CLEVELAND, Ohio — Dozens of U.S. House of Representatives members are asking automakers for a list of the vehicle models from which they’d removed AM radio receivers and their reasons for removing them.

Congress members say their constituents “rely heavily on it for emergency alerts and local news, information and weather.” We’re talking about the controversy on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with impact editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up here: https://joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn.

Here’s what we’re asking about today:

Why is Ohio Congressman Bob Latta so exorcised about what automakers are doing to AM radios in vehicles?

We talked last week about an enhanced drivers license Ohio will offer and how the are signs it might be obsolete. We dug deeper. How obsolete is it?

We’ve got three millennials leading Ohio cities as mayors, and chief politics writer Andrew Tobias took a look at the trend. What does this young generation of Democratic mayors mean for the future of Ohio politics?

Geauga County government has regularly been beset by squabbling leaders, but what is going on with the county water department takes us to new depths. What is going on in the rural county to Cleveland’s east?

Cuyahoga County Council has been in a frequent subject of criticism by taxpayers and this podcast, mainly over its squandering of cash and efforts to build a jail on a toxic site. How is the council proposing now to change its sorry image?

Let’s talk for a moment about Jim Brown, one of the most formidable athletes this planet has produced, and a Clevelander through and through.

How old do you have to be to remember when Ohio’s unemployment rate was as alow as it is now?

Who has Cleveland chosen as an electricity provider for residents to save money, and what is City Council doing to compel Mayor Justin Bibb to explain how he blew the deadline and will cost city residents a bundle in high power rates?

What did Cleveland’s Planning Commission have to say about Bedrock’s 20-year plan to remake the riverfront new Tower City?

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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

[00:00:00] Chris: How can anybody be in anything but a great mood after the day we had in northeast Ohio yesterday? What a beautiful time to be alive. It’s today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. I’m Chris Quinn. I’m here. Here with Lisa Garvin. Lela Tassi, and Laura Johnson. And Lisa, you’re up first.

Why is O Ohio Congressman Bob Latta so exercised about what automakers are doing to am radios in vehicles.

[00:00:30] Lisa: Yeah, the Republican from Bowling Green is he’s chair of a house commerce subcommittee that oversees telecommunications, and he sent letters to automakers along with dozens of his colleagues asking them to leave.

AM radios in cars, as many automakers are moving to eliminate AM radios. The letters went out to Ford General Motors, bmw, Tesla, Volkswagen, Volvo, and Mercedes-Benz. They say that there are 45 million listeners a month. For [00:01:00] AM radio and they rely on it for local news and information, weather emergencies, emergency alerts, especially in rural areas.

So that led to a new bill in the House AM for every vehicle act, it has bipartisan support. It was announced on Thursday and this ACT calls for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require automakers to retain AM radios without a fee or an extra cost or a surcharge. And automakers must.

Clearly disclose which vehicles lack am radios that they’re selling, and then have the government accountability office study alternative broadcast systems that would be as effective as AM radio without an extra cost. So Ford is saying that they are not putting AM radios in new models starting in the 2024 year, and that’s both gas and electric vehicles.

They say that electromagnetic interference is possible when you have an AM radio and an ev. Um, And you know, they say that you [00:02:00] can, most am radios are already on mobile apps, satellite radio, and uh, other digital streaming methods.

[00:02:08] Chris: Most cars today have the, the ability for to use your phone so that you can stream the am radio stations on your radio without interfering with the ev electronic signals.

I, I I, this one throws me and it, the, the, the story did describe that this might be about politics. That a lot of the far right wing radio nut jobs are on AM radio and they see what, what Detroit is doing as an attack on conservative speech, which. It doesn’t really ring true to me. When’s the last time anybody listened to AM radio here?

I haven’t listened to AM radio in probably years. Does anybody?

[00:02:45] Lisa: I haven’t, but I will say three outta my four radio jobs were for AM radio stations. So, you know, and, and two of them were news, you know, news information stations. So, and, and it’s true, but you know, you have to think that. That you [00:03:00] know, am radio might be the only radio in some of these rural areas.

