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Thursday, May 22, 2003
Their Athletic Department Must Be Scrounging for Every Buck
While U of Miami hasn't officially bolted the Big East yet, it seems like a matter of time. So, for those in the ACC, who are looking forward to having them, you can be proud to know that they are threatening a Florida highschool with copyright infringement (Via Hit & Run)
We're talking about the Hurricanes trying to crush little Umatilla High.
"I guess we got Miami worried when we won the district championship last year," cracked Kent Merrill, president of the Umatilla High School booster club. "I thought Miami was trying to join the ACC, not the FHSAA [Florida High School Activities Association]."
If you think the other Big East schools were shocked when they learned about Miami's ACC money grab, think of how Umatilla felt when they received a "cease and desist" letter from UM lawyers recently. The letter informed Umatilla that the "U" in its logo was too similar -- criminally similar -- to Miami's. It seems the Hurricanes have a trademark, giving them exclusive rights to the unique "Split U" design.
We're talking Umatilla here, folks. This place is so small that the local library closes whenever somebody borrows the book. Umatilla is a suburb of Eustis, for crying out loud.
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Translation: Miami has told Umatilla it can keep using the logo -- as long as it pays UM $2,000 a month.
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Cynthia Beamish, the UM attorney who sent the letter, would not comment when contacted Wednesday.
Umatilla, Florida, the Gateway to the Ocala National Forest. Because it is clear that people would confuse the Umatilla Bulldogs with the University of Miami Hurricanes, not to mention the obvious impact on their sale of Miami logoed gear.
Cleveland's NYC Approach to Parking Downtown
Cleveland City Council has decided to extend the meter hours for parking downtown during the week. Instead of meters operating until 6 pm, they will now go until 10pm.
The ticket for parking at an expired meter costs $25.
Restaurant and bar owners have complained that their businesses are taking a hit because too many metered parking spaces are taken by downtown workers staying late or coming in for night shifts, forcing patrons into more expensive lots.
They claim that extending the meter enforcement time will lead to more turnover and give people coming downtown for food or entertainment a chance to find a meter.
"This is about creating more affordable parking for more people downtown," said Councilman Joe Cimperman, whose ward includes downtown.
Most of the area affected by the change is around the Warehouse and Gateway districts.
Tom Yablonsky, who heads the development groups in both neighborhoods, said the law reflects downtown's evolution from a business district into a residential and restaurant district.
"We're trying to make it a 24-hour, user-friendly zone," he said. But Safety Director James Draper said he knows of no other major city in the country that requires meters to be paid past 6 p.m.
Enforcing the new hours will require more manpower from the traffic bureau, he said.
Weeknights. Weeknight street parking is being extended. They can spin and claim anything they want, but this will, simply, make it more expensive to work or play in downtown Cleveland during the week, without doing anything to alleviate the alleged lack of street parking. Downtown Cleveland meters have timers that go anywhere from 2 to 4 hours ($0.25/half-hour). Downtown lots during the week (excluding Friday), cost around $4 flat to park in after 6pm. Guess which is still cheaper? People coming into downtown for night shifts, or even the bar and restaurant employees, are the ones getting screwed out of more money and risk of parking tickets for a minimal increase in street parking.
Simply put this is dumb. In the Warehouse and Gateway districts, the closest parking to most bars and restaurants is in the various parking lots. If you do get a street spot close to where you want to be, there is nothing to stop you from going back to feed the meter -- thus, still no turnover in the space. There just isn't that much street parking, though, available within the same or closer distance for the increased hours to make sense. People who are being cheap and do not see a little walk as a major hardship (like myself) will park as far as 10 blocks further away when going downtown in the evening for a ballgame or to meet at a bar or restaurant downtown.
To enforce this extension, the city will have to increase by 20 manhours per week at the traffic bureau -- overtime and additional employees. This looks like a money loser for the city.
