Cincinnati City Council yesterday unanimously approved a motion that declares landslides along Columbia Parkway a city emergency.
Those landslides, triggered in part by heavy precipitation over the past few months, have buckled the backyards of homeowners who live above the parkway and have caused closures of the vital artery from the city’s east side into downtown.
The motion is the first time council has declared a city emergency since the civil unrest in Over-the-Rhine and other neighborhoods in 2001, according to Cincinnati City Solicitor Paula Boggs-Muething.
The declaration signals that council is taking the situation seriously, said sponsor Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman. But there were questions about whether the declaration will change anything and whether it could give the mayor power to take actions without council’s approval.
“There’s a risk to the drivers with the landslides and a risk to the homeowners who live on the hill,” Smitherman said yesterday. “What I don’t want to do — I don’t think anyone on council, the mayor, the administration, I think we all agree — we don’t want to wake up to a fatality. So this is an opportunity for us to send a clear message to the administration. Let’s end this problem once and for all.”
The motion is mostly symbolic, some council members pointed out.
“We’ve been getting daily emails and texts,” council member Chris Seelbach said. “You’ve been taking this as an emergency up until now, right? Is there anything that is going to change from this?”
Cincinnati City Manager Patrick Duhaney acknowledged that the city is already doing everything it can for the landslides.
“It’s just an articulation of a sense of urgency from council that we need to continue expediting this and treating it as an emergency as we move forward,” he said.
Council member David Mann pointed out the emergency declaration would allow Mayor John Cranley to make his own declaration. That might unlock his ability to unilaterally make decisions without council’s approval, Mann said.
It’s unclear what the implications of the declaration would be, Muething said.
“In the situation (of the civil unrest), it has enabled the mayor to take control of the police force,” she told council yesterday. “That doesn’t seem like it’s necessary with respect to Columbia Parkway, but there are other provisions here — maintaining order, enforcing the law — that it could be the case that such a declaration would enable us to take certain steps that we wouldn’t be able to take. We’d like to take a closer look at that… I don’t think we have a good sense of what those provisions have meant historically and what they would mean today.”
That wasn’t something Mann and some other council members were willing to risk.
“I’m not prepared to grant authority independent of this council, and I didn’t understand that was the intent,” Mann said. At first, Mann called for a hold on the declaration until the city solicitor cleared up questions about the impact it would have on separation of powers within City Hall.
Smitherman said the declaration was urgent and that he wasn’t willing to delay it. Mann then proposed an amendment, which Smitherman accepted, that stipulated that the emergency declaration doesn’t give the mayor power to act without council.
Cranley tied the landslides to climate change, noting that Cincinnati has seen record-setting rainstorms over the past few years. He said the emergency declaration is worth it, even if it is largely symbolic.
“There is real value in just hearing what is the obvious frustration of our citizens who are dealing with more difficult commutes as a result of this clear and present danger on Columbia Parkway,” he said. “Since 2013, there has been a 100-year-storm every year but one, and a 50-year-storm every year but one. These are incredible continuing events that are more and more common.”
Cranley said it wasn’t clear if the declaration could unlock additional state or federal emergency release funding or response. Council member Greg Landsman called for inquiries into that possibility. Fixes for the landslide problem could cost as much as $10 million, according to city administration.
City of Cincinnati transportation officials yesterday announced that two lanes of the three westbound lanes on Columbia Parkway near Mount Lookout will be closed until April 30 for retaining wall repairs totally more than $900,000 related to the landslides.
This article appears in Mar 20-27, 2019.
