Laure Quinlivan Blog : Cincinnati

Leave your mark on Cincinnati and help beautify an important gateway by sponsoring a bench or flower planter for the Purple People Bridge.  The planter and benches will have plaques with the names of sponsors built into them.   Call me at 352-5303 to donate.  Here's the story in today's Enquirer: http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20110518/NEWS0108/105190338/

Watch the video on my home page

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There was no such thing as an Iraqi female politician at the turn of this century, but everything changed after the fall of Sadaam Hussein in 2003. 

A group of female Iraqi parliament members met with me in my office this week. We asked questions of each other and shared a few stories.  They told me about 25% of all politicians in Iraq are women now.  I asked how life has changed for the average woman since the fall of the regime. One replied, "She is busier."

They all wore headscarves and beautiful smiles.  They have been to DC, Denver and LA and will end their trip in NYC.  They told me they thought Cincinnati looked "poorer and dirtier" than the other cities they'd visited.  Um..not what I hoped they would say, but revealing none the less.

Today pianos painted by students in the city summer art program "ArtWorks" are out and about in Cincinnati.  You can find two at Fountain Square and one at Music Hall.

Each piano has a "piano buddy" who is supposed to cover it with a tarp whenever it's about to rain.  Anyone can stop and play.  I can do chopsticks...and Heart & Soul...

I got a special tour of the pianos a couple weeks ago as the artists were applying finishing brushstrokes

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ArtWorks students come from high schools all over Cincinnati and they also are doing big outdoor murals on buildings in neighborhoods.  A professional artist supervises. This program won a national award this year, so kudo's to Mayor Mallory for starting the program.

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By Jeremy Jackson, Intern to Council Member Quinlivan

Two wrongs don’t make a right is the newest message from Keep Cincinnati Beautiful. The non-profit organization was recently chosen from a national list of cities to institute a pilot program that will seek to eliminate litter in Cincinnati by creating a number of prevention ads.

July 18 is the official introduction of the program, but the office of Council Member Laure Quinlivan got a sneak peak on the litter prevention ads. 

The ads include a series of one-liners, such as “Breaking up on Valentine’s Day, kicking your grandma’—Littering is wrong, too”, all of which were created in a humorous light in order to appeal to a younger demographic aged 18-34.

Gearing the ads to a younger base will assist in spreading the word through the social media platforms that that age group uses everyday, says Linda Holterhoffer, executive director of Keep Cincinnati Beautiful.

“We want this campaign and the people who support it, to interact with Facebook, with Twitter, and with our website,” said Holterhoffer. “This will enable us to get the litter prevention word out quickly.”

Aside from keeping Cincinnati clean, the campaign makes financial sense, too, according to Holterhoffer.  She says it costs Cincinnati $95 a ton to pickup garbage that is properly disposed in trash bins, but it costs the city a great deal more, upwards of $600 a ton, when the city uses prisoners from the sheriff’s department to collect garbage from the side of the road.

 “As you can see, there is a definite advantage to picking up our own garbage, or better yet, not littering at all. That’s what this campaign is all about,” Holterhoffer said. 

If you want to learn more about the litter prevention campaign, go to Litteringiswrongtoo.org.

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This was written by Jeremy Jackson, an NKU intern for Council Member Quinlivan.

Why demolish when we can deconstruct some of the city’s condemned buildings?

Council Member Laure Quinlivan wants to promote the environment and create job training opportunities by partnering with Building Values, a nonprofit salvage company. Building Value recycles building materials and keeps waste out of landfill.

The salvaged materials—which range anywhere from bathroom and kitchen fixtures to larger items, such as vintage fireplace mantels and stained glass—are all transported to the Building Value retail store, where they are sold to the public.

According to the store’s director Jerry Janzen, the process of deconstructing facilities benefits Cincinnati twofold. First, by having an 82% salvage rate with each facility they enter, it’s a boon to the environment.  But also, Janzen says the deconstruction process trains people with workforce disadvantages, allowing the workers opportunity to receive on-the-job training in order to bolster their resume.

“We’ve given them one building to deconstruct, and now I hope we can give them more,” said Council Member Quinlivan at the Quality of Life meeting June 8. “We’re working with our building department to see what we can do, and we’ll bring something forward.”  

If you would like to see video on Building Value’s deconstructive process or view their retail store, click here. You can also visit their website at http://www.buildingvalue-cincy.org.

