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City leaders have said trying to find parking in the Short North, even during peak hours, is a First World problem.
“I do agree that this is a First World problem, but parking is emotional because it affects you every day. It is a quality of life issue,” says Robert Ferrin the city’s assistant director for Parking Services. “There are people who are absolutely unhappy with this. Everyone looks at success differently.”
But tell that to long-time Short North and surrounding neighborhood homeowners who are planning to live in their home a lifetime.
Short North homeowners, feeling the squeeze of gentrification, say our city government, which has long been sold-out to high-end developers, made a bad parking problem even worse by not pushing back against a decade of overdevelopment.
“The community isn’t being listened too,” says Kevin Truitt, who’s owned his home on 3rd Avenue since 2011. “Instead, the city is thinking, ‘How can we develop the Short North? How can we benefit the developers?’ The parking problem is one element of this and the residents who have actually lived in the neighborhood for years are being tossed aside.”
You’ve been waiting and waiting and finally the day has come: The Patient Portal for the Ohio Medical Marijuana Control Program (OMMCP) is accepting applications. You can be legal! But, how? Here are a few tips.
The basics: You must be an Ohio resident, age 18 years or older and diagnosed with one of 21 qualifying medical conditions. To obtain cannabis legally in Ohio as an individual, you must secure a recommendation from a physician with a certificate to recommend. This recommendation enables you to download a registry card from the Ohio Board of Pharmacy that you will take to a dispensary where you can purchase various forms of cannabis.
The 21 medical conditions include cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Crohn’s Disease, Fibromyalgia, chronic pain and others that must be documented in your medical records. The Ohio State Medical Board can add new conditions.
January 21, 2019- Ohio State Representative Bernadine Kennedy Kent called for greater police accountability at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration and breakfast put on by the Police Officers for Equal Rights (POER) at the First AME Zion Church. “It is imperative as we celebrate the life of Dr Martin Luther King that we speak up and demand Police Chief Jacobs, Commander Mark Gardner, and Detective Jay Fulton receives a full, complete, and unbiased investigation by law enforcement,” Kent said.
January 14, 2018 // Columbus City Council voted to allow individual campaign donors to give them, and other city office holder candidates $12,707.79 per year. In the last agenda item of the night, on Tuesday 14 January, the city established one of the highest municipal caps in the state. In comparison, candidates in Cleveland can only accept $5,000, and in Cincinnati $1,100.
All four citizen comments regarding the ordinance at the council meeting opposed the high cap, but members of Council spoke glowingly of the ordinance prior to its approval. Michael Stinziano, President ProTempore, called the ordinance "a good first step." Council President Shannon G Hardin said, "For the first time we are putting a cap on campaign contributions in the city...This legislation is a good, historic first step."
Florence, AZ – Federal workers may not be getting paid during the government shutdown, but the ICE deportation machine continues its grind. In Arizona, ICE officials are preparing a charter flight to Africa at the cost of $148,000--all to deport a handful of people, possibly as few as nine. The charter may leave Arizona tonight or sometime tomorrow.
A luxury apartment offering beautiful views of 70 West is framed by two massive water tanks. Just a short stroll away from fine dining at Bob Evans – but be careful, because there’s no crosswalk.
And don’t forget the amenities and convenience of two nearby gas stations.
Luxury apartments are sprouting up in the damnedest of places around town. Everywhere you look developers are building complexes where a cavernous 400-sq-ft pad goes for a cool $1,300-a-month and a 775-sq-ft two bedroom for an affordable $2,400/month.
Out west on the Columbus-Hilliard border it gets no weirder than the complex being built on Fisher Road. Many of the apartments will be mere feet from two city water tanks. It will be called Austin Place, built and managed by the locally-owned Donald R. Kenney & Company Realty.
Right next to Austin Place are the luxury apartments of Andover Park, where you have easy access to the sweet sounds of 70 West as well as your next door neighbor’s life considering many residents have complained online how thin (and cheap) the walls are.
"Anyone who walks into a Huntington [Bank] branch should feel welcomed. … We hold ourselves accountable to the highest ethical standards in how we operate, hire and train colleagues, and interact with the communities we have the privilege of serving." – Statement emailed to CBS MoneyWatch from Huntington Bank on 12/19/18.
Bah Humbug!
Huntington National Bank (HNB) doesn’t discriminate against or mistreat the communities they serve … yeah, right. There’s one distinct group of citizens they don’t want. Those customers risk having their lives turned upside down.
August 17, 2018 seemed like any other summertime Friday. Chores and yard work awaited. The doorbell rang. The mailman handed me a pen to sign a certified letter from Huntington Bank.
Mind you, I was a Huntington Bank customer for 42 years. Wedding checks were deposited into my account as was Social Security. The account paid for kindergarten crayons and college tuition. Never an overdraft or bounced check. By any banking standard, I was a model customer.
“I never thought I would come back to this life” - Forced to Flee Again
American Electric Power (AEP) tells us that “smart” meters – now mandatory on your home electric grid – will save you utility money because the meters are “smart” and more accurate. But perhaps the real reason is that AEP will save themselves money by not paying meter readers anymore.
Not only is this depressing news for the current meter readers and the city’s unemployment rate, but the emergence of smart meters and grids raises much more disturbing issues that call into question how smart we are to adopt these shiny new high-tech meters.
In 2017 AEP began to replace old-school electric meters for 1.5 million local customers on a plan that runs through 2021. Starting in Delaware and then moving into Columbus and the suburbs, AEP is installing “innovative” and “highly-flexible smart metering solutions that provide advanced functionality to meet the evolving Smart Grid system needs,” according to their literature.
December 18, 2018 - Sent to Governor by the House
HB 41 VOTER REGISTRATION Will modify the law concerning challenges to voter registrations, the appointment of observers, and absent voting, and to change the manner in which counties may use reimbursements for voting machine acquisitions.
HB 58 CURSIVE HANDWRITING Will require the Department of Education to include supplemental instructional materials in cursive handwriting in the English language arts model curriculum.