I, I’m against taking the radios outta the cars and I honestly wish they wouldn’t take the CD out of the cars either. But

[00:03:11] Chris: yeah, that bothered me cuz I have a million CDs. Um, Laura Lela, have you listened to AM Radio pretty much time in your lifetimes?

[00:03:19] Laura: Yes. I mean, when I have to listen to sports on the radio because my kid like.

Needs to listen to it or my husband, I find it easier to find on am AM radio. Mm-hmm. I never know which FM radio station is carrying it. Mm-hmm. Yeah,

[00:03:31] Leila: same sports. So like 1100 sports is the only, and it’s mainly my husband isn’t, you know, follows that, so,

[00:03:38] Chris: so that’s, would you buy a car that didn’t have AM radio?

Would that be a deal breaker?

[00:03:43] Leila: No. I mean, I don’t care, but my husband might. Huh. I

[00:03:46] Laura: don’t know. I just, I don’t think it would bother me, but I, I also don’t, I guess I don’t understand all the different in interferences about EVs and all of that. Like, so I’m not a knowledgeable person about this. It just doesn’t seem like a [00:04:00] big deal to have to take

[00:04:01] Chris: it out.

Re Republicans are the ones that are anti-regulation on business, and what they seem to be doing is compelling automakers to include a feature in the car, and they’re claiming it’s under safety. So it’s the same way they require you to have brake light. They’re saying it’s a safety feature, but it seems a little bit over the top to claim that’s a safety feature.

Fascinating that, that they did this, Lisa. I didn’t see any Democrats signing onto this. Is this an all Republican deal? No,

[00:04:27] Lisa: it has bipartisan support. Oh, did it? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I can’t name ‘em off the top of my head, but yeah, there were several Democrats that signed onto this.

[00:04:36] Chris: Okay, you’re listening to today in Ohio.

We talked last week about an enhanced driver’s license Ohio will offer, and how there are signs it might be obsolete. Layla, we dug deeper. Is it obsolete?

[00:04:50] Leila: Well, to remind people these enhanced driver’s license are different from the traditional licenses or those real IDs that will be required to board airplanes.[00:05:00]

These are thicker than normal licenses. They cost $25 more in Ohio. They will have a radio chip that broadcast and ID number that border guards can use to access personal information beyond what’s on the actual license. And the benefit of these that they say is to let folks cross into Canada, Mexico, and Caribbean nations with.

Less of a hassle, but the other states and provinces that have offered these, you know, more than 15 years ago in response to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, you know, that was the agreement under which the US and its neighbors began requiring travelers to show proof of citizenship instead of just a driver’s license.

But none of the four. Canadian provinces that started offering these licenses in like 2008 and nine, which are British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. None of them are still offering them the last province to offer them. Manitoba discontinued it in June of 2022, and the reason is that demand is declining.

There are other options that are more [00:06:00] convenient and affordable. There are what’s known as Nexus cards, which low risk travelers can use at. Sp a special security and customs line at the US Canada border. It’s usually much shorter than normal lines and truck drivers and other others driving commercial vehicles across the border.

Can, can get a free and secure trade or fast card, um, after they complete a background check. Fast card holders. Only have to show minimal ID at the border. And they, they also ha often have dedicated lines at border checkpoints for, for these card holders. And these are options that are available in the US too.

The enhanced driver’s license do seem to be more popular in the us. Um, it because, or at least in the states that offer them, uh, officials say that because it, Americans don’t like carrying around more than one card. Or document it’s, it’s just more convenient. We’re used to having one ID in our wallets and in some states they don’t offer the real ID like Ohio does.

That allows you to board a plane. The enhanced license serves that [00:07:00] function, so more people are seeking them out for that reason anyway, and obviously these things are more popular in border states than anywhere else. In New York, for example, some people live in New York and work in Canada, so it’s convenient for them and they claim that.

That it’s been quite popular there.

[00:07:16] Chris: But yeah, the one state that doesn’t offer a real id, the percentage of people that are getting these licenses doesn’t really have an apples to apples comparison with Ohio. But the other states, I, when I read the story last week and we talked about it, I thought, These were more obsolete than I do now.

Based on the experience you have in other border states with how many people are using it, it sounds like there will be demand, and I won’t be surprised then if Ohioans use it. There is something to be said for always having the card with you, or you have a Nexus card. Do you carry it with you all the time, or do you only get it out when you’re driving to Canada, whereas if you had this license, it would always be with you.

