Channel 9 News has a good reputation for reporting uncensored news and investigates news tips.

But to be fair, a google search for all the regional news outlets is showing nothing at all about an incident this week at MHS.  There is one Fox19 story about a mom upset that her daughter is getting a 10 day suspension for filming a fight at Highview Monday, but that's it.

I'm not being sarcastic, Tomahawk, just being honest.  If there's any proof that there was an incident - and the cell phones were confiscated - then those involved need to stand up and speak out.

Sometimes in our schools there are incidents that involve students with special needs that, when isolated by a 15 second video on a phone, can be either blown out of proportion or are just out of context.  But - it I were a student and had my phone confiscated because of something like this - I'd be speaking up about it.  If I was the parent of the kid and I bought them a cell phone and it was confiscated (and I've seen kids all over that campus on their phones at all hours of the day, so it's not a permissive issue) I think I'd be pretty upset and speak up about it.

If the incident happened - those involved need to speak up...otherwise it kinda resembles slander when revealed in this manner.  Again - I'm not trying to say it didn't happen - but if that's true there's a heck of a story that any number of news outlets would love to get their hands on.

1. A teacher (at least an adult was seen stepping in to stop the fight - not students).

2. Only one phone was taken according to the report

3. The student was suspended after taking the phone back to the classroom and showing the video to others

4. Neither the parent nor student would show their faces.

5. No discussion of said student's prior disciplinary history.

6. Parent only going to appeal length of suspension not overturn it.

Methinks there's more to this story...I'm not really sure what the Journal would have reported.  There was a fight a Highview.  Happens everyday.  What would have made this newsworthy?

You seem to have an "unorthodox interest" in documenting the diminished number of active MUSA Blog members and those expressing displeasure with city government priorities, policies, plans and programs.  You should spend additional time going through the MUSA Blog archives over the past 10 years.  You'll find quite a number of now inactive members who factually voiced concerns regarding the actions of One Donham Abbey staff and city council counterparts.  You'll find that a number of participants grew tired of posting along the way because senior city staff and city council never paid much (if any) attention to their concerns.  It had become an "exercise in futility" for some that continues on to this day.

It would be interesting to know your personal take on the costs/benefits and failures/successes derived from the $20+ million spent since March 2009 on economic development, downtown revitalization plus older neighborhoods improvements.  What say you?  Please be specific if you choose to reply.

I don't need to go through the archives, I've been here for it and seen the decline firsthand.

If you think you could do a better job, come and see me at my office.

In the meantime, we do our best to keep the site open to free speech as much as possible. 

John,

The blog remains the only venue in the city that promotes free speech and diversity of thought.  Thanks!

mr.b--thanx 4 all that u have done here

has 2 b a difficult  juggle

much appreciated

don't know what else 2 say about these situations

groundhog day?

deja vu all over again?

You're so far off base it borders on the absurd.  I've commented on the shrinking userbase on exactly two threads on this message board.  It is not unorthodox for a long time user to look around and say "Where did everyone go?"  If you think it is, then I don't know what to tell you.

When there are threads where I feel like giving my input, I have done so.  Whether it was for or against city policies, that has varied based on my opinions of those specific topics.

What I have not done, and will continue to not do after this comment, is engage in your multi-year unorthodox - nay, unhealthy - interest in doing not a single thing but grind your personal axe against a city administration that you have not worked for or lived in for nearly a decade.  Because to engage in that would be like wearing a belt made of watches...simply a waist (waste) of time.

But hey, you do you.  Just leave me out of it, I have no interest in being sucked down that rabbit hole.

Here is where we might disagree, VVet....

The former downtown area IS improving imo. Certain privately-owned small businesses are filling a need and taking hold. They are trying everything to succeed, and things are slowly materializing. I patronize a few of these businesses, as do many others that I know and recognize. I see more activity in these locations every day. Is every day sunshine, happy and successful?? Of course not--it is not an easy journey. I expect to see many ventures come and go, as with anywhere. I DO NOT see much improvement in the other parts of the city unfortunately, which I find very troubling. I wish our admin would show equal love to so many others struggling for survival and as deserving or more to receive municipal support. DMI needs to reach out to the community and show that everywhere and everyone else matters just as much(maybe more so!).

