We’re on an accelerated release run through November 4. Today, we start with a quick refresher on Ohio House Bill 113. What annexation is, how expedited Type 1–3 petitions work, and what HB 113 would change (a benefit/detriment test, tighter Type 2 limits, stronger school-district notice/approval, and expanded ethics disclosures). Then we sit down with Jim Daumeyer, candidate for Loveland City Council, for a practical conversation about growth, parks, and getting around town.
In this episode:
Follow the show, share with a neighbor, and tell us: What is the character of Clermont County?
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In this episode:
- HB 113, simplified: why contiguity and acreage caps matter, and how a “merits” review could slow rubber-stamped annexations.
- Parks & trails: volunteer-built paths, invasive honeysuckle removal, and the case for year-round facilities.
- Sidewalks, bikes, traffic & parking: connecting neighborhoods to downtown, ideas for a second river crossing, and rethinking the Loveland-Madeira corridor (safer, more walkable, business-friendly).
- Public transit & school busing: what a small, smart system might look like.
Follow the show, share with a neighbor, and tell us: What is the character of Clermont County?
Like what you hear? Help support the show with time, talent, or treasure.
Donate
[00:00:11]
Unknown:
We've been living in it since so long. All
[00:00:19] Unknown:
Welcome to episode 29 of Let's Talk Claremont. I am your host, Patrick, and I'm happy here. Thank you for listening. I am I'm happy in general because as I've been talking about probably too much, I love fall, and it is very fall like outside. In fact, I think it was yesterday, I got the very first whiff of fall. I I was it's that smell of, you know, like, dried leaves and a bonfire. You know, the air is a little crisper. I'm it's just put me in a really great mood. So I hope you're in a good mood too. So today is Tuesday, not Thursday, when we normally come out have an episode come out. And, this is normally when I'd say if you're new, here's what we do, but this is new to everybody. So I thought I'd just briefly talk about, the plan leading up into the fourth, because we're on accelerated publishing schedule.
We've got a lot of candidate interviews. We've even got the some ladies from Child Protection Services to talk about their levy. I'm hoping to get the fire chief on to talk about the fire levy. So there's gonna be a lot of candidate interviews and a lot of, talking to people about what's on the ballot. And if it comes out after November 4, well, that doesn't do anybody any good. So I had to think about what are we gonna put in these intro sections because I don't know that a whole lot of news is gonna happen between, you know, you know, last Thursday and today. And we're gonna have an episode come out tomorrow, and I almost can guarantee you that there's not gonna be a whole lot of news between today and tomorrow.
So also, it's a it's a lot of work to to do that. So just to keep something in this intro and to kinda lighten my workload, we're gonna do something a little different. We'll still do a news roundup, but we're gonna save that for Thursday. Newsletters still only gonna go out on Thursdays because I don't wanna flood everybody's, inboxes with a bunch of newsletters. So for some of these intros, what I thought we would do is look back at some of the bills in the Ohio State legislature that we've previously talked about to refresh our memory because some of them are relevant to the discussions we're having with candidates, and just to see where they're at in general.
You know, are they still in committee? Have they passed the house? Passed the senate? Or have they been signed into law? We're just gonna kinda do a do a recap of them. And as far as events goes, we're gonna keep the same list of events, from Thursday to Thursday. And every Thursday, there'll be a new set of events at the end of the episode. So, again, that's just trying to keep things consistent and to kinda lighten my my workload because it is it actually is quite a bit of work to try to find all these events because they're all over the place. But after the fourth, we'll be back to our normal publishing schedule, and I'm still gonna try to get people from public office and, you know, like sheriffs and things like that. People in public life.
But I'm also gonna go we're gonna go back to, you know, interesting people, doing interesting things, you know, cool businesses, stuff like that. So so that's where we're at. I hope you'll stick with it. So today, I thought it would be good to talk about house bill one thirteen. And we talked about this way back in episode four, I think it was, when we interviewed Tom Lemon at the Cardboard Boat Museum, which is a really fun interview. And I would suggest if you've got the time, go back and listen to that. But house bill one thirteen, it has to do with annexations, which given all the development talk and and the, I guess, debate that the county seems to be having about development, it would be a good idea to to look at this again.
And to start off, we're just gonna do a brief overview of what annexation even is. So in very simple terms, if you're a village or a city, I think townships can annex land, but it might be a little different or more difficult for them. But cities and and villages, if you want to expand your territory, or if you're an individual and you wanna be part of a village or a city, annexation is how you do it. This it it is the way that villages and cities grow, at least in terms of land. And it's a way that people can say, like, yes. I would like to be part of this village, or I would like to be part of this city. And there's a couple of different ways that you can actually annex land in Ohio.
Now there's a regular annexation, and there's lots of steps to that, and it takes a while depending on appeals and whether or not there's a referendum. The process is around a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty days. And we're not gonna talk a whole lot about regular annexations in this discussion because house bill one thirteen deals mostly with these other types of annexations, which are expediated annexations. There's three types of them. You've got type one. For type one annexations, petitions must be signed by all property owners within the within the territory proposed for annexation. So if a village wants to annex your property and they wanna do it in a type one way, you're gonna have to sign a petition saying, like, yes. I would like to do that.
It also requires consent from both the municipality and the township or townships if there's multiple townships. It can be any size of land, and commissioners grant this automatically at the next session. There is no hearing, and these take about fourteen days. The next one is type two. Again, petitions have to be signed by all property owners within the territory proposed for annexation, but these do not require consent from the township. It also must include upwards of 500 acres, and it must have a contiguous boundary with the municipal corporation for a length of at least 5% of the perimeter of the total of the territory proposed for annexation. And we're gonna talk a little bit more about what that means when we get into what house bill one thirteen changes.
Now if the township or city objects to it, the commissioners have thirty to thirty five days to review the annexation. But at this point, they're only looking for mistakes. This is gonna be stuff like improper petitions or not meeting, the land or contiguity rules. Unless there's a mistake, type two annexations go through pretty much without a hitch. And those will take about thirty days. Now for type one and type two, if you sign one of these petitions, you waive your right to appeal the annexation. So somebody comes to your door and says, hey. Would you like to be part of this village? Sign here if you'd like to be annexed, and you sign the petition, you then cannot appeal the annexation.
And I think that's important to note. And the last type of expediated annexation is type three. For these, over 50% of the owners have to sign a petition, and it needs to be a significant economic development project. It can be land of any size, and commissioners must approve within thirty days unless, again, there's kind of a mistake in the paperwork, and that's things like improper petitions or missing service plans, things like that. And type three annexations take about forty five to sixty days. So as you can see, these expediated annexations go much faster than a regular one. So what does house bill one thirteen change?
Well, it's gonna add a general good or a benefit versus detriment test to every expediated petition, and it lets the commissioners deny it if it fails that test. Right now, type one and type two are almost automatic. With house bill one thirteen, commissioners are gonna have a greater say. The next thing is it's gonna tighten up type two parameters. So that acreage cap is gonna get cut from 500 to 200 acres. The contiguity bar is gonna be raised from 5% to 20%. So what's that mean? That means what they're gonna look at is they're gonna look at the shared boundary between the municipality and the property being annexed.
They're going to take that number, and they're going to divide it by the total perimeter and then multiply everything by a 100, and there you get your percentage. This aims to stop annexation of large strips of road to connect municipalities to developments. So you can almost think of this like gerrymandering. Municipalities right now can annex a long strip of road to get to whatever land that they want, whatever development that they want, and then that'll be part of the municipality. This would would make it significantly harder to do that. Also, house bill one thirteen is gonna change the petition language, so it now forces signers to acknowledge that they don't have appeal rights for types one and type two annexations.
Additionally, affected school boards will need to be notified and provided a written service plan, and it adds a mandatory school board approval step for residential CRA property tax exemptions. Now there already are, there already is rather, a mandatory school board approval step for abated properties, but it is only for commercial and in industrial abatements. And the last big thing that it'll do is, right now, elected officials and high level appointees, they have to file annual ethics and financial interest statements so that whenever one of these developments happens, we can all look at it and say, okay. There's no conflicts of interest or any kind of ethical problems with the people involved in this deal.
It's gonna add to that to that list of people, and I can't I don't know who has to do it now, but it's gonna add city managers, assistant managers, village administrators, and assistant village administrators to the mandatory filer list. So what is what is house bill one if it passes, what is this how is this gonna affect us? Well, it's gonna turn expediated annexation into a merits based decision, not just a paperwork exercises. It's gonna make types one through three more aligned with regular annexations and will probably slow down the average approval cycle. Also, like we talked about, by capping type two annexations at 200 acres and increasing the contiguity man, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Contiguity threshold, it's going to hinder the practice of annexing narrow, road strips of road, to reach distant subdivisions.
It's also going to give school districts more power. It's gonna require that school districts approve any residential property tax exempt exemptions within a CRA, and it's gonna give districts a more significant role in local development decisions that could affect their financial health. So I think this is important because of the, you know, the kind of contentious, issue at in Batavia. What happened there was there was a piece of property, that the owner sold, and they wanted to do a development. So they went to the township. Township said, no. We don't really wanna do this. They took it to the the commissioners, and the commissioner said, no. You can't do this. It's not good. And so then they went to the village, and they did a type two annexation, which nobody could stop. So, regardless of your opinion of that, that's how that happened. And under house bill one thirteen, it would be more difficult for something like that to happen.