I

[00:07:56] Laura: only get it out. I only get it out when I’m driving to Canada. I don’t like carrying it around [00:08:00] because it’s basically like carrying your passport, right? Like that’s a valuable piece of information. I don’t want lost, so I’m pretty careful.

[00:08:07] Leila: Are you gonna get one of these? Are you gonna get one of these?

No, I have not. Are you getting an enhanced driver’s license?

[00:08:14] Chris: I’m not, who are you? I,

[00:08:16] Laura: no, probably not. I mean, I have my, my passport and my nexus. Yeah. So I’m pretty

[00:08:22] Lisa: set. I don’t know if I would get one, but you know it. It’s got an R F I D chip. Anybody with an R F I D reader can. Read your card.

[00:08:31] Chris: Yeah, I, I, it it’s a, it’s an, I’m glad we did the follow up story.

It had a lot more dimension to it and I think people can make decisions. I suspect there’ll be quite a few Ohioans and, uh, end up getting it, at least in the short term you are listening to today in Ohio. We’ve got three millennials leading Ohio cities as mayors and chief politics writer Andrew Tobias took a look at the trend.

What does this young generation of democratic mayors mean for the future of Ohio [00:09:00] politics? Laura?

[00:09:02] Laura: It could translate to more excitement for Democrats in Ohio, but there’s no guarantees. But we’re talking about these three young men in their thirties. They didn’t pay the traditional political dues.

They’re more progressive there than their traditional opponents. They’re all people of color. Some of them. That’s a first to, for a mayor in their. And they’ve got big plans maybe for higher office, and then they all seem to at least know each other. Shama Malik, uh, who’s 32, was just elected basically the presumptive mayor of Akron because he won the primary in, in quite a, quite a big way.

And there’s really no general opponent. He actually volunteered for Justin BIB’s. Um, Campaign when BIB was running for mayor of Cleveland. So you, you’ve gotta think that they’re, they’re having conversations and that’s great for these two northeast Ohio cities for the mayors to be getting along. But Shama Malik defeated Marco Summerfield, who had been on city council for I feel like decades, and was a deputy mayor, basically anointed by [00:10:00] the current Mayor Dan Horrigan when he.

He, um, signed onto his campaign. So you, you know, he beat the guy. Everybody thought was going to be the next bear. And then we’re also talking about Aftab Oval, who’s 40 in Cincinnati. So, um, Shama said there’s a, the thorough line in all three races that people’s minds are open. They want someone they think can lead and that they don’t want.

An archetype that, you know, they’ve had in the past. They want a transformative leader, and that person might not look like the mayor they’ve always

[00:10:31] Chris: had. What a difference between what’s going on in the cities and what’s going on in the rest of the state. Mm-hmm. In the cities, you have people being daring, taking chances, throwing out the old, trying to get new and bold ideas.

And in the rural areas, which Alexa legislature, it’s the most backwards group of people we’ve ever seen in elected seats. I mean, it’s, it, the, the. Growing Gulf between what people who live near the cities want [00:11:00] and what everybody else wants it. I, I don’t know if it’s probably never been bigger.

[00:11:05] Laura: I would agree with that.

And what BBB is saying is that this shows that there is a big gap, you know, that the people in in, in the cities don’t, don’t want what’s going on in the State House. That, and that the cities don’t wanna wait their turn. Right. These, these young mayors are saying, we’re not gonna sit around forever. We’re going to take our turn now.

They’re not gonna pay dues sitting in city council forever and. They think that the Democratic Party should listen to them on how to be successful and deliver messages to the people of Ohio, but at least BIB thinks that the State House is out of whack with. With people. I, I would agree with him, but I, it, it, you’re right there is just such, this gulf.

The fact is that Republicans wanna make minority rule because they wanna hold on to something. Well, the, the

[00:11:51] Chris: trick for all these guys is going to be voter turnout. If they ever seek statewide office, they have to do a better job of getting people in the [00:12:00] cities to vote, because I don’t believe the turnout has ever been lower than it has been in recent elections.

