BuckeyeBlog

The city of Toledo, as every other city, including Columbus, is enjoying the idea of defunct downtowns becoming quaint urban lofts and brownstones (talk about your pendulums: Cleveland’s Millionaire’s Row was torn down for urban renewal; now everyone wants to tear that down to rebuild Millionaire’s Row).

Of course everything has its costs, and one of them is increasing noise problems. Apparently all the empty nesters and hip youngsters in Toledo don’t want all that shouting coming from all the bars that they want to be able to go to at all hours of the night.

This is just another face of the overpopulation problem identified by P.J. O’Rourke: Just enough of me, way too much of you.

James Nesbitt hits a home run with this entry.

First he catches a reporter actually writing this: “With a 5.5 percent tax during that same time period, the city’s profit would have been . . .”

Profit? Good Lord, if we’re going to editorialize with vocabulary, let’s call it theft. Much closer to the mark. It’s tax revenue, not profit.

Then he catches a good Ohio mayor thinking he’s got someone over a barrel. The city of Mason threatens to impose a discriminatory tax (which should be unconstitutional, by the by, but another time) and the victim business threatens to leave. Our intrepid hero the mayor says not to worry: ”Grossman remains skeptical whether Kings Island can take any action.  ‘I would be surprised if they could de-annex on their own say so,” he said. “I know it is a big company and I know they have lots of resources and power but de-annexing from the city, in my opinion, is not a viable option.’”

Got that, see? Yous guys can’t do nuthin’, see?

“Kentucky Kings Island” has a nice alliteration to it, doesn’t it? Plus some nice hills and river views.

Make it happen, Mayor Grossman.

It’s pretty common to see home builders advertise on billboards around the outer loop of any city, certainly including Columbus. It’s common to see those signs advertising "Homes starting in the 110’s" and "Pickerington Schools", too.

A few years ago a would-be developer in Pickerington ponied up a few hundred thousand dollars, I think the initial figure discussed was something like $500,000, to help building new school buildings. It ended up being less, something like $300,000, still not chump change. (Sadly, the board of education, in its wisdom, folded the money into its $50 million budget, which meant that the large fund had no affect whatever on any student or anything done at the school, except that it caused the treasurer to write a slightly different sum in his projections than he otherwise would have.)

There’s a developer in Illinois who’s done something similar, except he was smart enough not to give it to a school board. He built a charter school instead .

Now there’s an impact fee Ohioans could live with.

“While Riverview is not Mr. Shaw’s first go at real-estate development, it would be his first successful project.”

Ouch.

It’ll be enough victory that, if he fails, he takes only investors’ dollars with him, and not taxpayers’.

And ditto if he succeeds. Good luck, Mr. Shaw.