I think it's also important to note that this is just an overview. There's a lot of other things that house bill one thirteen changes. But in terms of annexation, this is what I found most interesting. And I'm also not an expert. I think by now, I've talked to enough people about this that I know much more than I did back in episode four. But in the future, I would like to keep having people on that are zoning experts and to talk a little and maybe even Adam Bird himself to talk more about this bill and, you know, what it's what it's doing. And I say Adam Bird because he's one of the primary sponsors of this bill and, one of our state representatives, which, brings up a good point. If this is something you like or if it's something you don't like, get in touch with the representatives. Tell them you really want this or you really don't want this. Talk to your local representatives, your trustees, your council members. They talk to people in Columbus.
Let them know that this is something you want or that you don't want. And and, you know, we'll see what happens with it. Right now, the bill has been introduced to the house, and it's working its way through the house local government committee. And if it gets to the committee, it'll go to the house for a vote. If it passes that vote, it'll go to the senate, or it will have to go through another committee, and then the senate will vote on it. And if all that happens, it'll finally go to the governor to either be signed or vetoed. So that's what I got for you on house bill one thirteen, which will bring us to we are a value for value podcast.
And what that means is if you find value in what we're doing, we just ask for a little value in return in the form of time, talent, or treasure. For time and talent, get in touch with us. Let us know what's going on in your community. Let us know who you'd like to be interviewed. I wanna talk to the people you wanna hear from, and I wanna talk about the things that are important in your community and let other people know what's going on there. And, also, keep thinking about that question I ask. What is the character of our county, in in looking into all this zoning and annexation and development stuff?
A lot of people and a lot of documents say we're trying to preserve the character of our county, of our village, our township, our city, whatever the case may be. But what is that character? What are we trying to preserve and protect in the face of all of this development pressure? I'm not sure I have a good answer for that, but if you do, please write in. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are. For treasure, go to the website, www.let'stalkclaremont.com. Click donate. You could donate via PayPal or Stripe, and I think this is a good opportunity to thank all the donors that came in under $50, and that's for reasons of anonymity.
But that really helps keep us going. It's really appreciated, and it's it's really awesome. It's just really awesome. I'm I'm really happy, and thank you so much for everybody that's done that. And when it comes to donations, any dollar amount is appreciated. If it's a dollar, if it's $2, if it's $3, I don't care. It's very, very appreciated. Helps us keep doing what we what we're doing. You can also do reoccurring donations with PayPal. You know, if the show's worth, I don't know, a buck a month, $2 a month, $5 a month, that'd be great. Sustaining donations will really help us keep the show going. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you to everybody who who is participating, with donations.
That all said. For donations $50 and above, you will get a special mention on the show. And for donations $200 and above, you will get an executive producer credit that I will vouch for, and you can put on resumes, whatever you want. And I'll read a note. Well, not live on air because I prerecord this, but on air. And it can be anything. It could just be what's going on in your life. It could be an ad read for your business. So I'm gonna keep pushing it. I'm gonna keep pushing nasty grams, so I can have a very dramatic reading for everybody. I don't know why I think that'd be fun. I just think it'd be I just think it would be fun. I don't know why.
And connect with us on Facebook, Let's Talk Claremont podcast. We're on Instagram at Let's Talk Claremont, and sign up for that newsletter. Another note about the newsletter on Thursday, it'll have all the episodes that have come out in this week. So, if you're if you get kinda lost and you don't know, you know, what's new and what isn't, that newsletter will still come out on Thursday, and we'll have every single episode from the week. And we're gonna keep doing that through the fourth. And please follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever it is you happen to use for podcast. It helps the show out, but it also helps you out. Because every time there's a new show, you will be notified.
And as always, if you just wanna get in touch and say hi or, I don't know, whatever you want. Info at let's talkclaremont.com. Write in. I love hearing from people, and I'd love to hear from you. Alright. So to talk about the posting schedule this week, we're obviously, I have an episode today, Tuesday. We're gonna have an episode tomorrow too, and we're gonna have another one on Thursday. And like I said a little earlier, we're gonna do that full news rundown and a fresh list of events on Thursday, and that newsletter will only go out on Thursday with all the episodes linked. Another good reason for the newsletter.
So let's talk about who we're gonna be talking to tomorrow. It's gonna be Bob Raab, an officer for the Kiwanis Club in the East Fork region. Now he's not a candidate for office or anything like that, but the Kiwanis are putting on an event called fields of honor. And it's a really nice event. It lets you sponsor a flag, and they're big flags, like full size flags, and I think he said seven foot flag poles. But you get to sponsor one of those for a veteran or a first responder, and it those will be displayed in various locations across the county. It kicks off November 1, So I thought it'd be nice to try to let people know about it. And because of that, we're gonna have to lump him in with all these, candidate interviews.
We also talk about the Kiwanis in general, which was great because I've heard of the Kiwanis before. You know, you drive into a town and you always kinda see that Kiwanis sign, and it'll be next to things like the Lions Club, which I'm not sure what the Lions Club is either. So if there's anyone involved with that, let me know. I'd love to talk to somebody from that organization to see what they do. But I wasn't entirely sure what Kiwanis do. And overall, it seems like a really great organization. It's focused on community projects and projects that, in particular, were for kids, which, you know, that's great.
So tune in tomorrow for that. But today, we are talking to Jim Daumeyer, candidate for Loveland City Council. I had a really good talk with him. We discussed his volunteer work with, Loveland's parks and some of the things he'd like to do for the parks as a council member, talk about some ways to relieve some of the traffic in Downtown Loveland. We also get into better communication and just development in general, which if you've been paying attention, has been a common theme among most, if not all of these candidates. So and we even get into brewing beer a little bit. If you've been listening, I brew mead myself. So whenever there's a fellow brewer, I can get a little nerdy and nerd out on brewing alcohol. So, and I this is important to note, and I think we talked about it in the interview. But I, I actually worked with his wife about fifteen years ago at this point. It was a while ago. And I really enjoyed working with Cindy, and I just thought it would be let everybody I thought it would be a good idea to let everybody know that for transparency's sake. I don't think it impacts the questions that I asked him, or the interview at all, but for the sake of transparency, I just want to let you know that.
And thanks again to Jim for sitting down with me, and we are going to wish him the best of luck come November. And I know I've said about all the candidates, but, you know, win or lose, I think, well, I'm back on. He's, he's also a sound guy, so I might bug him for some audio advice. But, you know, outside of all that, let me just talk about brewing beer and brewing meat and parks because he really likes parks. So thank you to Jim, and I really hope you enjoy the interview. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and start this, like all my interviews start. Why don't you just tell us who you are and what you are doing?
[00:20:34] Unknown:
Jim Daumeyer. I'm running for Loveland City Council. Nice.
[00:20:37] Unknown:
But I'm I'm assuming you have a day job. I do. What do you do for work? I freelance in film and video production. Nice. What do you what's that entail?
[00:20:46] Unknown:
That entails, a lot of things.
[00:20:50] Unknown:
Like, you know Which is good because I think council entails Yeah. Exactly. So I work in commercials,
[00:20:55] Unknown:
doing sound while I, you know, record talent. I will go out for, like, an ESPN or NFL network when they're doing long format interviews. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll set up the microphones to make sure they get to the camera. I'll do, for, like, the Bengals, I'll go down to pre and post game. You do a lot of work with the Bengals. Are you a Bengals fan? I am a Bengals fan.
[00:21:16] Unknown:
How are they doing this year? I don't follow. They're so far okay. They are,
[00:21:20] Unknown:
two and o. They won the first two games. It was a lot better than last year where they lost the first six. Yeah. That's that's a much better start. Joe Burrow got injured, so we're waiting to hear what happened to him. Yeah. It's turned How do Joe Burrow always? He's the quarterback. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, so, yeah, so I do that, and then I do other things. I'll do corporate videos, communications. I find sometimes I find myself in CEOs' offices recording messages to just internally. Yeah. And then industrial is another thing that we do, where we go out and usually it's, you you know, how to videos inside the plant or wherever, like, you
[00:21:57] Unknown:
know, proper safety. Yeah. Yeah. All kinds of things. At Milicron. We had stuff like in marketing, obviously. Yeah. We did stuff like that all the time. Yeah. Obviously, we didn't hire you. But no. I was available, though. Yeah. As a freelancer, I know that. Yeah. Like, yep. I'm available. Yeah. What do you need? Yeah. So yeah. And so I'll travel, I do a lot locally, then I'll travel regionally,
[00:22:19] Unknown:
you know, OSU or Louisville, Lexington, you know, horses. Oh, you do. Like the races. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would go down and do behind the scenes, you know, out in, you know, to the barns where the horses are. I've done a lot of those stories down there. Nice. Yeah. So it's
[00:22:37] Unknown:
the background of production is diverse in this region to, you know, to make a living. So I feel like Cincinnati is doing and we'll get to the council stuff. I don't know. Yeah. Are they still in Cincinnati doing a pretty big push for video, like, to bring movie production to They are. How's that going? That's going pretty well. Yeah. It's going really well. Yeah. You get jobs down there for So I don't do movies as much. Mhmm.
[00:22:58] Unknown:
There's a lot of sound people in the town, which is great. So there's certain people who do movies, and then there's others. Is it hard to get your foot in the door for movie stuff? I don't I mean, it's just something I haven't desired. So I did the last movie I did was, like, 02/2015. Okay. And, we when, we did the last scene of the last day, and it was an and it was the finale of the thing. So the, you know, they basically burned down a barn. Oh, really? Yeah. Like, they caught a barn on fire. They yes. Caught a barn on fire for the for this finale of the movie. Oh, wow. And so, you know, it was a great night, but I'm just, like, driving home at 05:00 in the morning. The sun's coming up. Yeah.