So if this is the beginning of a democratic wave of the future, if these are the future statewide politicians, that’s only gonna happen if they can get people excited to show up to the polls. That’s just missing, especially in Cuyahoga County. Interesting story by Andrew Tobias. Check it out. It’s on cleveland.com and you’re listening to today In Ohio, Juga County government has regularly been beset by squabbling leaders, but what is going on with the county water department takes us to new depths.

What is it? That’s going on in the rural county to Cleveland East, Lisa?

[00:12:41] Lisa: Yeah. This has kind of been a 20 year battle over the IT operations in the county’s water resources department. It’s currently handled by an independent contractor, C S J Technologies, owned by Joe Camino, and it’s been that way since.

2014, he’s raked in about $328,000 for [00:13:00] that. Um, GGA County auditor, Chuck Walder is on the county’s automated data processing board, which oversees IT operations for the rest of the county. And he’s trying to move to get the, the A D P B board to oversee the water department. It. As are required by state law, he points out.

But on the other side, county Water Resources Director Steve Wick, county Administrator Jerry Morgan and commissioners Tim Lennon and Ralph Speedo Lei wanna keep the status quo. So things he heated up. Last year, in July of last year, the A D P B tried to take over key card access to a new building for water department workers.

Uh, commissioners Lennon, in spite of Lee, filed a lawsuit against the A D E P B Walder and the county prosecutor James Fleiss alleging unreasonable security risks. Then later that month, the board announced changing the admin passwords for these workers, and [00:14:00] Commissioner Morgan accused it of being a hostile takeover.

Two days later, the McFarland Wastewater treatment plant shut down for three days. In Bainbridge Morgan said it was the county’s fault for changing the passwords and installing CrowdStrike anti-hacking software. Walter said, well, the timing is suspicious, and he thinks that this shutdown was an inside job.

Fast forward to April of this year. That suit filed by Lennon in spite of Lee, was dropped. Then a few days later, the water department email was attacked by a Russian hacker on a server that Camino oversaw. Um, then on May 3rd, the F B I, the US Secret Service and Gaga County prosecutors raided Camino’s mentor home in business.

And also the, uh, Office of county IT administrator, Mike Keringer. Uh, the prosecutor Fly says they’re probing payments from Camino to Kessinger and a $16,000 contract from 2022 that was approved three weeks [00:15:00] after county IT officials fired Camino. So, yeah, I mean there’s so much more in this story. I’m just trying to hit the high points here.

I

[00:15:08] Chris: thought the most telling line in that story was the guy who said, this doesn’t surprise me. Because they’ve been trying to keep what they’re doing so secret. Mm-hmm. And when you try to operate in secret, it usually is covering up bad things, which is probably what the investigators are looking at.

There’s some very questionable loans that were made of. Public money and, and this seems like it’s very ugly. What is it about Juga County? I mean, you got the GRS that are famous for causing all sorts of conflict. This is a mess. I mean, the sewer plan actually shut down. That seems like sabotage. That’s it.

[00:15:45] Lisa: It does. The timing is suspicious, as Walter said. Yeah, and also too, these contracts that they’ve given to Camino over the years were $30,000 increments. Which is under the threshold that requires competitive bidding. So he had a sweet

[00:15:59] Chris: deal. [00:16:00] Well, it’s a accurate thing to say. This story stinks to the high heaven.

Ha ha ha. You’re listening to Today in Ohio, Cayo County Council has been. A frequent subject of criticism by taxpayers and this podcast most recently over its squandering of money in its efforts to build a jail on a quite toxic site. Leila, how is the council proposing now to change its pathetic image?

[00:16:25] Leila: County Council is looking for a communications and outreach specialists to advise the council members and. How to connect better with the communities they serve and share council’s actions and coordinate media strategies to quote, enhance the county’s and council’s profile. The person who does this job is also going to develop online surveys to understand how county constituents feel about issues, and that’s all according to the job posting online.

They say it’s because they feel like the public doesn’t understand the work that county council does. But we also [00:17:00] know, as you pointed out, Chris County Council’s been really taking a thrashing over the way they’ve spent public dollars. They’ve poured public money into sports stadiums, which is increasingly becoming an unpopular move.