Cleveland Visitor & Convention Bureau -- Mostly Cloudy
John Nolan, the suddenly embattled president of the Cleveland Visitors & Convention Bureau of Greater Cleveland (CVB), has been placed on paid leave while the spending at the CVB is investigated and reviewed. This comes just one day after Mayor Campbell called on Nolan to take a leave. A more cynical and distrustful person might instead think that the CVB is going to be whitewashed and Nolan scapegoated -- especially when the man to oversee it, Dennis Roche, is a consultant for the Greater Cleveland Growth Association.
This is not the absolute worst time for this to happen for proponents of a new Cleveland Convention Center (that would be in October when it becomes a ballot issue), but this will only make it harder. Nolan is integral to the selling of a tax to pay for the new CCC. He has been a very public face on the issue of a new CCC. He is also on a committee that is going to recommend the financing options and site location.
The whole CVB is one big mess. How effective can it be when it has 41 employees and is overseen by a board of directors that numbers 63?
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Time Wasted
My friend Lee believes that, "bloggers are basically a group of people with too much time on their hands helping each other to waste it." Blogging is nothing, compared to this.
Cleveland Convention Center -- Clouding the Issue
Last night I noted that the embarrassing reports about how the Cleveland Visitors & Convention Bureau of Greater Cleveland (CVBGC) abuses its budget may help to derail the planned attempts to convince Cuyahoga County to pay for a new CCC. This morning, the biggest public supporter of a new CCC, the Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorial Board, agrees with me.
It is possible that within six months, the voters of Cuyahoga County will be asked to help pay for a new convention center in downtown Cleveland. And what was already sure to be a tough sell has just gotten tougher, thanks to a parade of embarrassing revelations about the quasi-public agency charged with enticing visitors to Cleveland.
Over the past week, stories by Tom Merriman of WJW Channel 8 and Sarah Hollander and Steve Luttner of The Plain Dealer have raised serious questions about how the Cleveland Convention and Visitors Bureau spends $5.8 million a year. After examining expense reports of the agency - which gets 90 percent of its budget from a countywide hotel tax and the balance from member dues - they found a pattern of lavish spending that all too often seems designed to benefit insiders rather than bring business to Cleveland.
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But as the recent stories pointed out, many of the perks went to the bureau's staff and board, people who are, presumably, already sold on Cleveland. WJW reported that the bureau spent more than $120,000 on tickets to Browns, Cavaliers and Indians games; more than 80 percent of them went to bureau insiders, not to travel writers or meeting planners who might actually route visitors here. The bureau also paid for lavish golf outings by Nolan and James Glending, who runs the city's current convention center. That disclosure has cost Glending his larger role as Cleveland's acting director of parks and recreation.
CVB Board Chairman Dennis Lehman, a vice president of the Cleveland Indians, now promises a thorough review of how the agency does business. He is bringing in an outside accounting firm to review spending and an independent law firm to explain Ohio ethics guidelines.
They aren't calling for CVBGC President Dave Nolan's head, yet. It would be that much harder to sell the new CCC if they fired him now. They will, though, at the first whisper of a chance that it would help sell the new CCC.
Mayor Jane Campbell, on the other hand, wants Nolan to take an "administrative leave" while there is an independent review of the spending practices of the CVBGC.
Mayor Campbell has very good political instincts. My guess is, she sees this getting worse, with the issue becoming Nolan and the CVBGC budget abuses, rather than the new CCC. She is taking a cautious position that Nolan should be minimized early.
Big East Death Watch
Not really anything new. Just pointing out that Josh Crockett has a new and more depressed than ever post on what has been happening. Meanwhile nothing is truly clear. In a surprisingly upbeat article, it seems the remaining Big East football schools, in an attempt to pressure BC and Syracuse to stay -- and by extension not make it worth Miami's effort to leave -- have made commitments not to leave for the ACC if BC and 'Cuse stay in the Big East (for whatever that is worth). It seems like it is too little, too late; but I can hope.