And my wife had to go into work. Yeah. And I was on kid duty. Yeah. All day. Yep. And I was like, maybe I can I need to stop doing movies?
[00:23:48] Unknown:
Maybe I shouldn't be driving home at four in the morning after a barn burning. It was a great experience, but, you know, practically,
[00:23:54] Unknown:
when you're trying to raise a family, it wasn't as
[00:23:56] Unknown:
it wasn't as good. Yeah. Yeah. I can I can see that? Yeah. So let's talk about Loveland, and let's start with,
[00:24:03] Unknown:
how long have you been here? I've been in Loveland for over twenty years. Where were you before Loveland? Pleasant Ridge. Okay. Great. So so you've been around Yeah. Cincinnati area. I have been, yeah. I got I went to high school. It's I got a degree at Sycamore High School. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One. Yeah. I want Sycamore and then Xavier after that. That's great. Got a degree in communications, electronic media. Okay.
[00:24:23] Unknown:
So so what made you wanna move to Loveland twenty years ago? So Well, best then. Yeah. Why don't we give you a double barreled question? So So we, we live in Pleasant Ridge. We just had our son, and we are looking at,
[00:24:35] Unknown:
schools. Like, you know, just like where you know, what do we wanna do for education? Both my wife and I grew up in a in a suburban setting. Yeah. And we kinda wanted to emulate that. Yeah. So we are looking around at the schools, and, and Loveland kept coming up. And they had a great school, and, so we decided to move here. Okay. So the school. So our love and school is still pretty good. I don't know. Schools are still they're awesome. Yeah. They're good. They are, yeah, the top 10%. Oh, really? They just had a a review
[00:25:08] Unknown:
last year, and they did really well in it. That's awesome. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Like I said, I'm on Batavia, so I don't really Okay. Yeah. Get out of here too much. What was it if you could just compare and contrast what Loveland was like twenty years ago to where it is now, what what's changed?
[00:25:25] Unknown:
So, the changes that I've seen, in Loveland are probably, our downtown has built up a little bit. Mhmm. We have a lot more, we have more apartment buildings downtown, which is a a difference. When we first moved here, it wasn't that. It was, everyone lived in houses on the, you know, edges of the town. Yeah. And then our downtown area across the bridge, in Claremont has probably, twice the amount of of, apartments that they had when we first moved in. In the Claremont side? Yep.
[00:26:00] Unknown:
Yep. That makes sense. Claremont's
[00:26:02] Unknown:
Yeah. So focus on growth. So there's a lot exactly. So it was a huge buildup downtown, as far as apartments and then also, you know, getting restaurants and and everything in. And then there was that fire that happened about four years ago. Four years ago downtown. But I talked to Dietra about the fire. I don't think you talked to her about the fire. I don't know about the fire. Yeah. What happened? Huge fire, on, West Loveland. It took a whole city block out. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's a serious fire. It was a serious fire, and, it was, it was a high impact for the community to see that happen. Yeah. What what was the I mean, what was the economic impact of that? Do you know? That I don't know. I don't know. I know we lost, you know, they're, basically, they were in there were three restaurants and then, four apartment building four apartments above the restaurants. Mhmm. Do was everybody safe? Everyone was safe. Okay. That's cool. Yeah. And then Did they know it started it? Was it, like, Bessie kicked over the fire extinguisher?
[00:26:59] Unknown:
What that was, but I'm sure they do. I bet it was electrical if it was anything. Yeah. Were they older buildings? They were. And that was the hard part, you know, to see, like, your historic
[00:27:09] Unknown:
community buildings go, and you're just like, and then and then they rebuilt. They did a really good job architecturally matching what we had before and then improving on the space that we could or they could. Yeah. Because I just sat and watched. Yeah. Had nothing to do with it. Yeah. But I appreciate what they did. That's good to know. Yeah.
[00:27:30] Unknown:
So you're running for council, and I think the first obvious question anybody would ask is why are you doing that?
[00:27:36] Unknown:
Why? I'm I'm I'm running for council, for a few different reasons. One is I think I could help Mhmm. You know, make us better. We are, there's a lot of things that I've seen in the past, eight years, ten years of just volunteering at at, in Loveland, and just kinda going to some of the meetings, the, committee meetings for, tree environment, parks and rec, and just how Loveland communicates with Loveland Mhmm. And residents and that messaging. And it's like, we're continuing having this education problem of, like, teaching people what's going on in our community. Yeah. And so, like, this big hurdle of, like, you know and it's even from, like, one committee to another or from council to committee. It's like, you know, no one's really aware of what each are doing. So Oh, yeah. It's a communication thing that I like to talk about. Unique problem. Right. Right. Like in Batavia right now, there's
[00:28:36] Unknown:
a whole big thing with some development that's going in and the township and the village and the airport. Everybody's at each other's throats. And it's I think a big problem is communication. Mhmm. Is is nobody's
[00:28:47] Unknown:
clearly communicating with each other. Right. And so it all gets spun up into this big mess. Yes. I imagine there's stuff like that in Loveland that happens. Yeah. Exactly. It's, yeah. So so if things aren't communicated correctly or on time, and then things start to happen, and then everyone's like, what's going on? And they feel like, you know, people are trying to pull the wool over their eyes and do something Yeah. You know? And it well, that's That's exactly what's happening. Yeah. It might not be the case, but, you know, you know, you weren't it wasn't communicated correctly. Yeah. We have a a really good for instance, that happened, on our school board eight years ago Yeah. Where, you know, there was a levy, and then it wasn't communicated correctly. And then everyone thought that everyone's stealing money from the school board. And I was just
[00:29:31] Unknown:
Well, it's crazy. This is like, when you don't give people information, they create their own. Yeah. Yeah. And they'll connect their own dots. Right. Whether that's positive or negative. Yeah. They'll just do that. Right. I do that. Yes. You know? If I don't have information, I look at the information I have and start connecting dots. Yes. Exactly. And if I'm missing a dot, then Make it up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I Yeah. That's that's what I do. You you infer. Yeah. Which you kinda have to do because if you don't have that information, you gotta figure out a way to interpret what's going on in your local government. So Yep.
So what are the other reasons?
[00:30:03] Unknown:
The other reasons are, I want the improvements that I would like to do in Loveland, I feel I can do at the, you know, at on the, at a council member level. Yeah. You know? So currently, I've, been volunteering building, paths and trails in, our green spaces and parks. Okay. Which is why I meant train environment committed me and why I show up at the, parks and rec. Yeah. Just to let them know what I'm, you know, what's going on and make sure I what I'm doing is okay with them. Mhmm. And, so that's been going really well.
[00:30:36] Unknown:
How many trails have you built and everything? I'm on, like, three. Nice. Yeah. Nice. It's been So does Loveland have its own parks district? I guess it would have to. They don't have their own parks district yet. Okay. So Are they are they looking to get one? No. Or are you looking to get one? I'm looking no. I wanna start one to figure out how to how to help them out. So our public service,
[00:30:57] Unknown:
team does a really good job in our parks, and so it's they haven't really separated it out. Yeah.
[00:31:02] Unknown:
But the Oh, so so Loveland can because, like, in Clermont Mhmm. Very, very few townships and villages own their own parks. Right. It's mostly done at the county level. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. That's why I was asking. Do
[00:31:16] Unknown:
have our own parks. But we don't have, like, a, you know There's not, like, a park in charge of, yeah, parks. Gotcha. Kinda everyone takes their responsibility at at public parks, and they do what they need to do. Yeah. It's been it's great. So what's your favorite park? Simpson Nature Preserve right now is my favorite park. Why do you like that? Just the diversity of, the terrain in there. It's not like you know, a lot of parks are very level. Yeah. Soccer fields, baseball fields. Yeah. Yeah. And then, this one has an elevation change
[00:31:49] Unknown:
of probably 200 feet. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. It's I mean, it's not Mount Everest. No. It's not. But But it's still a little bit better than just walking around a flat field. Correct. Yeah. Do you like hiking? I do. Okay. I do. Like hiking.
[00:32:02] Unknown:
I've been out to Colorado a few times. Nice. Hiked out there. Yeah. I went to a conference in Denver, and
[00:32:09] Unknown:
it's wild to see those mountains in the distance. Yeah. Like, I've never been backpacking out there. I'm not a huge outdoorsman. Yeah. But, yeah, it's it's good. It's not for everyone, but, you know, I enjoy it. I you know, getting away.
[00:32:21] Unknown:
And, yeah. So I started working on trails around here to kinda bring that to here. Mhmm. And, right after COVID, I realized that we needed more of that. Yeah. So started working on that. And, so yeah. So I've built, about two I'm I'm up after this third one, it's gonna be, like, three miles of trail.
[00:32:41] Unknown:
Nice. Yeah. And you just do that on your free time. I do. Yeah. So, originally, I started,
[00:32:48] Unknown:
I eight years ago, I started, at the my kids were in cross country. Mhmm. And I was at one of the cross country meetings, and I had, the coaches were talking about how they didn't have their home meet. Yeah. So we used to have a home meet. It was at the high school. You ran around the back field. You went out the front. You came back up and, you know, finished in the track, and it wasn't I'm also a runner, so it wasn't very exciting Yeah. To me. You know? Yeah. I'm like, so I took it upon myself to, to work on making a cross country invitational for Loveland. Yeah. So I started looking around at maps around, like, where's a good place to have trails, have a good ball field, have parking for 30 buses, have enough parking for everyone who's gonna show up to watch.