They spent millions upon millions on the Med Mart boondoggle. They took 66 million of the county’s American Rescue Plan Act funding and carved it into slush funds for individual districts to spend as they please, and then they pushed hard to build the county jail on a toxic site at one point count.

County councilwoman, sunny Simon suggested council needs someone on staff to defend counsel against what she called a constant barrage of attacks by media, especially us. And, uh, but council President Pernell Jones said, you know, well, okay, but he doesn’t want the communication specialist to spend all their time responding to stories in the media.

He says he wants outreach that educates the public about what council is working on.

[00:17:54] Chris: Here’s an idea, do your job better. If you do your job better, people will respect you. These guys have been a [00:18:00] nightmare of governance. They’ve done almost nothing, right, and the public has slammed them. When we did the call out to the community about how they weren’t standing up to provide the specialists needed for say Yes to education, the vital positions that address the needs of the students.

Readers responded and blitz them with, with a lot of correspondences, and they finally did the right thing. They should have done the right thing. Without that, they should been leading instead of following what the barking was, right,

[00:18:30] Leila: they can choose to be their own. Champions here and, and do the right thing that, that the public expects and they don’t need to, uh, to spin the public on any, on anything, and it doesn’t

[00:18:42] Chris: work.

Remember, Armand Buddhist tried this. He was very upset because, you know, despite all the people dying at the jail and all of the. Bad stuff that came out about him being vengeful. He thought it was really spin control. So he started. Remember those, those video statements that he would put out trying to change people’s minds.[00:19:00]

Very effective tool. It doesn’t work. The only thing that works, do your job well and be leaders. You’re listening to today in Ohio. Let’s talk for a moment about Jim Brown, one of the most formidable athletes this planet has produced, and a clevelander thrown through Laura. We published probably 25 different pieces over the weekend.

The two standouts for me were Mary Kay’s and Doug Maurice’s. Uh, look back at what he has meant. Uh, let’s talk about it a bit.

[00:19:31] Laura: Yeah, Jim Brown is a legend. Definitely not a perfect land man, one of the best running backs the N F L has ever seen. Though he is a civil rights leader, an actor in more than 50 films and TV shows, a giant in the hearts and minds of Clevelanders.

He passed away on Thursday evening, he was 87, and it’s crazy to me that he only played nine seasons and I mean, he led the NFL in rushing in eight of those nine seasons, but, It, it’s so much bigger than that. I love what Doug said in his column about [00:20:00] how this is, like if LeBron had retired at the end of playing for the calves and then gone on to be a movie star competing with, with Chris Rock for, you know, lead roles and as well as like a civil rights leader that, uh, at the, in the news all the time.

And that kind of brought it home to me, cuz obviously this is happening in the fifties and the sixties and I wasn’t around then, but. I mean the, the Muhammad Ali summit, the, the work he’s done with Amer can with, um, young people in cities, he has had. Such an interesting life and so many people were moved by him.

He had Twitter tributes that came out from President Trump and President Obama. I mean, uh, this, he is a looming large figure and some people call him the best athlete of the

[00:20:43] Chris: 20th century. Yeah, the thing Doug did, I think he said if he left Miami after his Miami Championship and then spent nine years competing with action stars like the rock.

Didn’t people like that a and then was this major activist. But the other thing that I really liked about what Doug said, look, j Jim [00:21:00] Brown had some, some issues over time. There were allegations, rape, and, and things like that. And what Doug said is because of. The Greeks, we expect our heroes to be perfect, but really a hero is a constant conflict with his good and bad sides.

Jim Brown did a whole lot of good and in balance, and it will be for history to decide how much of a hero he was. Um, great stuff. Mary Kay’s piece L about her. Personal experiences with him over the years was also mm-hmm. Quite well done. Talking about how Bill Belichick, every time he comes to Cleveland, he takes his team to the Jim Brown statue to remind them about all that he stood for.

Belichick was much, very much a partner of Jim Brown and his activism.

[00:21:49] Laura: Absolutely. And talking about just the stature he had and the presence. Right. The only, the person that she said that she’d worked with that compared was Muhammad Ali. And obviously that was very important the, the [00:22:00] Cleveland Summit when Ali didn’t wanna serve in Vietnam and, and Brown said, we’re all gonna go to Cleveland, we’re gonna have the summit.

