Neighborhood improvement plans offered
By Kevin Osborne
Cincinnati Post
August 16, 2005

With four weeks left until the primary election, Cincinnati's mayoral candidates are offering competing visions for improving the city's neighborhoods.

City Councilman David Pepper will unveil his plan today for neighborhood investment that calls for focusing city services along major corridors and in so-called "rapid redevelopment zones."

Pepper, a Democrat, proposes that the city concentrate enforcement sweeps along the corridors, which he called the "front doors to our neighborhoods."

Under the plan, several city departments - including public services, community development and police - would coordinate their activities. The efforts would involve street and vacant lot cleanup, cracking down on blighted properties and crime prevention, Pepper said.

Initial corridors that would be targeted by Pepper include Glenway Avenue in Price Hill, Harrison Avenue in Westwood, Burnet Avenue in Avondale and Reading Road in Bond Hill.

"These streets are the front doors to our neighborhoods, but we treat them like our dumping grounds," Pepper said.

"As mayor, I will conduct a major cleanup, add trees, improve safety, develop the business districts and remove blight on these and other major corridors that run through our neighborhoods," he added.

Also, Pepper wants to better leverage the city's development money by bringing together multiple private investors in concentrated areas known as rapid redevelopment zones.

Instead of smaller redevelopment projects scattered throughout the city, the effort would attempt to assemble joint-investment deals to promote development centered around newly built schools or revitalized business districts such as in College Hill, he said.

Another mayoral contender, state Sen. Mark Mallory, has criticized Pepper for being part of a City Council that cut funding for neighborhood councils.

City Council reduced the Neighborhood Support Program from $10,000 per neighborhood group annually to $7,000 because of a budget crunch.

Mallory proposes that Cincinnati sell the Blue Ash Airport, which the city owns, and create an endowment fund for the neighborhood groups with the proceeds.

Each neighborhood group would receive $20,000 annually under Mallory's plan. The groups could bank the money, allowing the interest to accumulate.

"For the first time in history, Cincinnati neighborhoods will have access to significant financial resources," said Mallory, a Democrat. "They won't have to beg any longer for the peanuts that City Council has been giving them."

Further, the groups would get greater discretion about how the money should be spent, he said.

As long as any submitted project was deemed an eligible public purpose, it wouldn't require City Council approval. Mallory said such purposes would include streetscape and business district improvements, along with "innovative crime reduction programs."

In 2003, city officials rejected requests from the West End Community Council - reacting to a rash of shootings - to hire private security guards for street patrols.

"We don't need to micro-manage every project," Mallory said. "Instead, this plan will give neighborhoods some of the financial tools they need to accomplish their goals."

Vice Mayor Alicia Reece, a Democrat who also is seeking the mayor's office, said the city should make greater use of local, state and federal programs to leverage private investment in neighborhoods.

Reece wants to offer incentives similar to the federal New Markets Tax Credit program. Created in 2000, the program is designed to attract private-sector capital investment into urban centers or low-income areas.

Individual and corporate taxpayers receive a credit against federal income taxes in exchange for making qualified equity investments in eligible community development projects.

Moreover, Reece believes the city should use its financial leverage to press local banks into providing more aid to inner-city neighborhoods under the federal Community Reinvestment Act.

"We should say to them, 'if you're not in our neighborhoods, we can't invest in your financial institutions,'" she said. "It's that simple."

Reece said she has continually pushed for neighborhood projects during her City Council tenure, noting she helped earmark $2 million from an insurance windfall to help redevelop Burnet Avenue in Avondale and Peebles Corner in Walnut Hills.

Reece criticized her competitors for releasing neighborhood plans. Numerous neighborhoods have city-funded development plans intended to guide their growth that haven't been implemented due to a lack of funding.

"The last thing we need are more plans," she said. "The biggest thing is putting the plans in action and having bulldozers in our neighborhoods.

"For me, it's about investing and creating timetables for getting it done so people can stick us to them," the vice mayor added.

The other major candidate in the mayor's race, Republican Charlie Winburn, has kept his campaign tightly focused on crime and safety issues.

Winburn, a preacher and former City Council member, said the most effective neighborhood development is reducing crime so people feel safer about living in the city.

Mallory, Pepper, Reece and Winburn - along with three independent candidates - will face off in a nonpartisan Sept. 13 primary.

The two top vote-getters will advance to November's general election.