Thanks to 5chw4r7z for the photo.
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Do Downtown Restaurant Week
Starting on Monday, August 10 you can find some great dining deals downtown! The Do Downtown Dining Group is putting on this week long event to encourage a night on the town as the summer starts to wind down. Twenty-two different restaurants are offering special deals for $35. Depending on where you go, you can get either two dinners or a three course meal for that price and while the menu selections are somewhat limited there is definitely something for everyone.
Check out an old haunt such as Arnold’s and build yourself a three-course dinner from their menu (pdf) for the week. Start with the Arnold’s Crabcackes, followed by Drunken Salmon, and topped off with the Super Brownie. Looking for a vegetarian option? You could try some Eggplant Bruchetta, a Wild Wild Wild Salad, and the Pasta Androski.
Get dressed up for a night on the town and head to Orchids at Palm court which was named by Cincinnati Magazine as the best restaurant in town for 2009. There are two choices from each of their courses (pdf) which will get you a salad, a great looking entree, and a dessert. Or be a little adventurous and head up into the Gateway Quarter and try out Lavomatic (pdf). Start with a Rabbit Salad, enjoy a Sea Trout for dinner, and have the wonderful Chocolate Macadamia Tart for dessert.
Try a candle lit dinner at Scotti’s or head to the uber-colorful Bootsy’s. Try some Korean or Indian or go a little more traditional and head to Montgomery Inn or Morton’s. Give downtown a go this coming week, your taste buds and the local economy will thank you for it! (It should be noted that this is a separate event from the semi-annual one hosted by Greater Cincinnati Independent Restaurants. Their fall Restaurant Week is coming September 14-20.)
The 17th annual Cincy Blues Fest takes place this weekend (8/7 – 8/8) at Sawyer Point along the Ohio River in downtown Cincinnati. This year’s festival will feature more than 50 local, national and international Blues acts on three different stages.
Friday’s performances will start at 5pm and last until midnight and cost $10 at the gate (free for Blues Society members with membership card). The headliner on Friday is award winning vocalist Janiva Magness.
On Saturday the music will start at 2:30pm and once again last until midnight giving you plenty of time to work your way up to the newly opened Righteous Room in the Backstage District downtown. Back to the festival…Saturday’s nearly nine hours of music on three different stages will cost you $15 at the gate (once again, free for Blues Society members).
Event organizers say that there will be lots of food and refreshments including Cincinnati’s own Little Kings and Christian Moerlein beer products. For a full list of performers and volunteer opportunities visit the event website: http://cincyblues.org/.
Be sure to keep the Blues fun rolling on Sunday at Cincinnati’s historic Findlay Market for its Blue, Brews and BBQ. The 2009 Blue BBQ will feature some great BBQ cooked up by the Essen Strasse Grillers. Event goers will also be able to grab a beer at the OTR Biergarten, and listen to three different Blues and Gospel bands. This event is free and runs from 10am to 4pm on Essen Strasse.
The news came out yesterday about how many City employees will be cut in order to help balance Cincinnati’s 2009 budget and better position the 2010 budget which is projected to have a $40 million gap.
319 jobs will be eliminated in total, with 138 of those coming from the police department. That means 319 households across the region that will have to face difficult decisions in the coming weeks about their personal budgets. Potentially 319 people and/or families could be without health insurance. 319 people without the sense of pride one has from going to a job day in and day out knowing that they’re contributing to society.
These are tough losses no doubt, and it’s unfortunate that some individuals and organizations are turning this into a political opportunity. Yes it’s terrible that 138 people from the police
department will lose their jobs, but it’s just as terrible that people from the Health, Public Services, Sewers and Water Works departments will lose their jobs as well.
It is easy to focus on public safety when budget time comes around. This is why you so rarely see cuts to police or fire, but often see personnel cuts in other departments. Public safety is after all a core function of government, but it should not be placed on a pedestal like it so often is.
These are tough times for our city, our state, our region and our country. We need to take a step back and figure out where we are, where we want to go and how we plan on getting there. We need to do so in a reasonable way that isn’t trying to score political points, but rather looks at the issues for what they are and discusses them in a productive way. We need to grow our revenue streams while we reduce our expenditures. Cincinnati needs to position itself to come out of this recession strong.
The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) and the Ohio Rail Development Commission (ORDC) last week announced that they have jointly developed a website called 3CisMe, which will serve as the main hub for information surrounding Ohio’s proposed 3C (Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland) rail corridor. Although the name of the site is admittedly lame, the site itself is quite useful.
3CisMe is meant to both inform the public as to the progress of Ohio’s 3C rail line and serve as a sounding board for critics and boosters alike. In addition to being one way that the ODOT and ORDC will disseminate information on the progress of the project, a “public comment” section will allow citizens an opportunity for their voices to be heard. Some of those comments will even be featured in the application for funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (better know as the Stimulus Package). Ohio must turn in its application by October 1.
The current 3C proposal would allow travelers to travel between Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland, and Toledo, collectively home to 60% of the state’s population. With stimulus funding, Ohio’s “quick-start” plan would be operational by 2011.
This system will link in with a larger mid-west network, servicing Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Omaha, and Kansas City. The Chicago Network Hub would serve as the gateway to the west. The 3C corridor is well suited to link with the Keystone corridor, a network of rail lines servicing New York, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and the rest of the east coast.
A March 2009 Quinnipiac University Poll showed that nearly two thirds of Ohioans favored re-establishing passenger rail in the 3C Corridor. Some want to see it happen because they know the economic development potential it creates, while others think the 3C corridor would be useful because they don’t want to put the mileage on their car, or they don’t have a car at all. While some want to travel by train because it is more relaxing than traveling by car or plane, others like the idea because it will allow them to be more productive, like this commenter from the site:
“Several times per year, I have to travel to Columbus for meetings and training. Whenever I go now, I lose at least 5 hours of productivity per trip. On the train, I could use a laptop to keep up with my e-mail, tend to paperwork, have telephone conferences, and sometimes even meetings with coworkers. These things can’t be done in a car.”
Just one parting thought: There is a proposed amendment to the Cincinnati City Charter that would require a vote each and every time the city wanted to invest in a new phase of planning or constructing passenger rail. If it passes in November, neither the State nor the Federal government would be able to count on Cincinnati as a stop on the system. The timeline on this project is one that will require cities and states to efficiently compile an application for funding. If Cincinnati cannot commit in a timely manner (and it would not be able to commit without going to another vote if this passes), the Federal dollars will go to one of the other 278 projects in 40 states that have already submitted pre-applications as of July 17.
Cincinnati would be offered another transportation choice with rail, but the city could easily be left out if the amendment passes. Passing the amendment would reduce travelers’ choices, and leave Cincinnati at a competitive economic disadvantage. For more information on the potential negative implication of the proposed amendment, please see the Cincinnatians for Progress web site. Though I disagree with them, for the other perspective on the amendment, please click here.
Note: to visit the 3CisMe site directly, go to http://3cisme.ohio.gov/ and please note that it does not include the www in front like many sites. Source for this post.