And everybody listened and it was such a moving. Just example of power. And so you’re right, not perfect. I think, you know, we had, we had so many pieces and we had one that looked at the allegations over the years, but made a difference, made a difference in so many aspects of American history. Yeah. And I had no idea he was a lacrosse player at Syracuse.

Like he made the, the college Lacrosse Hall of Fame. He said he thought he was a better lacrosse player than a football player. Mm-hmm. I mean, just, just

[00:22:39] Lisa: hugely challeng. And that was back in the day when you didn’t see too many black faces on a lacrosse team either. So yeah.

[00:22:47] Chris: And, and he lived to 87. And what’s remarkable about that is a lot of football players, especially from that era when they didn’t have the greatest pads, ended up with those brain issues that you get when you get knocked [00:23:00] around.

He clearly was knocked around. You don’t lead the league in rushing year after year, after year without taking a lot of hints. Um, tough guy lasted a long time. You are listening to today in Ohio. How old do you have to be to remember when Ohio’s unemployment rate was as low as it is now? Lisa, I asked you this question because neither Layla nor Laura were round back then,

[00:23:22] Lisa: right?

And I was, I was like a freshman in college. Yeah. So the April unemployment rate for Ohio is 3.7%. That’s the lowest since 1976, and that’s when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking such things. It’s down, uh, 10th of a point from March, which was 3.8% and the march. Unemployment rate was the lowest since 2001, and Ohio’s been below 4%, uh, since January of 2022.

So according to the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, 18,100 jobs were added in April, and that equals 5.6 million people currently [00:24:00] employed in the Buckeye state. Um, the jobless rate in April was down from 218 in March, so we’re also. Trying to catch up to our pre pandemic levels. We’re only 2,500 jobs short of pre pandemic levels in February of 2020, but the labor force is still

[00:24:18] Chris: recovering.

It is amazing how fast we went from the high unemployment of the early pandemic to record lows. That’s a, that’s just a rapid turnaround, and as we know, everybody’s trying to find workers, which is not the easiest thing to do these days. You are listening to today in Ohio. Who is Cleveland chosen as an electricity provider for residents to save money.

And what is the city council doing to compel Mayor Justin Bibb to explain how he blew the deadline, which will cause city residents a bundle and high power rates at least for a couple of months. Leila? Well, Cleveland

[00:24:52] Leila: has chosen the sustainable Ohio Public Energy Council or so opec. To provide the electric aggregation services [00:25:00] for first energy customers in Cleveland.

And this comes after the city acknowledged that once they had withdrawn from nopec, they dropped the ball on putting the steel together early enough to protect first energy customers from getting slammed with high electricity bills in the peak months of June and July this summer. The so OPEC contract won’t benefit customers until August.

So choosing so OPEC feels a little bit peculiar. Because this deal would make Cleveland the largest customer by far for so OPEC of the 26 Ohio communities that so OPEC serves, many appear to be villages in southeast Ohio. Its largest two customers until now have been the city of Dayton and the city of Athens Mayor Justin Bib, said he’s selected soap because it would offer the cheapest rates per kilowatt hour over the coming year compared to.

Two other competing proposals. The city received. One was from nopec and the other was from Energy Harbor. The so OPEC deal would also offer [00:26:00] electricity to Clevelanders that’s backed a hundred percent by renewable energy credits. So that’s sweetened the deal for the city. So there are three tiers of pricing.

Based on whether or not the customer chooses renewable energy credits. If customers do not opt out and they’re already not signed on to a third party provider, they will automatically be enrolled in the program at the rate tied to a hundred percent renewable energy credits.

[00:26:25] Chris: I guess that was the draw for them.

I mean, it seems odd to me they wouldn’t have gone with nopec because that is the Northeast Ohio entity, and I wonder if there was some feud there over the blown deadline. But it does sound like if you’re trying to be a green city, which Justin Bib wants to be, maybe that was the, the, the balance. That’s why he’s gone with this much sketchier cooperative.

[00:26:46] Leila: Right. I mean, so City council really wants bib and his people though, to take responsibility for this problem. They, they put out a press release on Friday calling on the mayor to explain what [00:27:00] happened. To residents and to tell them exactly what they should do to mitigate this high energy cost that they’re likely to experience this summer.

