Thursday, May 15 2014
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Cranley Reveals Straightforward City Budget
Before the beginning of the new fiscal year on July 1st, the city is required to pass a new budget and Mayor John Cranley has just released his plans to do so. According to the administration, his is the first balanced budget in more than a decade — that is, for every dollar spent, another dollar is cut. Further, the new budget hasn't proposed any layoffs or raised any taxes and also manages to close a $22MM budget gap. The only catch? It relies on a favorable federal judgement of the current mediation between the City and municipal employees.
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Taste of Cincinnati Bigger and Better Than Ever
Memorial day is right around the corner and as is customary in Queen City, so is the Taste of Cincinnati. This year marks the 36th anniversary of the edible event which kicks off on Saturday May 24th. Besides longer hours, organizers have announced that there will be more vendors this year than ever before. Last year, more than half a million hungry foodies were part of the feast.
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Holiday Inn May Be Coming Downtown Thanks to Recent Council
Thanks to a more positive financial outlook, City Council has approved two ordinances that relax some requirements on developers and paves the way for a new Holiday Inn to be built on the corner of 7th and Broadway Streets. Business Courier reports that the ordinances revise a development agreement from 2011 in a number of ways, most notably, removing a reference to the funding source of a new garage on Sycamore. Council has agreed that the city should pay for the new garage but has no idea how do that.
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Hamilton County Sheriff Cites Audit Detailing Department Changes
After taking office as Hamilton County Sheriff back in 2013, Jim Neil ordered an audit of his department to help find efficiencies and processes that could be streamlined. The result of that effort has concluded and the HCSO says its key areas of concern are pretty much what you'd expect: staffing, technology, and training. While the report contains praise for the officers it also states that they are resistant to change.
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Midterm Elections Fan the Flames of Voter Limitation
If you're a politics nerd, you know that mid-term elections are this fall so it should come as no surprise that the persistent war to limit voting eligibility is back on, again. And Ohio, being the swing-state that it is, is one of the hottest battle grounds for this sort of shenanigan, most often perpetrated by right-wing conservatives. In recent years, Secretary of State Jon Husted went to extraordinary lengths to limit early voting hours. And more recently, the dust-up about whether to move the Board of Elections out of downtown has caused a stir among political operatives here at home.
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