6/21 Council meeting comments

 

What the city is doing and the "chosen zone", also known as the Highland District, is treating that area like those getting first dibs on the Titantic lifeboats. The city knows precisely what it is doing...protecting that area's property valuation ahead of others. Yes, I know where Ms. G lives, and others, but MK, LM, others, live in an area they exert and leverage every ounce of power, favoritism, and croynism to lower the fall of property values when they are in free-fall every corner of Middletown, at taxpayer expense, and exquitable consideration for all residents.

 

Does anyone honestly not recognize the hypocrisy surrounding spending $500,000 on Cincinnati State and desiring to plug that into the Manchester and the Cinergy Building, when destroying so many others in town? Its straught forward, no pHD required on that chess move. It is to protect the area on Main using taxpayer money for what was hoped, prayed, visioned, an escape hatch for the residents down on Main as the crumbling came around the block. That is the sole reason for pushing Cincinnati State and taking $500,000 in cash to buy property and try to pump up the area LM, MK, others, live. The CS deal isn't about saving Middletown, adding more to educational diversity, but to create firewalls around those that know what carnage has been dropped on Middletown by city hall and council.

 

So Mr. Gordon, when throwing in the check-out cart THE MONEY PIT for C State, the Verdin project, that's nearly a MILLION in cash and reserves creating the Main Street firewall. As sj correctly stated, now the at large council will be in play in the future, allowing the city to determine who carries their water and does their bidding, the residents, analogous to Titantic sinking, will be stack ranked in importance, with deals being struck left and right hat have nothing to do with bettering the city. The C State deal and PAC fiasco was just a smoke screen to create the perimeter, the smoke screen, the fire wall, for the Main Street club.

 

Too bad the city isn't laying asphalt in my neighborhood and haven't in > 25 years, in a neighborhood of homes that once sold north of $325,000. First dibs of course go to building the fire wall for Main Street, and that's why the State and PAC deal, and shuffling of buildings in musical chair sequence, was orchestrated. We all can't be "dummy downed", and we should not be paying for the firewall on Main. The idea of course, was there would be some college profs, maybe a President, who would be interested in buying real estate down there, and maybe advance around the hospital. Nice area in the 1930's, but C State will focus their eyes out by the highway of they do anything.

 

Personally, I find the area across the bridge in Franklin on the Carlise side, to be more appealing, with the Harding museum and the river flowing. As one of the Board members at C State said, "why are we buying or leasing a musuem"? Finally, as for traffic, the speed flow is not 20 mph, and that street takes little abuse, and is not a heavily traveled area. I still don't comprehend why street lights aren't included in the money the city already got from the public safety levy? 

 

In my opinion,      

     

 

 

 

So what if it costs the taxpayers $10K or so???  Money is no object to these folks as long as it is OPM (other people's money)!!!

Mr. Adkins stated at a city council meeting several months ago that the City was filling out the paperwork for the Ohio Historical Society so the city could file grants for the Highland District and South Main Street. What happened to these grants?? When Mr. Smith inquired if this grant could be used for the cemetery Mr. Adkins stated he didn't know.
Mr. Adkins also stated last years that CDBG funds were going to be used in the Highland Disitrict since it was one of his "TARGET AREAS". 

Good crowd, good time, & good weather for a change!

 

I have heard, although no idea if true, tax deparment and city hall has stack ranked residents from net worth on down, and same with companies. Obviously AK and Atrium at top, city even pays for a police officer to be out by Coke plant for hours daily, just like they did at Hook Field, guarding it like it was Ft. Knox.

 

Dunno why or why not, just know dunno what's up nor what's down with city hall. Sure hope your rumor about the return of Huesman is unfounded. I do know that they are spinning round and round. City taking a mighty fine interest in the Sr. Citizens Center. Wonder of that's to buy YES votes, tit for tat. Everytime I get a peek and offer to be inside the circle of love, I run fast from the dark side of town.  

 

You've answered my question about the need to accompany an ambulance on every run, and I guess I buy that to some extent, so perhaps you can explain this other item that nags at me; correct me if I'm wrong, but do our firefighters work 24 hour shifts?  And if so, what, exactly, is the reasoning behind that?  My gut tells me it harkens back to the old days of volunteer fire departments, when it made sense to have one set of volunteers cover for an extended period, say, 24 hours, and the firefighters could eat, sleep, or do whatever during that shift, but what exactly is the reasoning behind that today? 

 

As I alluded to in my earlier post, I know of no other continuous operation that schedules its crews in such a way.  My gut also tells me that this is the preferred schedule for firefighters because it allows them to have most of the week free to pursue part-time jobs or other interests.  Is that the case?  Can you tell me, from your own judgment, what portion of the firefighters have part time jobs?  And let me be clear, I have no issue with a person who feels the need to work two or more jobs to make ends meet--good for them, they're several notches in character above the many deadbeats that drag us down through section 8, welfare, etc.  But the issue I have is that we seem to cling to this antiquated system of 24-hour scheduling in order to 1) allow the fire fighters to work other jobs, as I've said, and 2) maximize the overtime opportunities for the firefighters.  Also, if you are at the station for two 24-hour shifts per week, how much time is spent sleeping in that 48-hour span?  Don't get me wrong, I would never expect any of you to be awake for 24 or 48 straight hours--that would be crazy and dangerous.  But I would guess that at least 12 to 16 hours are spent sleeping during that span, so the actual available time is a lot less than 48 hours per week.  Now I don't doubt there have been times when you've had to get up from sleep to answer a call, so it's not as though you're completely unavailable during this time, but my point remains--we're not getting truly 48 hours per week of productive work from the firefighters.  This brings me to the conclusion that we would get a far better value and would need fewer firefighters if they worked 12 hour shifts and were, of course, awake for the full 12 hours.  And iff the firefighter staff were reduced by 10-15% this would be a significant savings to the city without any material loss in service.

 

If you can give me a compelling reason, why, for example, you don't work 3 or 4 12-hour shifts per week like nurses do then I'll shut up and stop asking quesitons about this topic.  Thanks!