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This blog was written by intern Adam Clark, from Xavier.  He attended the last Citizens Budget Review session for me on Satuday, June 5.  Here's his report.:

I attended the Citizens for Civic Renewal city-wide budget hearing this past Saturday, June 7th and came away with plenty of information, but a few questions as well. Let me walk you through the experience. I arrived at 9 AM at the Cintas Center and walked into a room with about sixty people in it. The group was very diverse in many respects. There were people I recognized from all over the city and some people I didn’t recognize, which is good. It means that some new faces were out here to discuss the budget. Vice Mayor Qualls, Councilman Thomas, and Councilman Young were in attendance as well as some members of the administration. I sat at a table with seven other people: Jenee (I did not catch where she was from in the city),  Vanessa from Over-the-Rhine, Steve from Roselawn, Terry from Westwood, Clara from Downtown, Gail from Roselawn, and our moderator Isabelle from Pleasant Ridge.

We were given budget worksheets and a sheet describing how each of the cuts would effect the department being cut. We then went around the table and talked about our priorities. Several expressed an interest in not cutting police and fire. They said that would could not afford to cut city services like police an fire. Others said that there is no way we can get rid of a projected 50.4 million dollar deficit for 2011 without cutting something from police and fire. Some voiced that taxes are already too high and we cannot afford to raise them and remain competitive in Cincinnati. One person even suggested that we eliminate the Human Services budget. Wow. After much deliberation our group found a way to balance the budget, but it in no way pleased the entire group. This just represents the differing priorities of all citizens in Cincinnati, which begs the question: how can council balance this budget in December in a way that will please the citizens? and will they?

My opinion on the budget is that a 50.4 million dollar deficit is a big one, and city council will have to make some unpopular moves to balance this budget. Police should take about a 10% cut, Fire and EMS should be about 5% with EMS touched as little as possible, the smaller departments should all take a small cut, we should raise the earnings tax by about .08%, look at instituting a Volume Based Trash Fee with some kind of recycling incentive built into it (hopefully more on that later), and raise the admissions tax to 8%. I do not think we should touch the property tax.

The process that we went through was interesting as the moderator had us talk about different aspects of the budget and we even discussed some things that were out of our control and put them on a piece of paper as ideas to be considered. These were things such as modernizing street parking downtown, consolidating services with the county, and getting the county to fund the Metro bus service (definately more on this later). Some people were not happy that we did not get to look at the entire budget (just the general fund) and that we did not really have a breakdown of exactly what each department spends its money on. I certainly agree that those things would have  been advantagous, but all of that information would have taken weeks to digest. As it was we were very limited in the three hours that we were there. All-in-all Citizens for Civic Renewal did a good job with this event, and I expect them to tweak the process to make it even better in the future. The recommendations  that we made will be presented in a meeting between Steve Johns of CCR and the City Manager.

Here is the Channel 5 coverage of the event (I make a few appearances in the video and the print version)

I sponsored a resolution which Council passed 9-0 Wednesday to provide free city water to the new Firefighters' Memorial space which will become a new public park at the corner of 6th & Central.  It's a tiny concrete patch now.  They break ground this summer. 

If you'd like to support the project you can purchase bricks with your name on them for $50 or $100. Call 404-8618.

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GreenSource is a great new place downtown to see all the latest "green" technology in action.  They have a living roof, greywater and rainwater reclamation systems, and lovely rooms in all recycled materials. 

The building dates back to 1875--just shows how much potential we have in Cincinnati to recycle our old buildings into the latest and greatest.

I presented a plaque to owners Ez and Will Housh, the father and son team who've built this wonderful place.  It's open by appointment, located on East 8th Street across from the library. 

Then outside I got presented with a flying pig with green wings. I'm giving that to my baby boy...his first piggy bank.  That's Alan Werner standing next to me.

Photos of this event are in the Gallery.

I went to the Art Academy today to watch more than 600 people participate in a design charette for our new casino.This fabulous idea came from the architects international association whose members did something similar last year for Ft. Washington Way, then gave all the results to the City -- for free. 

People divided into 4 rooms and brainstormed. I overheard some fabulous suggestions; a green roof for the casino, courtyards to break up the big building, verifiable energy efficiency and emphasis on reduction of waste (no styrofoam perhaps?)

It's so good to see so many people who care about our fair City.  The casino offers a wonderful opportunity and events like today increase the chance we'll make the most of it.

I am meeting with people every day to prepare for Council duty.  We get sworn in at 11 am Tuesday, Dec. 1. The balcony at Council Chambers at City Hall will be open to the public so I hope to see you there.

Today I went to a supplier diversity session hosted by CPS.  One of my goals is to help improve the City's use of minority and female businesses.  It's not all about construction, and I think we really need to reach out more in the professional services areas.

So far, I'm doing a lot of reading.  Today over lunch at T's, I started on the City Charter. Sound boring?  Could be to many, but not to an investigative reporter.  We love this stuff.