So I started, looking around. I came up with Home Of The Brave, which is in Symmes Township. Okay. But it's, less than a mile from the high school. Okay. So less than a mile from the middle school. And does the high school and middle school still use it for cross country? They do. Nice. We just had our eighth invitational Nice. Over Labor Day weekend. That's awesome. Yeah. So, so that's when I started getting to building trails. And so So I don't mean to cut you off. No. You're
[00:33:56] Unknown:
What does it actually take to build a trail? Like, what's that work look like? So that work,
[00:34:01] Unknown:
initially for me is I'm just going through and I'm just, taking out the invasives. Mhmm. And so Like the branches? Honeysuckle. Oh, man. Yeah. So honeysuckle. So I'm going at and I'm going at the root level to to tear them out. That stuff is So they don't grow back. Yeah. And, generally, so you can build a trail through honeysuckle and still have honeysuckle on the side. You know, they're so invasive here. Oh, yeah. And and that's what our initial plan right now is is building these trails so that we can have volunteers come through and clean the rest of the honeysuckle that's not, you know. Yeah. But to get to it on the trail is is probably a little bit safer than just to go through the woods and not have a you know, and just, like, clear out acres. But if you go through a trail and you identify all your invasives, you know, your your pear and, you know, your autumn olives and just and also take those out, It'd be, you know, so we're working like that. So that's what I'm doing when I'm doing trails. Man, you're fighting honeysuckle.
[00:34:55] Unknown:
That's so fun.
[00:34:56] Unknown:
It isn't. I've learned to enjoy it. Yeah. You know, yeah. For some reason, it's just it's very soothing to me, be out in nature. I'm usually by myself when I'm working on these trails, and, you know, I just have a direction that I'm heading towards, and you can't You can't stop. You're in the zone? You are in the zone. Yeah. And just yep. I always like things like that. It's like a meditation.
[00:35:17] Unknown:
You know? Yep. I I think there's a I don't know if it's Zen or something like that, but, like, small repetitive tasks.
[00:35:23] Unknown:
When you do them, you're it, like, frees your mind. It does. It does. Really enjoy stuff like that. Right. And that's that's exactly where I'm at when I'm when I'm out there doing them just, you know, just cleaning things out. And then I thought I would only enjoy it in the summer, but then I found out I enjoy it in the winter. Oh, you go out there in the winter too, and it's cold. Yeah. So I found out that my one of my discoveries was, it's sometimes easier when the wet when the temperature's below 30, you know, when it's freezing Mhmm. Because, all the molecules are frozen. So everything you've, you know, just explodes. Just snaps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so much easier. Yeah. A little colder. It is a little colder. Although, I don't know. I would because I hate the heat. Well, yeah. I I find, yeah, when you're doing the work, you're gonna sweat no matter what Yeah. How much you're wearing. So I, you know, just get that, and it's, it's good. It's make be smarter on how to identify the invasives without leaves. Mhmm.
Leaves are important when you're identifying. Leaves are really helpful Yeah. To me. Yeah. So but when you're out there now, I know what honeysuckle looks like when it's with no leaves. It sounds like you might be a bit of a honeysuckle expert at this point. I feel like I yeah. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. The the irony is write a book about The irony is is that before I got into this is that,
[00:36:30] Unknown:
honeysuckle was, like, one of my favorite plants. Yeah. Like, I love the fragrance. Yeah. I mean, they're rooms. Yeah. They're beautiful plants, but they just we lived out in Felicity, and it was honeys we we had about 10 acres. Mhmm. And the honeysuckle, man, is was just everywhere. And you try to cut it back, and it would just come back twice as hard. It would wrap itself around existing plants and choke them out. Mhmm. It's such an aggressive plant. Yeah. That's why it's funny. People look at nature, and they're like, oh, isn't that all beautiful? And then you dig into it. It's like, oh, no. Everything out here is trying to kill each other. Yeah. Like, it's it's kind of a brutal place. It really is. It really is. I mean, you know, brutal and beautiful. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's absolutely beautiful. Yeah. But it's I mean, it's not it's not like some idyllic,
[00:37:15] Unknown:
you know, like wonderland that you can just go skipping through. Yeah. And that's yeah. But that's where I'm at now where I where I see a native plant now and identify a native plant, I you know, it brings joy to my heart. Yeah. You're making it, buddy. Yeah. Stay away from that funny cycle. Yeah. But that's where yeah. And that's when I realized that you you can't just cut the limbs off. You gotta go and pull out the root system and make sure it's not gonna come back. Yeah.
[00:37:37] Unknown:
So you've got communication, parks. Mhmm. What else? What what else are you running for?
[00:37:44] Unknown:
So, oh, that leads into so the parks, which are you know, I'd love to improve some of the parks that we're that we have. The other thing is is, when I get on council, I can, you know, build trails all day long, but I can't build sidewalks. Sidewalks. So one of the things I'm running on is just, like, now that I've I've become a map person as well, just look at the maps. Have you gotten into GIS at all?
[00:38:08] Unknown:
No. Oh, man. That'll change your life. Really? It's really fun. Sends for geographic information services. You can go and get data all kinds of different data sets, and you gotta learn a program. Okay. And then you just basically take maps and overlay the data, and it you can get it gets pretty wild. I I can imagine. I would probably enjoy that then. Yeah. I've done orienteering.
[00:38:30] Unknown:
Okay. You know what that means? Basically finding your way through woods. Yeah. Right? With a map and a compass. Yep. Mine two love. So mapping and then running Yeah. Because it's a timed it's a timed event. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah. So, looking at all the maps, I'm just studying, like, ways for people who live closer to town could walk in or ride their bike in. Mhmm. I don't know. I'm not gonna go as far as I don't think it would be helpful to have bike lanes Yeah. Yet. It would be great to have sidewalks that were appropriate for bikes Yeah. Because we're not talking about
[00:39:01] Unknown:
high end cycling. Yeah. It's not like the guys in spandex with little meters on there. Right. Yeah. It's like a guy in a Right. Just a single gear that's just trying to get to the brewery or something. Right. Exactly. So,
[00:39:13] Unknown:
so I've been looking at improving our sidewalks and and making them get our, residents into town Mhmm. Better, safely. I know that, Deidre talked about that with you last time. Yeah. Because a lot of these sidewalks are over in Clermont. Yeah. I'd like to fix that, get us down there, and then there's a few sidewalks here. Even at the front of my subdivision, we could use a sidewalk down, and then, you know, we're, like, a I'm two miles away from the city center. Mhmm. I ride my bike down there freak not frequently, but I have. I did notice on the way in, were there any sidewalks on the We don't have sidewalks in this community. And then, you came in on Loma Madera. There's no sidewalks out there. So and then this so Symmes Township is what you drove through Mhmm. Until you got to my subdivision, then it switched over to Loveland. Okay. And so that's the other thing too is, on city council, I'd love to work with Symmes Okay. And figure out how to get, you know, their pockets of of Sim Town Symmes Township that is, on the thoroughfare that we can we need to build sidewalks through Mhmm. You know, to help both of our residents Yeah. You know, travel. That seems like a win win. It would be. Although, you know, when you're dealing with different government entities, you don't really ever know. Yeah. And that's what, you know, and that's why, you know, I got to work with Symmes to build the cross country
[00:40:30] Unknown:
race. I think we're good. Yeah. Sometimes it does. Alright.
[00:40:33] Unknown:
I got to work with Symmes, township to work on the cross country race, and they're, you know, they're great to work with. And so, you know, it's I'm not afraid. We share a fire department. We have a Loveland Symmes fire department. So, you know, it's not outrageous for us to think that we can't Right. Work together.
[00:40:49] Unknown:
So so you've got parks and sidewalks and communication? Parks, sidewalks, communication,
[00:40:55] Unknown:
traffic. Traffic? Traffic.
[00:40:58] Unknown:
I haven't driven I I haven't driven through Downtown Buffalo many times, but when I have, it is pretty congested. It is. So,
[00:41:05] Unknown:
it's interesting. I've been walking the neighborhoods, talking to residents, and one of the things I get back is, you know, we start talking about traffic. I'm like, oh, what do you think? You know? And then the answer I get from them is, like, I don't even drive there. Yeah. They just go the opposite way. Yeah. And I was just like, well, what does that mean, you know, as a resident of a town that you avoid Yeah. Your own town?
[00:41:26] Unknown:
It's not a good No. No. Yeah. So I mean, especially you want people Right. Like, it's there for people to work. You know, this is you know,
[00:41:34] Unknown:
your taxes are paying for this, and you wanna avoid it because Because it's too too much traffic. Yeah. So, and then parking is always has been a problem too. And this is what I would hope that, you know, If I come at it with sidewalks and, motivating, cycling to town, I'm not saying everyone's gonna do that or needs to do that, but there's probably 10 to 20% of us that would. Yeah. You don't have to be need especially cycling. Like, you don't need many to alleviate the traffic issues. You know? Right. So I'm just you know, if if there was a few of us that, you know, it would walk when you could and rode your bike if you could, you know, that would be it would alleviate some some of those stresses that we have of that.
[00:42:16] Unknown:
Well, parking's not I mean, that's not, again, unique to Loveland. I was I was listening to and it might have actually been Deidre's episode that I went over the parking issues they're having in Milford. Okay. In Old Milford, I think what they've actually found is it's not so much the people from the city that wanna come in and eat and drink and do whatever. It's the people who work there. So when workers come, they're gonna take up a parking spot for six, eight hours. And if you have enough people working, it's really gonna take a chunk
[00:42:46] Unknown:
out of your parking. That's an interesting I don't know if that's the same for Loveland, but I'm sure we have know if I'm trying to figure out. Yeah. I'm sure that we have I mean, we have restaurants and bars and employees, and, so I'm sure that that could be Yeah. That's an interesting, thing to come at. Yeah. Because, yeah, that's one of the things I have with the cross country event is, like, you know, I have a 100 volunteers.
