Is the First City Wide Benefit of the Streetcar Greater Civic Engagement ?

Invest in Neighborhoods hopes so.
From their latest newsletter:

Let's Continue the Drive
The past couple of weeks have seen an exercise of citizen engagement unlike anything Cincinnati has experienced in recent memory. Historically at the neighborhood level, we tend to see a significant increase in participation when issues that touch self interest are being debated.
To be sure, the streetcar debate did for some involve self interest, but for many, many more (on both sides of the issue), it was a matter of what they felt was best for the future of our city. Many of those had not ever before spoken or acted publicly on an issue of such importance.
It's apparent to us there's a whole lot of passion about Cincinnati throughout the city. This passion, if pointed in the right directions, can benefit every neighborhood in the city.

Talk about swords to ploughshares…
Cincinnati can really benefit from friendly neighborhood rivalry but it can also result in bitter Balkanization. Our new mayor deftly used division to his favour in the last election.
Besides the outpouring of activism on both sides of the issue, the scrutiny applied to the streetcar project has also been pretty educating as to the processes of government, public infrastructure projects, government accounting, and such.
Taking this experience, we should be able to move forward promoting our communities & the city at large more efficiently & effectively.
Or we can waste it and just fall apart & squabble & threaten secession & bask in victimhood I guess...

Changing Community Councils

Councilwoman Y.L. Cole has proposed a change in how Cincinnati's community councils handle memberships and voting.
Cincinnati's 52 neighborhoods are represented through quasi-governmental private bodies of volunteers called community councils. While they are set up on their own with their own by laws, they administer funds from the city for various purposes and the city also recognizes them as representatives of their respective neighborhoods. Information is routed to and from the city through the organizations. Their influence was deprecated significantly under Mayor Luken and City Manager Lemmie.
Naturally every city resident can weigh in on anything anywhere in the city with the mayor or any city councilmember.
Currently, the community councils all have their own rules concerning membership and voting qualifications and what members can vote on. Some councils require attendance at meetings to vote, others require a minimal number of hours of service. Some require dues - some don't. Oftentimes the rules are set to avoid people "stacking the vote" or "stuffing the ballotbox". Most of the experienced people on the councils have had the experience of people showing up for one vote to get their way to sway votes on zoning and liquor permit issues or to stack the councils with particular candidates. Bond Hill, College Hill and Westwood have all had such problems.
Ms Cole's efforts are to enfranchise all members of the community and not bar them from having their vote counted through service that may not be doable due to time or physical constraints or the financial constraints that dues might have.
The problem is that Ms Cole's changes erase the safeguards the councils have had to enforce to avoid dirty politics.
One of the issues I have is, after years of working night shift, is that the meetings and voting are usually in the evening and the voting time is usually under an hour. many of Cincinnati's working poor probably fall into this category and the current ordinance does not address the issue. I have no idea how the councils could afford to do such a thing, anyway. They do not have the budget of a county BOE. The city currently funds the community councils to the tune of about $7k/yr. Accommodating 12 elections a year could eat that up right off. The next bit of funding the councils have is dues and that will be eliminated.
Currently, these are private organizations of volunteers. I have heard of the Northside Community Council referred to as a social club and I don't think the speaker was being sarcastic.
The thing is, I can see this effort to enfranchise the greater public as disenfranchising the paltry number of volunteers the city has and never really engaging the apathetic majority of citizens. Westwood has it's community council as well as Westwood Concern. How many people can afford the extra time to be involved in multiple organizations ? A good number of the few who do the most already are - it would be one more burden on the people the city already depends on.
Ms Cole has good intentions here, to be sure, but I don't think this is a really good idea and I don't think there is a practical way to implement it.

The initial proposal can be found here, but this is not a FINAL VERSION, there is, apparently a revised version somewhere which is ALSO not a final version.

Click here for links to councils' websites.

Invest in Neighborhoods

Community Development

Speaking of Bio-Fuel

Speaking of bio-fuel, soil conservancy and American progressivism.....
Do we really want to further deplete our natural resources, so vitally important to us - the resources that give us our food - so we can maintain our sprawling car-centric lifestyle ? Is that part of a progressive agenda ?

The International Council of Shopping Centers reports that holiday sales at mall & shopping center stores had it's worst season since 1970.
But were sales and gift giving down ?
For the most part, on my end, it wasn't. A lot of the gifts given and most appreciated were handmade by local artists, craftsmen and family members.
For some time the "shop local" mantra has been trudging along and gaining some traction.
This article from the Noose Son describes the popularity of knitting these days. In Cincinnati there are several knitting groups including CinCity Stitch and the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library offers a knitting program at some of it's branches.
Add to that the local galleries and craft shows/fairs in Cincinnati like the annual Holiday Arts Fair in Northside early every December and The monthly open houses in Oakley and OTR, one has to ask himself how much these individuals making and selling unique items are affecting the sales at big box stores selling generic electronics and stuff.

Cincinnati Unchained
Saturday, Nov 22, the biggest local shopping event of the year goes down.
BuyCincy is sponsoring a citywide event to promote "shopping local", featuring deals at 44 Cincinnati stores.
In Northside, Shake It Records, Melt, NVISION and Shoetopia are participating.
Up north in College Hill, American Heritage Flooring, College Hill Coffee, Bacall's Cafe and the ever cool St Theresa's Textile Trove are participating.
Up the other hill to the south, the Mustard Seed Boutique and Duttenhofer's are offering discounts.
For more information and to see wnat other stores and neighborhoods are participating go here:
www.buycincy.com/unchained.html

The Numbers
On Monday, 11/17, the Cincinnati police performed a sweep of a violent criminal gang mostly residing in the Northside community. The police claim the gang had about 100 members.
That night I went to a Northside Community Council meeting to hear Councilwoman Qualls discuss Form Based Zoning Codes and got an earful about the big bust. I also heard the Community Council's Membership Secretary, Melody Smith, report that the number of citizens active in the Northside Community Council topped out at just over 200.
The population of Northside is a little over 9,000 with about 6,600 adults. this means roughly 3% of the population are officially active in the community. Obviously you don't have to be a member to be active and not all the members actually do anything. From what I have seen, probably less than 2 dozen people are actually doing 99% of the work. From what I have heard, Northside is one of the most involved communities in the city.
So, how the hell can our communities improve when the numbers of people who give a pooh are so close to the numbers of people who want to tear the community apart and establish a warlord type rule of fear and violence ?
My level of community involvement works out to about an hour a week (woopteedoo). I am not a member of the NCC but I think I might just go down and plunk down the $5 membership fee. If Northside's 9,000 residents each put in an hour a week toward their community, the neighborhood would put wealthier communities in the area to shame. Just communicating and being aware of what is going on is incredibly important.
I am probably preaching to the choir, but -GET INVOLVED.
Here are links to other neighborhoods websites councils in Cincinnati.

Camp Washington
Clifton
College Hill
Columbia Tusculum
CUF
Downtown
Hyde Park
Kennedy Heights
Madisonville
Mt. Adams
Mt. Lookout
Mt Washington
North Avondale
Oakley
Over the Rhine
Pleasant Ridge
Roselawn
Sayler Park
University Heights
Westwood

Wrecking Springfield
Taking the lead of Building Cincinnati, I give you a one shot of Wrecking Springfield. A few interior pictures of the soon to be demolished Springfield North High school and some shots on and around Plum Street of homes slated for demolition to make way for the big new hospital.
North High


Plum Street