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Cincinnati City Councilman Jeff Berding is hoping the third time is the charm for his struggling reelection campaign.
Berding recently decided to switch campaign managers for the second time in three months, replacing Dave Schaff. It’s now likely that Berding will temporarily fill the campaign manager’s spot with someone from his city council office.
Turnabout is fair play, and the maxim looks like it's holding true when it comes to swapping positions between Jim Tarbell and Roxanne Qualls.
Tarbell is stepping down from Cincinnati City Council Sept. 3 due to term limits and arranged for Qualls — a former mayor — to finish his term to give her a leg up in this fall's elections. Now it appears that Tarbell is the frontrunner to assume Qualls' seat on the board that oversees Cincinnati's bus system, according to sources close to the deal.
While attempting to listen to a recent Reds game, I ventured to 700wlw.com, assuming the team's flagship station could provide me with the always entertaining late inning adventures of the Cincinnati Reds. The first thing I learned was that WLW doesn’t stream Reds or Bengals games due to league broadcasting restraints. I decided to sneak a peak at one of the uber-enlightened local radio hosts before I left the page, and I was stunned to find a photo of a half-naked woman staring directly at me.
Last week’s issue of CityBeat outlined planned changes to the long-stalled Banks housing and shopping district that involve doubling its size and increasing the amount of public subsidies proposed to $110 million, or nearly 20 percent of the project’s overall cost.
With taxpayers already footing the bills for the new Bengals and Reds stadiums along Cincinnati's riverfront, as well as the cost for redesigning Fort Washington Way and installing new infrastructure such as sewers and roads, there's a growing public sentiment to rethink whether building The Banks makes sense.
Greg Harris is saying something you won't hear from many, if any, other candidates for Cincinnati City Council: The Cincinnati Police Department needs reform.
Harris' critique goes beyond the reforms established in the past five years by the Collaborative Agreement and the city’s memorandum of agreement with the U.S. Justice Department. Those reforms largely focused on use of force, racial profiling and other issues directly related to civil rights.
What Harris has in mind is something rarely heard, namely that the leadership of the police department is ineffectual and has caused serious problems in morale. Indeed, as Harris points out, city council seems to go out of its way to avoid serious oversight of the police department.
Rumor has it that The Cincinnati Enquirer is negotiating to buy the online version of The Cincinnati Post and keep it alive after The Post's days as a newspaper end Dec. 31. Everyone seems to know something about it, but no one's willing to share details.
If you have any information, please drop me a line here. Or just post the information in a comment for all the world to see.
— Gregory Flannery
(Photo: Catleton.edu)
I never developed an appreciation of the flag fetish, so it's always struck me as funny to see so many cars, front yards and lapels decorated with the American flag. It’s as though people fear they'll forget what country they're in unless they see constant reminders. Do people in, say, Mauritania have flags all over the place, including their clothing, or this just an annoying American habit?
Today I arrived to find a gargantuan American flag filling the space behind my desk. A golden eagle, wings spread, sits atop the flagpole. Certain persons at CityBeat — let’s call them “members of the sales staff” — seem to believe I suffer a deficiency of patriotism. Before I knew what was going on, a particularly — what's the word? Oh yes — fanatical sales exec was at my desk reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. To my horror, he even corralled an innocent new copy editor into joining him. I feared my poster of Bob Marley would fall off the wall or my gas mask — given me by a San Francisco anarchist for protection against police tear gas — would burst into flames.
Picked up a new flat panel? Going high-def? Instead of putting the old boob tube out by the curb, recycle it free of charge in October. OK, so there’s some effort, time and gas involved, but that's a small price to pay for not dumping more crap into your local landfill.
Hamilton County Environmental Services will take and recycle old televisions (all sizes, consoles and combo units), VCRs DVD players, DVRs, satellite receivers and cable receivers Oct. 11 and 12. Pre-registration is required by Sept. 25 by calling 513-946-7719 or on the agency’s Web site.
As The Cincinnati Enquirer today trumpets Jungle Jim’s victory in Cintas Corp.’s 2007 "America’s Best Restroom Award" contest, Cintas is facing more serious allegations in a federal lawsuit filed by a labor union.
In a lawsuit that was unsealed today, Unite Here — a garment and textiles union that is trying to organize in many Cintas facilities nationwide — alleges the company defrauded the federal government in the performance of several service contracts.
The lawsuit states that Cintas knowingly submitted falsified documents with the government in order to obtain millions of dollars in payment under the contracts. The suit alleges that Cintas fraudulently represented to the United States that it provides employees working under the contracts the full measure of wages, benefits, vacation and holidays required by the federal Service Contract Act.
Faced with sagging poll numbers and automated telephone calls attacking him on the issue, embattled Cincinnati City Councilman Jeff Berding recently did a turnabout on whether any city-owned swimming pools should be permanently closed.
Although council is on summer recess, Berding last week introduced a proposal that instructs city administrators to find the money needed to keep all swimming pools open next year from mid-June until school resumes in August. During the past two years city council has struggled to find the cash to keep the pools open, opting to close some early and close others on alternating days.
Berding proposed that administrators take $140,000 from City Hall's $800,000 annual travel budget and use it to keep the pools open longer. Council’s Finance Committee will decide on the issue in coming weeks.
The proposal is at odds with what Berding proposed last winter during contentious budget negotiations at City Hall.