[00:43:09] Unknown:
Yeah. Like, it's always like I'm like, can you can you park somewhere else? Just let everyone who's coming into the event. Well, and it's a tough nut to crack. It is. Because because you're asking for volunteers. Well well Yeah. Or And, well, and with the parking too, it's like these businesses need employees. Mhmm. And you don't want your employees parking five miles away. Right. But at the same time, you need customers. And so it's and I think Milford's idea was a charge for parking, and people got irate about that. Yeah. But it was nice to watch because it was like local government in action. Right. All these people came to a council meeting, and they said, this is a terrible idea. We thought about this, that, and the other thing. Yeah. And the council went, no. So let's not do the paid parking. We'll figure something else out. That's good. That's good. Yeah. I have heard some negatives about our paid parking. Yeah. They're like, we're residents, and we shouldn't have to pay to park. And I'm like, I agree. Yeah. I I would agree with that. Yeah. You know? So And I don't really think it helps the problem really. Because, I mean, if, again, if your problem is employees taking up spots Mhmm. You need to figure out Right. Or, you know, get in charge for parking to to build more parking or a little better structure
[00:44:13] Unknown:
or Yeah. Then it might make sense, but, you know,
[00:44:18] Unknown:
it doesn't make a lot of sense. So or or I don't want me to cut you off. No. You're fine. I was Are there any other besides those, I guess, you'd three or four? Yeah. Three or four, and then, yeah, parks and sidewalks, traffic. Transparency,
[00:44:32] Unknown:
which kind of is that communication thing. Yeah. And then, you know, keep an eye. I'm, you know, fiscally conservative. Yeah. You know? So I don't like wasting money. Yeah. I don't like it when I see my tax money getting wasted. Yeah. Nobody does. No one does. No one does. So Especially with property taxes. That's what they are. You gotta get in. You can't sleep on anything. You gotta make sure that, you know, everything's happening.
[00:44:56] Unknown:
And then, yeah. So just and but at the same time, not being afraid of growth and and keeping us quaint. You know? Well, we'll put a pin in the growth part because I do wanna ask you about that. Okay. But I'd like to circle back to all of the things that you're running on and just we'll start with communication and transparency. Mhmm. What do you think is working, and what do you think should be changed, like, concretely? Right.
[00:45:18] Unknown:
So what is working, is the, you know, is our the website, you you know, as far as communication goes. So what's not working is, you know, getting that website seen, you know, getting it, you know, where, they did start an app, that you could sign up for. And then, but, you know, it's getting that done. I've been on the way I'm on the website all the time now, and it's I'm challenged by it. Yeah. Trust me. I've been after starting this podcast, I've been on a lot of
[00:45:48] Unknown:
village and city and township websites, and they're all Right. Challenging to navigate. Yes. Yeah. And so and then that's a challenge,
[00:45:55] Unknown:
that we've gone through, and I'm I'm watching, you know, you know, the hiring. You have to find somebody who specializes in, you know Yeah. In computers. Yeah. It's a skill. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's like you can just get some guy and It's fix this for me. Yeah. And it's a skill set that is I don't know if it's built for, you know, for government. You know? So it's, you know, and it's it's also something that it's not tangible. So to spend money on that,
[00:46:24] Unknown:
to say that we're better communicating Trust me. I'm in the digital marketing world. Like, it's tough to sell somebody on a website Right. Like a a real structural change in how your information is presented Yes. Because it's time consuming and expensive. A lot of people just like, well, let's just make it look prettier. It's like, oh, okay. It looks pretty, but Exactly. You can't get the information. Right. Right. So, you know, is it so one of the quick ones would be just like, you know, we need to have our own Instagram account. Oh, Loveland doesn't even have an Instagram account. They do. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. I need to do a quick check. Just make sure.
I'm assuming they have a Facebook page. Or Yeah. Yeah. But, you know,
[00:47:06] Unknown:
you know, just get updates on your whatever what's going on.
[00:47:11] Unknown:
There it is. We'll do a a quick check and see if they have an Instagram account. Well, while you're looking, I'll ask you a question Yes. To think about. So outside the website and social media, what are some of the other things that you would and, actually, I'll I'll ask this kinda more specifically. Because I think part of communication is in the marketing world, we call it voice of customer. You know, like Mhmm. Taking the temperature of customers, what's working with our product, what isn't, what would you like to see, what features do you need. I guess for a government, you'd call it voice of constituents.
How would you try to capture what your constituents are feeling and wanting and react to it? Do does that you does that make sense?
[00:47:56] Unknown:
Yes. So you're, we're talking from the residence up. Yeah. Like, how how do
[00:48:02] Unknown:
you how do you get what people are thinking and and what they want in a in a broad sense? Mhmm. I mean, outside of, you know, the council does something nobody likes and 500 people show up. Right. You know, you you don't want it to get to that point. Yeah. You wanna understand what people really want. Right. So,
[00:48:16] Unknown:
basically, just, you know, it's for me, it's one on one talking, you know, finding out about but then it's not there's, like, stopping at the first or 10 people who are also in your, you know, in your set. You know? You need to reach out to talk to people who are not in your income bracket. Talk to people who are not in your neighborhood. You need to talk to people who are you know, everyone what's you know, what are they experiencing? You know? It's like, you know, we were talking about traffic earlier. It's just like it's it impacts me differently here in Hamilton County than it does everyone over on the other side of the bridge, because we were talking about cycling earlier, and that might alleviate things, but not during school time. Yeah. You know, not in the morning when, you know, everyone's gotta drive across the bridge to go to high school. Is that the infamous eight foot tall bridge? Yeah.
Yes. Is that the oh, that's the, that's the trestle. The trestle. The trestle. So a different bridge. Yep. So a bridge. That's alright. Very not familiar with this area. So, yeah. So just, you know, in in the morning, you know so no one's riding their bike in the morning or to school, but, you know, is that something we could change? Maybe. You know? Okay. But, anyway but yeah. So just continuing on to talk to people and finding out what's going on out there. And then, you know, if you, you know I was trying to bounce ideas off that they seem awesome to me. Yeah.
[00:49:36] Unknown:
Like, I've got this great idea. Hear me out. Monorail? Yes. Little Simpsons reference for anybody who Yeah. Who watches the Simpsons. Yeah. So,
[00:49:47] Unknown:
yeah. And I do stand corrected there. I do have an Instagram account. Okay. So I I apologize. No. That's fair enough. I will now I will now join.
[00:49:55] Unknown:
I don't think everybody's gonna string you up for that. Okay. So that's kinda communicate. Is there anything else in terms of communication and transparency that you would like to see outside of, like, a website and just better social media presence?
[00:50:10] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, just a, yeah, better presence. You know? It'd be great to figure out a way just to you know, where messages are received. You know? It's just an email to the city manager, I think, currently, is one of the best ways to Yeah. Communicate, which is great. Our city manager is awesome. David Kenny
[00:50:26] Unknown:
usually replies. Good that he's responsive. Yes. I don't know if that is Yeah. I don't know if that is characteristic of Oh, that's a good point. Yeah.
[00:50:33] Unknown:
But, but if you would email from, people I've heard of with some certain issues Mhmm. You don't get a reply from council. Okay. You know? And I don't know. I'm currently not sitting on city council. I don't know if they get 2,000 emails a day. Yeah. I would say that they're probably not getting that many.
[00:50:49] Unknown:
Well, I so my father was on school board, and you'd be surprised. I mean Really? It's some of the things that people eat you know, I served in restaurants. Mhmm. And you will always be shocked at what people complain about. I we have worked in a Mexican restaurant, and this guy had a ground beef burrito. And he was irate that it was greasy. I was like, it's a ground beef burrito. And we've got the owner, and the owner looked at him like, I don't know what to tell you. It's a Mhmm. Ground beef burrito. It's gonna be greasy. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just saying, you know No. It's yep. You never really peep there's no accounting for people. You know? Yeah.
[00:51:23] Unknown:
Yes. Exactly. And that's the challenges of Yeah. City government Of city government. City government. Yeah. Yeah. General. Yeah.
[00:51:30] Unknown:
So let's move on to and I think you probably talked a little bit about it in your in your answer to the last question. But what do you think the, city is doing well with parks and trails and and sidewalks, and what would you like to see more of?
[00:51:45] Unknown:
The the city is doing well with, parks trails, because, I go down to the parks and rec committee meeting all the time, and I see what's going on. And they're doing a really good job. They evaluate their parks themselves. The committee does that, and then they send that list of things that need to get fixed and repaired to the city. And the city is super responsive Mhmm. And and, you know, to take care of those items. You know, we're talking about, you know, ADA ramps Mhmm. You know, to off the sidewalks into the park that needed to get fixed, and then the next day it was fixed. You know? So it's a you know, they're very responsive of getting things done. Currently, they just put up a fence around a tot lot over in one of our neighborhoods, which is gonna ask a tot lot? So a tot lot in Loveland Okay. Is, what some people refer to as a pocket park. Okay. You know, it's just a it's maybe less than an acre. Okay. So it's like a micro park. Yeah. It's a it's less than an acre, and it's got a playground on it. How many of those are there? There's two. Okay. Yeah. There's two. It's in, one of our older neighborhoods, and, they're both there. And then yeah. So we had someone ask to, that there be a fence around it, you know, to help children.