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
It's Now Getting Silly
You know that the whole Jayson Blair thing has gone totally overboard when Jim Rome devotes a whole segment during the first hour of his show today to ripping the NYTimes for not catching on sooner. Here's the written version
The New York Times’ run as the nation’s leading newspaper is over. I sure hope they enjoyed it. All good things, including 152 year runs at the top must come to an end. 27 year old reporter Jayson Blair, plagiarized and fabricated more than 36 articles that ran in the ‘Gray Old Lady’.
Great.
Nothing like swiping other people’s material and making up the rest for the preeminent written news source in the country. Check that…former preeminent news source.
The New York Times’ reputation as the standard-bearer is toast. The paper immediately tried to stick this on Blair calling it, “a profound betrayal of trust’, and ‘the low point in the 152 year history of the paper’.
Yeah, I’d imagine so.
And gold stars for the editorial staff that never caught any of this along the way. 36 pieces? Nobody ever once thought that maybe some of the information or sources were a bit shaky? Nobody thought that mixing in an editor might be good for the newspaper?
For the next several years, everything that runs in the paper is going to be looked at sideways. How the hell does this get by everybody. We’re not talking about one bogus article, we’re talking about 36. We’re talking about some that were absolute fiction.
Who isn't mocking the NY Times these days?
Blogger Crap
Bogus post to get a previous one published.
Back to the Convention Center Chatter, A Little Catch-Up
It's been something like 2 months since I last wrote about the Cleveland Convention Center (CCC). For the most part, talk of a new CCC was silenced, while the city, county and others pushed to get the Health and Human Services levy renewed and raised. Not that, as early as April, there wasn't some planning and plotting by some of the groups.
The committee will work this summer to come up with a financing proposal and study the five possible downtown sites for a new center, though it may not recommend one location. It will present its findings to elected officials in August.
The plan is to have nine people on the committee - three each representing the city, county and business community - though nearly a dozen attended last week's meeting.
Among the people who attended were Roman, Ronayne, Cleveland Finance Director Robert Baker; Dennis Eckart, head of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association; Dave Nolan, head of the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland; and Paul Alsenas, director of the county Planning Commission.
The HHS levy passed in the beginning of May. The day after it passed, the CCC was already back on the radar, of course it must be wrapped in a holistic economic growth tax plan.
Discussions about building a new downtown center formally resumed yesterday morning, following the passage of Cuyahoga County's health and human services tax the night before.
Business leaders and politicians need to determine which projects to pair with the center in time for a November vote on a countywide tax, said Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell.
"It's bigger than just the convention center," she said. "It's the convention center, the arts and neighborhood development."
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Voters already suffering from tax fatigue won't be asked to pass another property tax, Dimora said. Options include increasing the parking tax or taxes paid by hotel guests, or both, he said. Boosting the county sales tax would be the last option.
County commissioners have floated plans for including money for the arts in the convention center tax. And City Council President Frank Jackson wants business leaders to factor in hundreds of millions of dollars for development projects in Cleveland and suburban neighborhoods.
Jackson discounted criticism that his add-ons will drive the price tag so high that voters will reject it.
"The value it will create will be much higher than the cost," he said.
Have I mentioned that I have some land in Lakewood that I want to sell you?
Now the self-serving Forest City/Dick Jacobs proposal to place the CCC on W. 3rd Street had been met with lots of resistance, from its neighbors and as a multi-level structure didn't even meet the articulated desires for the CCC to be a single level convention center. Apparently even they figured it out. So, rather than try to push this obvious loser, they have now proposed a new and different self-serving site.
The company that suggested building a convention center on the edge of the Warehouse District now plans to lobby for a location between Tower City and the Cuyahoga River.
Forest City Enterprises still thinks the West Sixth Street site has merit, the company said in a statement released yesterday.
"However, opposition from our friends and neighbors in the surrounding area gave us considerable pause to reconsider our initial enthusiasm," Will Voegele, the company's regional director of development, said in the two-sentence statement.
Forest City officials would not comment further.