I(and many others) want far more than "blue collar" interests. I enjoy the arts and find them to be an attraction. Finer dining, realistic shopping options, better entertainment options spread throughout the community.  IMO that is the only way to bring this city back where everyone shares in the enthusiasm and positives. Many are beyond tired of having to travel elsewhere for even basic clothing and appliance needs. We are honestly lucky to still have an honest nutritional foods availability at all(and that continuance is far from assured).  We are seriously struggling in that regard. Our schools continue to struggle, our drug/crime situation is not good, and the all-important employment situation(a serious driving force) has honestly not improved. We are lacking in appeal to everyone outside looking in. With Austin, Liberty and such, that fight is long lost. 

To a large degree, I lay most responsibility on our continuing merry-go-round of elected and hired officials. Their lack of REAL inclusion and forward change is holding us back. They need a serious re-evaluating look in to the mirror and ask themselves if they honestly should continue in their positions

Also comes the real responsibility for the rest of us. We need to step up to accentuate the positives and mentor our future generations to regain community pride and self-worth. Being a serial dependent, slacker or always negative force isn't helping. I honestly believe in a lot of our city manager's/admin's intent, along with our police ands emergency depts.

We need them to improve their methods and communication skills, and not give in to blow-back. A lot of the distrust has been well-earned imo.

So--shut up--step up--and do your part and more. Hopefully it will be contagious.

We all have equal responsibility to be as constructive as possible to improve our situation.

Should seem natural, and there honestly isn't a reasonable alternative.

The primary issue was/still is the city's record of costly and mostly ineffective "downtown" commercial redevelopment hand-outs.  Maybe, just maybe, Doug Adkins and his staff will eventually become more competent when it comes to highest and best use, cost-effective and productive taxpayer-funded assistance priorities, policies, plans and programs 

There are local real estate, banking, commercial development, seasoned business professionals and resident advocates in the city who could and should be be called upon to help craft "real world" strategies for the "downtown" and older neighborhood areas.  People such as Paul Renwick, Walter Leap, Steve Dillman, VietVet, Whistersmom, John Beagle, etc. need to be engaged.  Back in 2007-08, this was the case insofar as the city's HUD-funded home ownership and owner-occupied housing rehabilitation initiatives were concerned.

IMHO, the "brain trust" at One Donham Abbey needs to be much less isolated and more meaningfully resident inclusive in terms of assessing and creating various city redevelopment goals, objectives and programs.  And, the Middletown Journal editorial staff needs to be somewhat less Police Gazette oriented in its reporting thereby promoting the city in a far more positive and hopeful light.

Spider, VietVet may not be in total agreement, but, you both have a committed and long-lasting concern for the city.

Thought it was interesting!

=======

Sunday, October 14, 2001

Middletown finds its way

Industrial town grapples with change

By James McNair

The Cincinnati Enquirer

a MIDDLETOWN � It's Sunday-morning quiet downtown on Main Street. Stoplights change for cars nowhere in sight. The Sorg Paper mill, shut more than a year ago, stands solemnly like a penitentiary wall at the west edge of town. Ben Ligon's 76 Service is servicing nothing.

 What makes the scene so contradictory is that this is a Friday, not a Sunday. Banks, government offices and stores are open. But the real Main Street, with businesses teeming with customers, is 10 miles away � at the city's lone link to Interstate 75.

Mr. Ligon, a wiry 66, doesn't seem to mind the lulls between doing oil changes. The gas pumps are long gone, and his two bays are empty, as is the Snack-Rite machine inside the propped-open front door. Still, Mr. Ligon stays open from 8 to 5 and works Saturdays.

 �It's just something to get away from home,� he shrugged.

 Many cities and towns share the dilemma of stagnant downtowns and suburban flight. Middletown, though, has a more fundamental problem at its doorstep: Trying to make itself over as a diversified business center after a century of dependence on steel and paper.