[00:52:59] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, listen. I've got a You know, there's five year old and a one and a half year old. And
[00:53:04] Unknown:
if we didn't have a fence around our yard Mhmm. Well, I'd be terrified. Right. I'd be absolutely terrified. Yeah. So it's you know, that's some of the parks, you know, got wind of and went and, you know, the I think it was one resident said this is my need. Mhmm. And then they're like, that's not a whole a horrible idea for everybody to have that need. Yeah. And so they went, you know, put a fence up. And so, yeah, took care of that problem, and then, our other parks are doing well. I'd love to improve them. Yeah. You know? But it sounds like for parks For parks, we're Sounds like
[00:53:37] Unknown:
everything's going pretty well with them and just more of, maybe just more. Yeah. I mean, yeah, just always more, always better.
[00:53:45] Unknown:
You know, we're, it's it's a challenging topic to talk about because I see how other parks are, and I would love ours to improve to that level, which we're not far from it. You know? We're doing a great job. We have a lot of, recreational sports activities that can be played on our parks, which is tremendous. You know, it's gonna come down to budget. It's gonna come down to, you know, waiting to see if you can make these changes happen,
[00:54:09] Unknown:
to make them happen. But, but What are some of the parks that you you'd like to emulate?
[00:54:16] Unknown:
The parks I'd like to emulate are in Symmes. Okay. So different tax structure, different payout structure. So we're talking about, you know, it's a township versus a city. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they have different hurdles to hit. Yeah. So their parks are, slightly nicer. Their bathroom, they're year round. Okay. So ours shut down because we don't have the we didn't do the infrastructure. Mhmm. Hopefully, we're gonna improve that in the next few years. I think that would be a great thing to have a a year round bathroom, something you didn't have to close down. Yeah. I do volunteer work. I ask for volunteers to come out. Sometimes it's in the winter, and I have to, you know, send out a message. I'm like, hey. We're gonna go work in this park. You should go to the bathroom before you get there. Yeah. Because Yeah. You know, there's no facility. Yeah. So, that's the only, you know, I find disappointing, for that. But yeah. So, I mean, that's something that we start budgeting for. Yeah. I'd like to start working towards that.
[00:55:11] Unknown:
Nice. And then the last one was traffic. What's what do you think is working, if anything, I guess? And what what do you think you could improve?
[00:55:21] Unknown:
So traffic, there's many ways to improve that. Again, I think we hit on this a little bit. Yeah. So but so the big ticket item is I think we really need a second bridge close to the city center. Okay. That is a big ticket item. That is a big ticket item. So and and it's not a great grants for that or something? Is that you could. So it would this would be Hamilton and Clermont County getting them together, and then it'll be Ohio Okay. Transportation. And then, Probably the army corps. I imagine they'll get together. Yeah. And then well, yeah. So early on so and we're also crossing the Little Miami River, so you have to do an environmental impact test Yeah. Yeah. Because there's a conservancy over that river. So we have to look and see what what we're doing and then what that impact is.
And then I I'm hoping that that comes back, you know, and Or is that already in the workplace? It's not in the workplace. It's gonna gonna be the first thing that happens. Yeah. You know, it's that, you know, they gotta do an impact study. And, and so I'm hoping that just helps have to do one and No. It would just it would just be a pure conservancy would probably do it, or we would pay to have it done from the Ohio State Gotcha. Find out what it is that we're talking about. And then I'm hoping the only impact that would be is would be how it's constructed, how a bridge would be constructed. Right. You know? Obviously, we're not gonna put pilings in the middle of the river. Yeah. Right. That practice is passed. Yeah.
But, you know, but I think, you know, just gotta really gotta figure out how to get a second bridge across,
[00:56:54] Unknown:
to alleviate that. So that bridge is a big, but again, I'm not Yeah. It's a bottleneck. That's right. It's a bottleneck.
[00:57:00] Unknown:
And then a few years ago, they came through that somebody did a, a study, and they decided that the four lane should be reduced to one lane. On the bridge? Not to the bridge, but for the downtown center. So they Okay. Close that down. And now it's decreased the speed. Oh, okay. But it also decreased the traffic flow because you went from four lanes to two lanes. You put up parking on the sides. So, yes, you did decrease the speed. Okay.
[00:57:28] Unknown:
Yes. You did. Dramatically, I imagine. Yeah. So
[00:57:32] Unknown:
that's, you know, one of the thing you know? But the bike trails right there, do you go you know? I don't think we should put four lanes back in. I mean Right. You know? But that would alleviate traffic, but then you're also gonna increase by, you know, twice the amount would be the, the cars and then, you know, the impact of people crossing over. So, you know, do we, you know, put a pedestrian bridge over the bike for the bike trail? Right. You know? Like, is that the next thing? Like, would that be simpler?
[00:58:00] Unknown:
I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a nice thing too. You know?
[00:58:04] Unknown:
I I don't know if people realize this or even people who are thinking about running for city government. It's not like you have to be an expert in all of these things. Mhmm. You know? Right. Like, there are gonna be people that will do these studies. Yes. It's your job to look at the look at all the facts and go, well, maybe, maybe not. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, yeah, and that's the thing too is, it's, you know, having these traffic studies done are great and having that and knowing, you know, to do those studies, to to look at the data, and to figure out what's best for our Loveland. Right. You know? That's and that's helpful when you lean on those Yeah. Studies a little bit Yeah. Which was yeah.
[00:58:37] Unknown:
So I think those were all the the items you mentioned. Mhmm. So let's talk about growth. Mhmm. Because at least from where I'm at in Clermont County, it's a big issue. It's coming to Clermont, and everybody's trying to figure out how do we grow, but how do we do it the right way. So what what are your thoughts on growth as it pertains to Loveland, and and how would you structure it or deal with it?
[00:59:01] Unknown:
So, yeah, I would like to see us well, we are working on still controlling, you know, our architectural and, the space. It seems like currently, because the property is, I'm not gonna say it's not it's people are willing to sell. Mhmm. Buyers are willing to take those properties, but they are also looking at a return Mhmm. On that property. And, like, their answer is to raise the property and put down four times as much, doors that were there. Yeah. You know? And then our job So just cram more people into the space. And, and that's what, you know, we could talk about another, you know, impact study and what that means to traffic, everything like that. So that's that's the growth that we're gonna be challenged with Mhmm.
For the next, you know, twenty, thirty years at least, you know, just because it's, you know, we're landlocked. We can't really expand too much further out. We were doing a great job conserving our green spaces, which I think is awesome. But, the land, to expand into is is minimal. Yeah. You know? So there's not, like when you say expand into, would you mean, like, annex more land? Or Oh, no. No. No. No. Not not necessarily that, but just what you have. Yeah. Just Just taking what we have. So, you know, if we were to, move down to our, you know, through our industrial edge of, River Road, which is next to the river and start, you know, heading that way and and picking up those pieces of properties, like, if they sell and then want to redo you know, then we'd have to I think it would be, oh, is it that would have to get rezoned. The planning and zoning would have to go look at that and, you know. Yeah. The whole process. Right. It's like what goes in there, and then we have another property currently on. It's called the Chestnut Property.
It's like five acres. The city's looking at trying to bring somebody in, to fill that as, like they're looking at industrial or business center type of thing, just a two or three story building, to bring more work into to Loveland. It's, it it sits on an old dump Okay. That got cleaned up, which is awesome Yeah. But didn't get clean enough to have residents on. Yeah. Yeah. So it's good for, you know, maybe a small a mini corporate park Yeah. You know, is what they're looking at, something like that. So with the I guess, when you when you're talking about growth
[01:01:30] Unknown:
and that industrial park and things like that, how do you see the balance of bringing in more residents and bringing in more businesses? Like, what what do you think the focus needs to be?
[01:01:41] Unknown:
That's a good great question because, you know, because we're our tax base is based off of income. Mhmm. So we always talk about bringing in more residents, bringing in more workers. You know, what does that look like? How do we diversify? You know? It's like bars and restaurants seems to be ruling right now, which is great, but it's like, what other things could we bring in, you know, that, you know, would help us income wise, you know, for taxes, what would have a better impact? Mhmm. How to maximize that for Loveland? And, so, yeah, trying to find those types of industries that are outside of our almost outside of the entertainment district, you know, and trying to fulfill those needs.
[01:02:27] Unknown:
So you think businesses, like, trying to bring in a bit more diverse set of businesses?
