City Council on Thursday accepted City Manager Milton Dohoney’s resignation, setting the stage for the end of more than seven years of service that fostered Cincinnati’s nationally recognized economic turnaround, the $133 million streetcar project and the controversial parking plan.
The request comes just one day after Mayor-elect John Cranley announced Dohoney’s resignation. Cranley says he will appoint an interim city manager once Dohoney officially steps down on Dec. 1 and then begin a nationwide search for a permanent replacement.
For the year following his resignation, Dohoney will receive $255,000 in severance pay — the same as his current annual salary — and health benefits through the city. The extra costs will go to an already-strained operating budget, which has been structurally imbalanced since 2001.
Although council members acknowledged that they had to accept the resignation in the aftermath of the Nov. 5 election, some said they were unhappy with the behind-the-scenes approach Cranley took to finalize Dohoney’s leave.
“It’s certainly not the process I would have liked,” said Councilman Chris Seelbach.
Others praised Dohoney’s work for the city, which lasted through both the Great Recession and the beginnings of Over-the-Rhine and Cincinnati’s economic revitalization.
“He has served the city very well. He has been a leader in terms of economic development across the city,” said Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, who lost in her bid against Cranley for the mayorship.
Cranley and Dohoney differ on both the streetcar project and parking plan, which would have outsourced the city’s parking meters, lots and garages to the Greater Cincinnati Port Authority and private operators. Cranley opposes and plans to do away with both policies, while Dohoney helped establish both.
announced on Tuesday
that he, newly elected council members and the Port Authority agreed to call off the parking plan once the new city government takes office on Dec. 1, but it remains unclear how much it will cost the city to break from the plan and its numerous contractual obligations.Similarly, Cranley told The Cincinnati Enquirer in a livestreamed interview on Thursday that he will try to put an estimated 30-to-90-day time-out on the streetcar project as the city conducts a full accounting of how much it would take to cancel the project versus continuing with ongoing construction and the potential return on investment of completion.
The talk of cancellation already spurred some Over-the-Rhine residents and businesses to
launch a campaign to save the streetcar
. Cranley insists it’s too expensive and the wrong priority for the city, but supporters tout independent studies and their own experiences to argue it would spur economic development. The pro-streetcar group will meet on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Mercantile Library, 414 Walnut St. #1100, downtown Cincinnati.If the streetcar goes the way of the parking plan, Cranley will effectively unravel two major milestones of Dohoney’s seven years of service.