The company, which owns Tower City, in January unveiled plans for a center between Superior and St. Clair avenues, from West Third Street to West Sixth Street. Supporters said the site would be close to hotels, stores and restaurants and could reinvigorate Euclid Avenue.
Critics, however, said it was too cramped for a convention center and that the structure would dwarf surrounding historical buildings. Exhibit space would have been split over multiple floors, with part of the building spanning Superior Avenue.
Forest City now suggests building the center on part of 15 acres that the company owns behind the Tower City mall and office complex. The building would stretch between Huron and Canal roads and look over the Cuyahoga River, east of the new federal court building.
They have no real plans and only some preliminary drafts, but that is not important. What matters is it is right by their dying downtown mall-like property and hotels. As long as the public is footing the bill, it is important that Forest City Enterprises gets to be the primary beneficiary. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has been silent on this proposal, except for its "architecture critic," Steven Litt, who likes what no one has seen.
Now Forest City is working quietly to show how the convention center could be built along the Cuyahoga River, behind Tower City Center and south of Huron Road.
This idea is deeply intriguing for many reasons. For one, it would complete the raw, unfinished backside of the Tower City complex, now dominated by ugly traffic ramps and parking lots.
Even more important, a convention center on the Cuyahoga would be the first large-scale riverfront development in the city's history. It could announce to the world that the once-combustible river finally has become a source of civic pride.
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The horse race among the proposals is entertaining, although it borders on the surreal. There's no financing plan and no mechanism to build the project.
All we know is that the business community, led by Cleveland Tomorrow, the Greater Cleveland Growth Association and the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland, will recommend a site to the city next month. Then the city will have public meetings. Theoretically, a site could be chosen by August, the deadline for putting a bond issue on the ballot for November. At some point, the city and Cuyahoga County will figure out who's going to build the thing.
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Back to the convention center. If we have to have a new one, Forest City's concept shows real promise.
Neither Albert Ratner, Forest City's co-chairman, nor Will Voegel, its regional development director, would reveal drawings, which explains why there aren't any pretty pictures with this column. But Forest City has shown sketches to a growing number of public officials and business leaders, hoping to get their support and, perhaps, free advice on how to improve the plan before letting it out.
[Emphasis Added.]
So, the concept of some building on this riverfront is promising, even if it hasn't been seen and the last building proposal was ugly. I've heard of keeping an open mind, but this seems to be taken a little too far.
To be somewhat fair to Mr. Litt, after the ridiculous gushing about the concept, he does list some of the very key negatives about building on this site.
Side Issue May Help to Derail the CCC
(or at least make it a tougher sale)
Something good finally came out of the May sweeps. WJW, Fox 8 had an " I-team" report on how the Convention & Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland has been spending its money. Specifically, a $30,000, ten-day trip to Europe for its President, Dave Nolan, two other employees and a Continental Airlines executive
The bureau employees met with and entertained tour operators, embassy officials and travel writers.
They spent $1,500 for hotel bills in Paris, and $6,500 for receptions, luncheons and orchestra tickets in London.
They also spent a long weekend on the French Riviera, where the only business scheduled was entertaining an airline executive and getting to know France.
Bureau President Dave Nolan, two other employees and the Continental Airlines executive toured the south of France on the public dime for three nights, records show. One evening, they spent about $60 each on foie gras, sauvignon blanc, creme brulee and other dinner treats at a brasserie in neighboring Monaco.
This was part of the CVBGC's $150,000 "international marketing budget" that was scrapped this year. This has helped put the spotlight on the budget for the CVBGC.
The bureau's staff and budget have grown since Nolan's arrival from the Milwaukee visitors bureau in 1994. Its finances are now ample enough to cover $246,000 in annual compensation for Nolan, including a $595-a-month car allowance and a country club membership. Joe Zion, the executive vice president, has a bureau-supplied Toyota Sequoia sport-utility vehicle and was granted $4,000 for a weight-loss program in 2001.
