, 3.1 percent, has fallen from a year ago, when it was 3.85 percent. Overall, California had the highest rate of personal income growth while North Dakota fared the worst.
• So, as you know, Ohio Gov. John Kasich is experiencing a strange kind of political afterlife as a somehow-still-campaigning candidate for the GOP presidential primary. He has no mathematical chance of winning the nomination in the traditional way, but he’s hanging in there in hopes of a brokered convention. One of the side effects of that doggedness is that a certain degree of harsh light is now being shined on the Big Queso. This story in The New York Times today explores Kasich’s reputation as a brash, kind of rude politician — a rep that plays directly counter to the reasonable, even friendly, image he’s worked hard to cultivate in his campaign. Meanwhile, those within his party have continued to rebuke Kasich for continuing his campaign. The latest hater? Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is considering making an endorsement in the primary race. Walker threw a little shade at his fellow GOP governor when he said he hasn’t decided who he’ll endorse, but he has decided he’s NOT endorsing Kasich. Oof.
This article appears in Mar 23-30, 2016.