I watched out my bedroom window as she showed the officer her cell phone (which carries a signal from her wireless service that maintains the exact real time, lapse a 10-30 seconds). She was rather upset – the ticket costs $50 – but the officer would not even budge.

So, I went out and said I looked on the two computers I had open and on, both with automatically updated Internet time (also very accurate) and my cell phone and said she was right and he was wrong. His response? Look at the ticket.

She showed me the ticket. “8:00 a.m., April 2, 2010.” No Day-After April Fool’s Day joke here. I told him that even right then, as we “discussed” the ticket, it was only 8:01 a.m. so there is no way it was after 8 a.m. when he wrote the ticket.

I encouraged the woman to go to the ” parking court.” Court, in this case, is a closet with a hearing officer (“judge”), an appointee who also works as a lawyer someplace else, who almost always lets parking violaters off the first time they appear before him (or sit next to him, as is the case in Hamilton County) and usually halves fines if you take the time to go on subsequent visits. I know this from personal experience – I had a few “surprise” tickets when I lived in Over-the-Rhine. The surprise was I never got them, likely removed from the windshield by some board passer-by (and we had more than our share of those types). The excuse took with the judge  because I had actually paid, on time, other tickets over the years.

But this all comes at a cost: The experience for those living in downtown Cincinnati. It is one we cannot afford right now. And this is a stupid way for the city to make up expenses in a gigantic budget hole.

In an effort to beef up parking enforcement, officers (the parking kind, not police) have been armed with electronic ticket-writing devices that dramatically speed up the process. There apparently also have been several new hires in the past 18 months or so, making the force larger than it has been in recent years (this is an observation). Couple that with a more than doubling of the original $14 fine (as it was until 2005, late, as I recall) to the now $35 fine for parking at an expired meter, and I think we have ourselves a grand way for the city to make money for itself.

Good. No new taxes, right? But it comes at the expense of creating massive discontent about living downtown. Parking spaces – like on Perry Street – still reflect an industrial alleyway where trucks needed to park throughout the day. Now, it’s low-hanging fruit for parking enforcement folks and the bane of people who live in the former warehouses and manufacturing facilities now converted into townhomes, condos and apartments – the people who are making downtown work again.

Should parking on the street be made legal for anyone? No, but there are best practices from other cities of similar size that allow for residents to park on the street near their residence.

Cincinnati has a similar ordinance. Why haven’t you heard of it? It’s pretty fascinating, actually. Passed in the early 1980s, but it has never been used once, because the burden for residents to enact is nearly insurmountable. Why? Who knows for sure. It was either an extremely poor piece of legislation or doing exactly what it was intended to do. I have (or had) a copy of the ordinance, and some accompanying complaints by current and former Council members, and will track that down and discuss that in a future post.

The visitors’ center is the first LEED platinum certified buliding in Ohio. Seems like they are doing their darndest to fix a horrible wrong

But Paul Daugherty, the Enquirer’s incredible sports columnist (and I don’t typically even like sports – but his columns are great) does a great first-person about what happened… Here is an excerpt… link at the end.

At 10 AM Tuesday, I was handed a severance package and shown the door. Literally overnight, I went from being “the future of the radio station” (Parks) to the parking lot. The whole transaction took 5 minutes. Since I’d never been “severed” before, I don’t know if that’s the norm. And obviously, there is no “right” way to do that sort of thing. Regardless, it was entirely classless and, from what I’ve heard from others within ClearChannel Cincinnati, not atypical.

via Cincinnati Enquirer | Cincinnati PluckPersona | Cincinnati.Com.

Here’s the “Who” part of the press release sent out this morning. Note that the regulars are at the beginning, added by an ever-increasing amount of, well, relatively strange folks to be at a census office opening.

Mayor Mark Mallory, Hamilton County Board of Commissioners President David Pepper, Ohio Governor’s Regional Director Brewster Rhoads, Ohio State Representative Denise Driehaus, Director of the U. S. Census Bureau Detroit Region Dwight P. Dean, Cincinnati Local Census Office Manager George Conner, Reverend Doris Hoskins, Lebanon High School Color Guard, Cincinnati Public School of Creative and Performing Arts harpists and vocalist, and a host of Cincinnati and Hamilton County leaders and dignitaries…

Why night have the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, all the employees of Duke Energy, the Westwood Blue Devils 4th grade softball team, Larry Flynt and the ghosts of Marge Schott and Peanut Jim there, too?

It’s all happening at 2 p.m. today at the local census office, 801 Linn Street, 4th Floor, Cincinnati, Ohio 45203-1603 (map).

I agree the census is important and more important than past city leaders have made it. It just seems like a lot to do for an office of literal bean counters. Funny, too. Might have to go just to see the grand spectacle.

Here it is:

I mostly like what was said, aside from the “never talk off the record” part and no mention of “never lying” to a reporter, which is something I think people fall into a lot.

At the end of the class we were asked to role play a crisis situation discussion with a member of the media. The person I’m working with runs a small private school and the scenario we came up with a child was picked up by an authorized person, namely a parent who did not have custody, and was now missing. I played the reporter. We decided to keep it light (after hearing a class full of people take it seriously).

Indian Hill official dies in crash | Cincinnati Enquirer | Cincinnati.Com

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In a memo distributed today to all non-unionized employees at The Gannet Co., The Enquirer’s parent firm, a top executive announced that workers must take a five-day unpaid furlough from their jobs before the end of March.

“Like others, Gannett has had to make some very difficult decisions over the past year,” stated the memo, written by Robert J. Dickey, Gannett’s U.S. Community Publishing president. “Having to reduce staff, reformat newspapers and end delivery to some customers has had a deep impact on our company and all of us. We have consulted with many of you on how to minimize the impact on our readers and customers.”

The memo continued, “As a result of your feedback, and in an effort to minimize the need for more layoffs, I have decided to take another approach as we enter 2009. To that end, every non-represented employee in the USCP division will be furloughed for five business days during this quarter. That includes me, your publisher, everyone. Unions will be asked to accept furloughs in lieu of layoffs. We all will be sharing the financial hardship.”

via Enquirer: No Pay For You.

The Dayton Daily “news” wasn’t at the Dayton Public Schools school board meeting yesterday when they voted to give an open ended $108,000 PR contract to the Cleveland political consulting group, Burges & Burges. However, the Dayton Daily was at a Fazoli’s in Huber Heights to cover a corporate PR stunt of giving away 25 $3 bowls of spaghetti.

Some area spaghetti lovers got a free plate of the stuff Saturday, Jan. 10, and a reminder about the most important rule of success – you have to show up.

via 25 win free spaghetti for a year from local restaurant.

via When it comes to giveaways, Dayton Daily cares more about spaghetti than your tax dollars | Esrati.

I post this because it brought a tear to my girlfriend Melissa’s eye when she saw and heard this YouTube clip. She loves Al, a guy she called “The Silver Fox” very much, saying he was one of the good guys who treated her fairly and with respect. Watch the clip closely and read between the lines, and if you know anything about the politics of this fire department or a general assumption about many public safety professionals, you can see, with tears in his eyes, why this guy is obviously a big loss for the citizens of Cincinnati.

The Cincinnati Enquirer had a nice article about him that ran the day after his last tour on Dec. 26, 2008. I’m headed to his retirement party now.