In total, the bureau spends $6 million to $8 million a year to sell Greater Cleveland. Most of that comes from the bed tax: When someone stays at a $100-per-night downtown hotel, for example, $2.90 of the bill goes to the bureau.
In addition, it seems that Nolan used the budget to pay for outings for himself and other employees that ended up costing one county insider a nice interim gig.
Jim Glending was removed as acting director of Cleveland's parks and recreation department yesterday in the wake of reports that he went on a golf outing paid by the local tourism bureau.
Glending will continue his duties as convention center commissioner, a job he has held for more than 10 years. Natalie Ronayne, Glending's assistant, became acting director yesterday.
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WJW Channel 8 first reported this week that Dave Nolan, head of the Convention & Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland, spent more than $1,100 of bureau money on a weekend tournament for himself, Glending and their wives at the Avon Oaks Country Club in 2001. The expenses included costs for the tournament, carts, food, drinks and cigars, bureau records show.
In an interview this week, Glending told The Plain Dealer that the group played a weekend of golf only twice - in 2000 and in 2001. Glending said he thought Nolan paid for both weekends out of his own pocket.
Nolan said the outings were a good way to strengthen a relationship with someone he often works with. But after criticism of the outings surfaced this week, Nolan said he decided to end the practice.
Ohio law appears to consider such an outing unethical. According to a written opinion by the Ethics Commission, the law prohibits "any party who has business, regulatory or other relationships with a public agency from promising or giving a round of golf, cart rental and food and beverages, at a golf outing, to the officials and employees of the agency."
It looks like Nolan was the one acting unethically, but Glending took the fall.
Dave Nolan is one of the leading cheerleaders for a new CCC. He is a very energetic person, and can be quite the salesman as long as you don't look for facts. It will be very difficult to keep him behind the scenes. This will make the selling of the new CCC very interesting. Nolan will be working double time to spin this away from the CCC. The business leaders and other city and county officials have a real headache to cover.
What Does "Blighted" Mean?
In Ohio, a "blighted area" within a municipality is:
ORC 725.01(B) "Blighted area" means an area within a municipal corporation, which area by reason of the presence of a substantial number of slums, deteriorated or deteriorating structures, predominance of defective or inadequate street layout, faulty lot layout in relation to size, adequacy, accessibility, or usefulness, unsanitary or unsafe conditions, deterioration of site or other improvements, diversity of ownership, tax or special assessment delinquency exceeding the fair value of the land, defective or unusual conditions to title, or the existence of conditions which endanger life or property by fire and other causes, or any combination of such factors, substantially impairs or arrests the sound growth of a municipal corporation, retards the provision of housing accommodations, or constitutes an economic or social liability and is a menace to the public health, safety, morals, or welfare in its present condition and use.
This is how the City of Lakewood, Ohio (a suburb west of Cleveland) concluded an area was blighted.
Council designated the area as blighted after consultants D.B. Hartt Inc. said it was economically obsolete and included houses and other buildings without modern amenities.
Most houses in West End do not have modern bathrooms or modern kitchens or two-car attached garages, the report said. Many are on dead-end streets that overlook Cleveland Metroparks and the Rocky River gorge.
Wow. The house we live in is economically obsolete. Most of the houses in Cleveland and in the older suburbs would be considered economically obsolete.
Lakewood wants the property to turn it over to private developers "to build a $151 million complex of shops, theaters, offices, entertainment businesses and at least 200 condominiums." The mayor claims it is necessary to prevent economic decline and increase tax revenue. To accomplish this, the City will have to issue public financing of about $35.5 million plus the legal proceedings to sieze the land.
The homeowners who don't wish to sell are being representate by the Institute for Justice. The Institute for Justice has its own press release on the matter.
I'm not hopeful for the residents that want to fight. There isn't a lot of real protection from the courts or the legislature. The most the legislature has done recently was to require better and more accurate appraisals of the property, and that the acquiring body pay the market price.
Monday, May 19, 2003
Fair and Balanced
According to the wife, the "mommy message boards" still buzz quite a bit over an alleged link between the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccince and autism.