Bibs, I mean, bibs, sustainability director has already said that customers should sit tight and wait for the lower rates to kick in, that they will be better off not going with a third party provider, but if they feel they need to. The city has a list of providers that won’t charge them early termination fees if they wanna jump off and.

Join the the so OPEC contract later. But I think council’s problem is more with the administration dodging accountability on what gave rise to this. They don’t feel like the mayor has been direct enough with the public in explaining what happened here.

[00:27:36] Chris: Yeah, I, and maybe that’s it. Maybe that they’re, it’s genuine.

Maybe they really are trying to get accountability or maybe we’re, you know, almost, we’re getting close to another ME campaign in a couple years and Boyne Griffin wants to run against Justin Bib and Justin Bibbs had a good run. So far, I mean with, with what the council did with the west side market, which made no sense to me, seems like it’s just a [00:28:00] shot at BIB and this, you’re wondering if there’s some hostility brewing that’s really about they don’t want bib to look good going into a re reelection year, cuz he’s had a pretty good run.

I don’t know. I would like to have answers for how they blew the deadline. So there’s that. You’re listening to today in Ohio. What did Cleveland’s Planning Commission have to say about Bedrock’s 20 year plan to remake the riverfront near Tower City, Laura? This was a late in the week story,

[00:28:29] Laura: right?

Unanimous approval from City Planning Commission for Dan Gilbert’s plan. We’re talking about 3.5 million square feet of offices, apartments, retail, and entertainment between Tower City’s unfinished Western Edge and the Cuyahoga River. So the city wants to keep. Bedrock working with a bunch of public agencies to explore the possibility of extending the Kago Valley Scenic Railroad in its plans, which is interesting.

So the idea would be they’d have a rail link from Tower City all the way to Kago Valley National Park, and Akron planners have been dreaming [00:29:00] about that for decades. It’s about five miles north from Rockside Road, uh, at that independence area. Where it has to keep going. And they’ve had planning efforts before in the past that has failed, but they wanna keep talking.

NOAA’s got, uh, $250,000 for an upcoming study to explore the real connection. So that’s what they’re really focused on right here. What,

[00:29:22] Chris: that’s not a commuter thing. Right? That wouldn’t be So you could, so no. Slow. It’s so, how much so slow demand would there be for that line? It’s an very expensive project putting five miles of track in.

Yeah. How much demand would there be to go from Tower City to the National Park?

[00:29:41] Laura: I don’t know. I, I would never use that. That would not be something I would be like, yes, please, let me jump on this 20 mile an hour train. I mean, have you ever taken, I, I, I think Layla’s taken it right, like the bike and hike train and you have to really just enjoy the ride.

It is not, I. Gonna

[00:29:56] Lisa: get you, but as a tourism thing, I mean, if you have cruise ships dumping off people in [00:30:00] Cleveland for a few hours That’s true. Or conventions. People at conventions. So I, yeah, it might be more of a tourism thing than an actual, like, you know, uh, residential people mover.

[00:30:10] Chris: That’s a really good point.

So that might be a loss leader to draw more people into Cleveland, cuz I can’t imagine that that would be self-sustaining. Interesting that they’re so excited about it at the planning commission. Uh, I think, I think people might be more excited about getting high-speed rail to Columbus, but

[00:30:28] Laura: Right. And that’s just part of this, I mean, I love the idea of using Tower City as a connector between Public Square and the riverfront.

Right. Because right now you have to go down. I mean, you can get to the flats from downtown, but there’s no super easy, inviting way to do it. And this would really give life to Tower City, which obviously has had its troubles in the last decade or so, and create this kind of open, it would open up the city a lot more.

I don’t know, I, every time I look at the renderings, I was like, I. There’s like sailboats on these renderings. It’s [00:31:00] supposed to be a river, like the sailboats generally don’t have their sails up on the river. It looks like a pond in a park. Like I, I wanna see, I don’t know it. They’re pretty, but I wanna

[00:31:10] Chris: see what it would really, it’d be a lot more discussion before it comes to a solid plan you’re listening to today in Ohio.

That’s it for Monday. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks Leila. Thanks Laura. Thank you for listening to this podcast.