[01:02:32] Unknown:
Right. Right. Like, you know, we used to have a, more of a manufacturing
[01:02:37] Unknown:
core, and we've lost that over time. You know? As of many. Yeah. Yeah. That that's not again, something not quite unique, but Right. To to Loveland. But and that's one of the other things about doing this because I've been to all different kinds of towns across Claremont. And it's interesting because a lot of especially out in, like, the Batavia way, a lot of people are trying to figure out what do we do now, especially with downtown areas. And Loveland seems to have a great downtown area, but that's one of the big questions is how do we revitalize this downtown? Like, do we need more people or do we need more business? It's kind of a chicken and egg thing. It is. It is. I wanna say
[01:03:10] Unknown:
that we are fortunate in the manor right now that we don't have. We are our downtown is thriving Yeah. You know, which is great. It's great to have a traffic problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, it's a good it's like old old Milford. It's a good problem to have some people won't be there. So it's you know, and that's the continuing in. And that's where I feel like, you know, as city council, you gotta really, really navigate that well. Yeah. Because, you know, a couple wrong turns, no pun intended. Yeah. You know, you could end up, you know, ruining what you have worked for. On a lot of these decisions, you know,
[01:03:43] Unknown:
they seem immediate, but they have ten, fifteen, twenty year ramifications. You know? It's like, if you don't fix the traffic problem, well, ten years from now, that's gonna be even worse. Mhmm. And it's gonna be more expensive to fix. You know? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I would I would absolutely agree with that. And then yeah. So
[01:04:01] Unknown:
the problems yeah. That was not a not an easy fix to gotta thread that needle and continue on and make sure that, you know, you're continuing on. My thought was is that, you know, to keep us thriving, for, you know, for our downtown to continue on and to stay the way we are so that we don't have you know, we have a lot of visitors coming in from out of town, which is an awesome thing to have. And it's like, you wanna continue that if our traffic continues the way it does, people on the outside are gonna start avoiding Yeah. Loveland. And then, you know, it's gonna be a, you know, a downturn, and no one wants to see that. So we need to really figure this out as fast as we can, I feel? I mean, I I don't know if it's a one for one problem, but
[01:04:50] Unknown:
we live pretty close to Eastgate, and I avoid Eastgate like the plague Mhmm. Because it's just it's a nightmare to navigate. It always makes me angry because there's just so many people and there's construction and and, you know, it's that's just the way it is. Mhmm. But I think you're right. If you know, much like Old Milford, if you don't fix these problems, then you're not gonna get the influx. It's like your residents and people from the outside, which actually might fix your traffic problem. But Right.
And then yeah. Yeah. If you get nobody that wants to come to Levelyn, then Correct. Yeah. There goes your traffic problem. Exactly. But that's probably not the goal. Right. Right. Not the goal. Yes. Yeah. You want I want I would love the people to you know, when I tell people I'm from Loveland, you know, it's the, you know, like, oh, yeah. We were there, and they talk about other things they did here. Yeah. And that's awesome. Well, you've got I think a lot of kayakers come in from Yep. Again, much like Milford. I mean, the kayakers will come in. It seems like a really nice place, not just to eat Mhmm. Eat and drink and have fun, but there's a lot of outdoor activities that'll just bring you right to Loveland's front door. Right. Right. There are. Yeah. And that's,
[01:05:59] Unknown:
that's some other stuff. Yeah. I like to work on is, like, you know, reaching out to CORA, which is Cincinnati Off Road Association Mhmm. Which is biking, but it's not on a bike I mean, it's on a bike trail. It's trail riding. Yeah. Yeah. It's on It's like mountain biking if we had mountains. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But, but we have some, some green space that would, you know, be great for that too for, you know, cyclists who wanna, you know, do some trail riding to come out to Loveland and do that. Yeah. So and, yeah, just added to the tourism thing. You know? It's like, come on. Yeah. Hike, bike, and ride.
[01:06:32] Unknown:
Yep. So I'm I'm I don't even know I'm imagining that tourism actually plays a pretty significant role in Loveland's economy. Is it a big chunk of
[01:06:43] Unknown:
Yeah.
[01:06:44] Unknown:
I mean, not tourism in the sense that people are coming from, like, California to get some of them, but Right. People from, like, Hamilton County. Correct. Like, I think we are,
[01:06:53] Unknown:
an excellent, day trip Yeah. Destination. You know? It's, like, heading here to whether or not you're gonna go kayaking or meet up here to go cycling or cycle through, stop by, get lunch. Mhmm. You know, it's, it's definitely one of those, I would say, any given time, and it's 25%. You know?
[01:07:12] Unknown:
So what are some of and this is doesn't really have much to do with council, but, what are some of the places you like to go downtown? Oh, that's an excellent question. So, And this is almost a selfish question. Right. Because, like I said, I don't get to level them much, but I know you guys have really good food restaurants and Yes. We flat rooms down there. Right? Yes. Okay. That's pretty I haven't been there in years. But Yeah. You should go. Have you been there since they moved over to the West Loveland? No. I don't think so. They're they've, like, doubled their size. They're it's great. You should go down, visit sometime. It's a good record. So, I mean, I grew I didn't grow up, but, you know, I've worked obviously, you know, I guess I should probably say that. I worked with your wife years and years and years ago.
But when I lived in Cincinnati, the Shake It records is just Oh, yeah. I mean, that's like Yep. Yep. I think I think people do come from all over the country. They go Shaken. Yeah. When I grow up, we would, my friends and I drove down to everybody's records, which was in Pleasant Ridge. Yeah. I've driven past everybody. I didn't I didn't was that a record store? Because it it looked like it was more of like a recording.
[01:08:13] Unknown:
Oh, yeah. I don't know if they've changed there, but they were record thinking of something else. Okay. I might be thinking of something else. We used to, yeah, we used to go there, and then, so to have Plateroom here in Loveland is awesome. Yeah. People mention that a lot. Places I like to go,
[01:08:26] Unknown:
Narrow Path Brewing. Okay. It's a fun one. Is that a brewery? It is. It I mean, I'm assuming it has good beer. They do. They do. What's your favorite one?
[01:08:35] Unknown:
I'm usually an IPA guy. Yeah. So, yeah, usually, it's whatever the IP is. Tired of IP. I know. It's I'm waiting You haven't gotten tired of it? Been waiting to tire out of IPAs. I've I've been on, I bartended. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So and then nineties, and so I
[01:08:51] Unknown:
that's when, like, I think the first round of, microbreweries are coming out. And then I was, you know, super interested into that. I start I home brew now. Oh, do you? Yeah. Yeah. I make meat myself. Oh, do you? Yeah. What kind of stuff do you have? I'm sorry. This is not exactly doing counsel. We'll just give you a little bit of a personal Yeah. Personal background. What do you brew?
[01:09:10] Unknown:
I usually brew IPAs on it. IPA. So my favorite my favorite beer is, is, Mad Trees, rounding third. I don't know if I've had that. Yeah. It's an IPA, but it's made with it's a red. Okay. So Oh, it's like a red. Reds. Okay. Yeah. So it's kinda cool, but it's like my So it's like an Irish red? But A little bit. With a lot of hops. With a lot of hops. It's the yep. A lot of, No. Wait. Do you like the IPAs that were just like the hops blow your head off?
[01:09:37] Unknown:
So like a hardcore IPA guy? Sometimes. So,
[01:09:41] Unknown:
I lean into, the West Coast. If you wanna talk about nerd out on beer with me? Yeah. I mean, if you want to, we can talk more about counseling. Yeah. So the hops, you know, when you pitch them in later, it's more of a bouquet. Yeah. You know? So it's more floral. So when it's they go hot. When they go in early, it's it's more of a bitter. Okay. So I usually like them when they're pitched at the end. Okay. I like citrus IPAs. I like, you know, the tropicals. You know? So
[01:10:06] Unknown:
I've been working through them all. I'm trying to get burnout on it. It's been a journey. I hated them for at least ten years, and then I don't know what happened. And now that's all I can, I mean, drink? Yeah. Honestly, I've something about beer, I've just kinda moved away from it. Well, to be completely honest, with three kids running around have time. I don't have a lot of time to just sit around and drink. I did not I did not drink at all when my kids were younger. Yeah. It was just like, you know Especially as I'm getting older, it's like I'll have, you know, two or three beers. And then the next morning Yeah. I wouldn't say I'm hungover, but I'm certainly a step behind. Mhmm. Yeah. When I'm chasing after a five year old or something, I can't be a step back. I mean, you cannot. No. They're they're gonna wake up at 06:00 in the morning. Have room or not. Yeah. Whatever. They don't care what you did last night. No. No. My kids do not care. Mhmm. And they will have the same amount of energy no matter how I feel. Yep. Yep.
[01:10:54] Unknown:
I'm on the on the same way. But yeah. But Nerapat's a good beer, a good brewery. Are they distributed? Do they They aren't. No, really? They are, they're on the smallish end, which is why I like them. And, you know, not a lot until you go down in Loveland, you might not see them Yeah. Out and about, but they do good quality beers. They have nice little They have food. Casual outside patio. They have a truck. A food truck. They have a food truck. I'm not sure the affiliation if it's them or just, like, the same truck shows up every night. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, it's a taco truck, and people were telling me they love it. They rave about that.
But, yeah, Paxton's a good restaurant right downtown? Paxton's? Paxton's. I actually think I might have. Is it, like, a fancier looking place? No. That's the other one. Okay. That's a French Quarter. Okay. That's I mean, it's fancy looking to me. Yeah. There's a lot of fancy looking ones downtown. Like, I think E and O would be fancy.
[01:11:49] Unknown:
E and O. There there's an E and O in Hyde Park. Right? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I used to live in Hyde Park Okay. When I was working with Cindy. Oh, awesome. And I would walk all over the city. I walk by E and O all the time. Oh. Actually, I was I really like to walk. Yeah. I'm sorry. We're off That's alright. Script. So what I would do is on the weekends, I would I was in Hyde Park, and I would wake up really early on, like, a Saturday. And I would walk downtown or I would walk to North Side, and it it was really fun because you got to see places that you normally would never see, especially I think it's over it's over a highway. I don't know if it's 471 or 75, but that bridge that goes the pedestrian bridge that goes up over that Yeah. You'd always drive by it. You're like, what is how do you even get there? I know how to get there. Right. And it's really fun. Mount Adams. Yeah. And so then I'd I'd go and be in the city or I'd be in Northside, and I'd have fun because I was in my twenties.