The controversy began in 1998 when Andrew Wakefield, then a specialist in gastro-enterology at the Royal Free Hospital in London, published a paper in The Lancet suggesting a possible link between the measles virus, a new form of bowel disease and autism which raised questions about the safety of the MMR vaccine. Dr Wakefield suggested giving children separate single vaccines would be safer.
Unlike most scientific controversies, which flare up and die away, this one has simmered on for the past six years.
It apparently hit its zenith in 2002, when there were some 561 stories in print, radio and television between January and September. Over half the stories occurred between January 28 and February 28.
The link is tenuous, at best. The overwhelming majority opinion is that there is no link, it's just that often when the MMR is given, it is near the same time that autism is diagnosed. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) reviewed the stories during 2002. They concluded that the media essentially added confusion and misled the public as to the actual risk and danger.
The focus of the story was the possible link between the MMR jab and autism, a fact mentioned in over two thirds of the articles. While the bulk of evidence showing that the vaccine is safe was used to balance the autism claims in half the television reports, only 32% of the broadsheet press reported this. The report says:
"Attempts to balance claim about the risks of the MMR jab tended merely to indicate that there were two competing bodies of evidence."
Two things stand out there. The obvious is the equivalence given to the two views as if they were equal in evidentiary weight. The other, though, is that print media -- the supposed less sensationalizing, and more analytical -- was not even bothering to mention that the claimed link had very little evidence or support to back it up.
Big East Death Watch
There isn't a lot to report on the Big East-ACC-Miami(-Syracuse-Boston College) matters. The Big East is having its annual meeting and making pitches to Miami to stay. Along with trying to pressure the other schools not to bolt (of course the key is to keep the other Big East schools (VA Tech) from trying to fill that opening).
This is such a money move on all parties. Miami is looking to at least break even on its athletic department. BC and Syracuse want to stay in on the BCS money. So does Pitt, WVU, Rutgers, and even Temple. Cinci and Louisville are seeing their best chance to get upgraded in their football status. The ACC (probably correctly) recognizes that 12 team conferecnes are the way to go in the BCS-college football world and sees itself as being potentially vulnerable if it doesn't act first (it has to worry about the SEC -- either going to 14 teams, or the Big 12 kicking out Baylor to get Arkansas back and the SEC raiding the ACC for FSU, GA Tech, or Clemson -- or even the Big East). The Big East football teams are fighting to avoid becoming a stronger version of C-USA, but still shut out of the BCS money and bids (no one buys that an at-large bid will ever go to a non-BCS conference). So, there isn't much energy in actual outrage. Just individual self-interests and some clucking at how this hurts individual programs that spent a lot of money to upgrade.
In rumors, despite numerous reports and statements that the Big 11 won't be expanding (or "pressured to react") there is support in the Big 11 to still do so. Pitt is still seen as the best choice (since it is assumed that ND still won't give up its football independence). A friend reports that Ohio State and Penn State want Pitt, and sports talk in Columbus (WBNS) and their callers love this idea. While the Big 11 meetings are coming up, and expansion isn't on the agenda, it seems fair to point out that expansion wasn't on the ACC agenda at its annual meeting either. Really, there is no rush for the Big 11. They can wait a year or two to decide, see if it might create more pressure on ND to cave, or go with Pitt. They have no fears or worries of being raided.
I fervently hope the Big East somehow prevails on Miami to stay, with the football programs splitting off. In my fantasy they would add Louisville and Cinci (and Temple would join full time), and then either raiding FSU from the ACC (just for the cruel blowback/backfire on the ACC) or somehow convincing ND it's time to fully join a conference. My second choice, has been without FSU or ND, but similar. If Miami and 2 others do bolt, then I have no choice but to hope Pitt gets invited by the Big 11 to join -- better to be in the Big 10/11/12 with hope for the BCS then apart and with nothing but seeing the program descend to mid-major hell.
"Screw the Moose"
Lileks on the NYTimes. Just read it.
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