 The effort stems partly from the recognition that Middletown, perched squarely between Cincinnati and Dayton, has a future as a regional business hub and commuter haven. But there's another factor beyond the city's control: The continuing unraveling of its primordial manufacturing sector.

 In May 2000, Sorg Paper called an end to a 148-year run and laid off its last 200 employees. Square D, an electrical devices maker, is dislodging 250 workers through the phased shutdown of its 101-year-old Middletown operations. And AK Steel � the successor to Middletown's longtime corporate benefactor, Armco � has said that a slumping steel market and new environmental-compliance mandates could force it to halt raw steel production and eliminate 2,000 local jobs.

 The upheaval in manufacturing goes back several decades and has made Middletown less self-contained and less certain of its identity. More and more, natives are going elsewhere for work.

 �The aim of most of my classmates in 1951 was to get a car and get a job at Armco,� said City Council member Fred Sennet. �But today, it's tough to keep a kid in town because there are fewer jobs in the steel mills and paper mills. It's tough to keep his parents in town.�

 To this day, the city of 51,000 owes its economic vibrancy to steel, paper, airplane parts and other assembly-line industries. AK Steel, Middletown's biggest employer with 4,000 local workers, is the steel industry's most profitable producer. More than a dozen factories chug away in the unglitzy business of making corrugated boxes, industrial toilet paper and other paper goods.

 �There are a lot of businesses in Middletown that don't get a lot of play,� said Larry W

Jobs abundant

 If there's anything wrong with being a factory town in 2001, it isn't readily discernible.

 The unemployment rate for the Hamilton-Middletown market was a nearly invisible 3.3 percent in August, a big improvement over the 7 percent of 1993. Plant workers at AK Steel earn an average of $60,000 a year. AK's Web site advertises jobs starting at $45,000 with all the benefits one would expect of a Fortune 500 company.

 Middletown has come a long way in toning down its blue-collar image. With its borders now stretching to I-75 and into Warren County, the economy includes a greater base of retailing, service industries and construction.

 As of August, 16.7 percent of Middletown-Hamilton's nonagricultural work force toiled in manufacturing, down from 20 percent in 1993, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time, manufacturing accounted for 18.6 percent of the state's work force, 19.1 percent of Dayton-Springfield's. Cincinnati was at 15.3 percent.

 City income tax collections also shed light on the shift away from manufacturing. Business and industry contributed 7 percent of income tax receipts in 2000, down from 11.6 percent in 1989. The rest comes from individuals and sole proprietorships.

 Andy Haney, president of Local 2258 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said the Square D closing will send even more residents out of town for work.

 �I would say that's going to happen because Middletown is not really that big a place,� Mr. Haney said. �Other than AK Steel, it's going to be hard to find a job in town right now with the kind of wages and benefits we make here.�

 Hourly workers at Square D earn an average of $35,000 to $40,000 a year, he said, and about three quarters of them live in the city. For every worker who finds employment where the local income tax rate is the same or higher, Middletown will lose a trickle of revenue.

Two Middletowns

 Middletown's growth to the east and I-75, meantime, has essentially created two Middletowns, one with the factories and dormant downtown, the other with the mall, restaurants and middle-class subdivisions. The differences will be even more pronounced in a matter of years.

 Both Bishop Fenwick High School and Middletown Regional Hospital plan to relocate toward the I-75 corridor. The moves would boost Fenwick's draw as a regional school and enhance the 310-bed hospital's ability to serve a broader market.

 �The population outside of Middletown proper has been growing at double-digit rates,� said Larry James, vice president and chief marketing officer for Middletown Regional Health Systems. �We want to make ourselves more accessible as possible to patients from those areas.�

 With the hospital alone spending $125 million and moving 1,500 employees, the city aims to move in lock step. Plans call for the annexation of nearly 400 acres near I-75, including what would become the hospital and Fenwick sites.

 Somehow, downtown boosters are optimistic.

 Central Avenue, the town's historic shopping venue, is being disinterred from a mall structure that entombed the street in 1973. A commercial disappointment, the City Centre mall wound up costing the city $500,000 a year to heat and cool. The price tag to renovate the four-block downtown sector: $13 million.

 Earl Back, a retired iron worker who has lived 60 years in Middletown, is skeptical that downtown will ever amount to much. So is Mr. Ligon, the service-station owner. To him, the abandoned Sorg Paper plant is a huge liability.

 �They need to tear it down and put a casino in there,� Mr. Ligon said.

Leaving the past

 Like many Rust Belt burgs, Middletown is learning how to wean itself of old, patriarchal industries.

 For about a century, the city practically owed its existence to the factories who employed its ablest men and created a flotilla of local contractors and suppliers.

 Paul Sorg, one of the richest men in America in the late 1800s, was Middletown's biggest employer and benefactor as the owner of a tobacco plant, the paper mill and a hotel. He also built the city's opera house, where locals can treat themselves to classics such as Babes in Toyland and Bizet's Carmen. Sorg's 35-room Romanesque mansion still anchors a row of elegant Victorian homes.

 George Verity took it to the next level. His American Rolling Mill Co. began steel-making operations in 1901 and made the city a nucleus of world trade. Armco helped bankroll the construction of public buildings, schools, parks, swimming pools and community centers. It sponsored countless events and civic initiatives.

 In 1961, Armco employed more than 50,000 people in 139 countries. In Middletown, its payroll approached 8,000. To many generations, it was said, Middletown was Armco.

 �You name anything in town, and Armco and its employees had something to do with it,� said Mr. Sennet, the city councilman. �You wanted to get a school levy passed, they'd get the troops out. They built the Armco Recreation Center in the south end of town. They had a hand in expanding the hospital. They sat on boards. Every group that was worth anything in town was created by Armco.�

 Today, the relationship between the city and the company is more arm's length.

 Through a series of ownership changes, Armco became AK Steel. Maintaining an active philanthropy, AK accounts for about $500,000 in corporate and employee United Way giving every year and it pledged $500,000 to Middletown Regional Hospital last year for a cardiac emergency room. It threw a 100th anniversary party for 40,000 people last year. It committed $250,000 toward the construction of soccer fields and other facilities at Jacot Park.

Not company town

 But industrial leadership and profitability � and pleasing shareholders � are what make AK tick.

 �We recognize as the largest employer in town that we play an important role in the economic engine of the area,� said AK spokesman Alan McCoy. �We choose to play an appropriate role in civic direction. We're involved, but not hired to drive. We don't intend to run this town; we intend to run this company.�

 AK Steel also operates in a much different regulatory environment than Armco did.

 A year ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency filed suit against AK Steel, accusing it of air, water and solid-waste pollution. It didn't come as news to residents of the Oneida neighborhood on AK's southern perimeter. They say soot from AK smokestacks coats their cars and homes. Not only that, they say, it stinks.

 �The siding on my home is practically ruined,� said Raymond Agee, a retiree who lives on Navaho Street. "I've taken to washing it by hand with an SOS pad. You can't just take a hose and wash it off. I was raised in this neighborhood, and it was never this bad.�

 Clark Thompson, whose house on Seneca Street is less than a mile from the nearest AK mill, said he wears a respirator when he mows his lawn or blows leaves. He said his air-conditioning intake filters are black.

 �Basically, if you live in or around AK you expect some odors, some minor fallout or soot, but it's clearly gotten increasingly unbearable in the past five years,� said Mr. Thompson, general manager of a specialty machine company in Middletown. �People in Middletown realize that AK Steel is vital and don't want it to suffer, but they have to be held accountable.�

 AK asserts that, if anything, it has eliminated emissions substantially over the years. If the court sides with the EPA, the company could have to pay million of dollars in fines. Either way, the government is getting stricter in governing steel mill pollution, and AK Steel is looking at spending $80 million to comply.

 Mr. Wood, of the Middletown Economic Development Corp., said he knows of no instances of companies spurning Middletown because of foul air. Still, in the organization's promotional brochure, little mention is made of the town's lifeline from steel. The brochure contains not a single picture of the sprawling AK Steel plant.

 It also sidesteps the city's underperforming public schools and nagging crime rate.

 According to the Ohio Department of Education, Middletown schools failed to reach the bar on 17 of the state's 27 performance standards in the 1999-2000 school year, mostly proficiency test scores. Meanwhile, FBI statistics show the city racked up 64.3 serious crimes per 1,000 residents in 1999, or 50 percent higher than the urban Ohio and national average, yet lower than Hamilton's 78.3 per 1,000 and Dayton's 95.1 per 1,000.

On the upswing

 But city elders believe Middletown's fortunes are on the upswing. Sam Ashworth, executive director of the Middletown Historical Society, said he would like to see the city use its industrial heritage as a springboard to the future.

 "I think � and I hope � that the future brings some higher-tech sort of organizations to the area,� Mr. Ashworth said. �I can see that happening with Butler County and I do think that Middletown is in a good position for that.�

 Seizing on the city's geography, Mr. Wood has resorted to pillaging companies from Cincinnati and Dayton. His agency's radio spots, touting Middletown as �the heart of Southwest Ohio,� beckon on stations in those cities.

 �We're sitting in the middle of 2.8 million people, and there are businesses that can strategically serve their customers better from here,� Mr. Wood said.

 Several companies have made the move, he said. One was Terminix International, which closed offices in Cincinnati and Dayton and consolidated its 60 employees in Middletown, said branch manager David Joles. The company provides commercial pest control in a 120-mile area from Northern Kentucky to Wapakoneta, Ohio.

Subdivisions appear

 Home buyers are buying into the concept, too. Along I-75 on Middletown's amoeba-like eastern edge, subdivisions are springing up on what used to be farmland. Homes priced at $200,000 are marketed to urban professionals who want more space.

 �Middletown's greatest asset is its location,� said John Sawyer, a home builder and owner of Sawyer Realtors in Middletown. �The wife might work in Dayton and the husband in Cincinnati. You can be in Fountain Square in 40 minutes from Middletown, easy.�

 New residents might be surprised by the amenities of their new home. Middletown has a symphony orchestra and a fine arts center, a championship golf course and a branch campus of Miami University. On the first weekend of October, it again hosted its Middfest International, a celebration of the culture and food of a different country every year, this time that of Greece.

�There are still people in Cincinnati and Dayton who perceive us as being a grimy and industrial town,� Mr. Sawyer said. �It isn't.�

This kind of look-back has to produce the same feelings in all of us as it does Viet and me.  The reality is this city has wasted the last 20 years with its proverbial head in the sand...while the rest of the area eclipsed us.  Even Franklin has done a far better job realize where their growth was coming and did all they could to make themselves business friendly - and have reaped benefits from that understanding.

We've go no jobs in this city.  Until we fix that - we've literally no hope in revitalizing our city and continuing to pour money into the Munsters Basement that is Downtown is only making it more difficult to attract real business and jobs to this city

Thought the article was a pretty interesting look back to '01 and how it seems nothing has gotten better - in fact, have only gotten worse.

The plan:

1. Jobs

2. Jobs

3. Jobs

4. Jobs

They're so important to a community that I firmly believe that jobs solve every problem by simply bringing life back to the community, giving young men busy hands (idle hands are the devil's playground), filling the city coffers and where there's some jobs - more jobs will always follow.

We're too worried about 'housing stock' which is an issue (but guess what will fix that issue?  JOBS!  Get jobs and people will build bigger, better homes.

We're too worried about houses going down the drain - we should have required bonds on these out of state no-face companies against this sort of thing to financially protect the city.

We're never going to see the east end develop until we re-zone so much of that 'residential property' that's 1000 feet from the highway off-ramp.  No one is EVER going to live there - but Starbucks and Chick-fil-a would love to have that property....and a small industrial park would bring jobs!  Snowballs chance on that one.....

There's so much more to do...and little costs us anything but it can REALLY reap us huge benefits....but then again there's a bunch of decrepit, decayed and dilapidated buildings downtown that need new facades - because we all know that the facade makes all the difference....but it's just lipstick on a pig.

Actually, lipstick on a pig is what I would describe pretty much everything our Administration does.