[01:12:44] Unknown:
And then I just get an Uber home, and it was Oh, that's cool. So you don't even have to worry about, like, I think I've gone far enough. I need to start walking back? No. No. No. No. I just have I'd have my backpack, and I'd hiked downtown, and it burned off a lot of calories. And I was like, well, all good. I have a burger and a bunch of beer and go home. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I, Completely aside. I'm Yeah. No. It's, that's what I one of my favorite things to do when I travel to a city. I'm a I'm a runner. Yeah. I I get up in the morning, I go on a run. And when you visit a new city, I'm always, like, trying to map out, like, where I'm gonna go. You're running. But you discover
[01:13:14] Unknown:
things that you would never discover Oh, yeah. You know, on a pedestrian level. You know? It's like, oh, that was kinda cool. The other thing I've loved doing when I traveled to see because my mother was a flight attendant for a fair bit of time, so you'd get free flights. So I just fly to New York or I'd go to San Francisco and just walk around. But taking public transportation, especially buses, man, you'll just see the whole city. Mhmm. And you gotta figure them out, which was kinda fun for me. But Right. Yeah. I wasn't I'd I'd loved especially San Francisco, which had really good public transportation. They had this whole, like, BART system, and you could get, like, a pass. Yep. And just been on that. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good one. Yep. I like that
[01:13:54] Unknown:
one. Public transportation is an awesome thing. I'd love to talk about that further.
[01:13:58] Unknown:
Do you wanna bring public transportation to Loveland? I I do. Well, let's talk about that. You wanna talk about Yeah. See, there was a point to one of this. Yeah. We went from beer to public transit. Right. Yeah. How would you does it currently have a public transportation system? No. And then and this would be this would not I mean Well, even if it's not I'd love to figure it I'd love to figure it out how to do that in in Loveland.
[01:14:21] Unknown:
You know, so we lost our school busing for the high school. I didn't know that. Yeah. So last we didn't Was it just a budget thing? Yeah. Yeah. Levees if levees don't get passed Yeah. Yeah. You have to start making changes, and they chose, high school busing, so which digs into the traffic in the morning because, a lot of parents are letting you know, having their kids drive themselves to school, which is great
[01:14:44] Unknown:
from an independence level, from, you know There's a bunch of 16 year olds on the road. Then yeah. And I'm you know?
[01:14:51] Unknown:
Actually yeah. So and, yeah, my daughter was in high school still at the same time when they stopped that, so she So it's so it's actually been a little wild Yep. That they don't have busing for the high school. Yeah. So, you know, so to figure out how to do public transit and then all you know, figure out how to get that done is to, like, lean into, like, school board and be like, this would help everybody. Yeah. You know? This we could do routes in the morning and then just continue on all day long Yeah. From the city aspect. It you know? I don't know. That would be another solution, you know, whether or not we could get that done efficiently
[01:15:25] Unknown:
Yeah. Or have a third party come in and figure out how to get that done. Or you might even be able to I don't know who has public transit around here. I don't think I mean, there might be county systems that you can tap into Yeah. Something. Right. I mean, I have no idea. No. Right. The,
[01:15:41] Unknown:
I wanna say, the VA does stuff for their Veterans associate. Oh, okay. Associate. I mean, we I mean, we're just talking bear you know, they have buses that will let them, like, pick up, veterans, which is an awesome service, you know, if we're talking about public service. Yeah. Yeah. You know? I mean, this is kinda outside of what we're both talking about, but Yeah. You know, it's public. And, you know, if you're a member, you know, if you've been a veteran, you know, which is awesome, you know, take care of vets and get them to where they need to go. But other than that, Downtown Cincinnati, it's got their own public transit.
[01:16:14] Unknown:
They've got their own monorail. They do.
[01:16:18] Unknown:
I wanna ask you. And we do have and, you know, and and, they there's a a bus that comes out here, and over by our mire, which is over. Oh, that'll, like, take people from, like, Cincinnati? Literally just a straight shot. It's, yeah, it's the 71 Corridor, and it just comes out until you get downtown. Yeah.
[01:16:37] Unknown:
I bet there's a way to do it because there's funny enough, I'd I'd because I'm I'm in marketing communications, so I'll do a lot of blog post writing, and I do one for a transit, like a transit software company. And it seems like there's gotta be a way to use technology to enable a smaller transit system Mhmm. To run efficiently. Because I think that that would be the issue is the cost. Is it can you buy buses and pay people to drive them? Correct. Yeah. And if you don't have people on the buses, well, then you're not making money off of it. And Yeah. You know? Yeah. You've got yourself in a bit of a pickle. Yes. Yeah. And a lot of the Which is the same with it. Yeah. A lot of them are subsidized. Yeah. You know? A lot of public transit. You could find grants for that too. Probably. There's gotta be grants at the state level or even federal level. Right. I'm sure there's federal grants. Actually, almost positive there's federal grants for especially if it's I don't know what they would consider Loveland because you're you're close to Cincinnati, but you're also pretty close to rural areas. Mhmm. But I know that's a a big thing is, like, transportation, like, where I live out in Batavia.
How do you get people to where they need to be at least from the public side of things? Yeah. Because it's tough. Everybody lives much, much further apart. It's much more expensive.
[01:17:50] Unknown:
Not everybody's gonna use it. Yeah. So And that yeah. And that's the challenge also. It's like, you know, if you wanna have that one bus stop Yeah. But, you know, you have to walk a half mile to get to it. Yeah.
[01:18:00] Unknown:
What's the point? You might as well just walk wherever you're going. Yeah.
[01:18:04] Unknown:
Lose that that efficiency. Yeah.
[01:18:08] Unknown:
So what else I guess, I've probably asked this around about ways, but overall, with the direction Loveland is going, what do you think is positive about it? And and the overall direction, where where would you like to see it kinda move differently? On a, like, a big scale. Right. Not just, you know, communication or transportation or anything like that. Okay.
[01:18:33] Unknown:
It's a good question. The, the positives, that are go that Loveland has going for itself is still, the fact that it's received positively in all the communities around, I wanna say. Mhmm. You know, when I'm out and I'm explain telling someone why I'm from, you know, in Cincinnati and I say Loveland, it's received positively Mhmm. Which is awesome. You know? You have to have pride where you come from. You know? It's like, you know, it'd be different, like, you know? Yeah. I don't wanna talk about where I'm from. Yeah. But, you know, to be able to say you're from Loveland and have somebody reply with, oh, yeah. Was that the thing? Or, oh, yeah. The bike trail. Or, oh, yeah. I did that. And that's always a nice positive thing to have, you know, and, you know, pride in your own city Yeah. I think is probably what you know? But I think it's going great. I would say that's probably the foundation of a good city. Mhmm. Because if everybody's proud of where they live, then everybody's gonna wanna work together to make it better. Right. You know? Right. That's a big thing, and not a lot of cities are like that. Mhmm. You know? Right. Yeah. There's a lot of cities that are very disparaging of themselves. Yeah. That's a good point. Yes. So yeah. And so then, so the flip side of that is, you know, keep how to continue that and giving the residents what they need, you know, to continue to be here.
I think, as far as everybody, you know, we're talking about fixed income. We're talking about low income. We're talking about median income. You know, everybody. You know? What is it? Yeah. How do we do that for the most amount of people? Like, and and when I say most, I really don't wanna leave anyone behind. Right. You know, I want everyone to come together and and figure this out, you know, and and continue on to, enjoy our city, to make our city what everyone thinks it should become. Mhmm. You know? I think we are diverse enough in in, topography and, we think you're talking about maps and overlay.
Our businesses, I think we have a lot of things going on for us. I would love to continue that, you know, as we develop further. You know? And that's it. It just reminded me of another thing we haven't talked about yet. It was the Loveland Madeira Corridor that they're trying to improve, which I, you know, I will also try improve when I get to Can you explain what that is? Because So yeah. So it's, so to get into Loveland, one of the one of the thoroughfares, you get off 275, you get on Loveland Madeira Road, which is between Loveland and Madeira. Yeah. But you would go towards Loveland, and then it tees into West Loveland, and then you turn and you go into Loveland proper. Mhmm.
There's about a mile stretch of Loveland Madeira, which is kinda like strip malls, developed, you know I wanna say I came in on that road. You did. You just didn't go. I mean, I don't think you went that far. No. That's right. I know I got off a two seventy five. But yeah. I love that. I said yeah. So, yeah, you're on that road. So you continue in. You go into into town. Anyway, so, so we're talking about the corridor. We're talking about the traffic circle that's gonna go in in the next year or two. Okay. They took out a, they took out a glass factory to put the put an access into that Chestnut property. We also spoke about earlier that there's about four acres back there. So it's it's good improvement. But, so the city right now is trying to figure out how to change over the corridor to be a part of the same changes that we did downtown.
Okay. So it's extending that out, to businesses, and to you know? And I think everyone you know, you're just trying to figure out how to pivot from that, strip mall look Yeah. To, you know, more of a, you know, town kinda feel. Mhmm. More pedestrian friendly, more bicycle friendly. They wanna put in a it's gonna be a, it's still gonna remain two lanes, but they're gonna add in off to the side. The way the pictures are now is, a walking, biking path. Mhmm. It's paved. But just to, you know, to get commuters biking and walking and then, trying to change the businesses that have parking lots in the front to the parking lots in the back to be more of a pedestrian friendly town.
That seems like a pretty big overhaul. Isn't that yeah. That's a huge overhaul. Yeah. So,
[01:22:55] Unknown:
Are they working with businesses to do that? I mean, if if I had a business in a strip mall and somebody said, hey. I'm gonna demolish this strip mall. They are not yet, and that's something that we need to address when we get there is is,
[01:23:07] Unknown:
currently, the city has an overlay on it. I think that I'm not sure if it's if it's done yet. What do you talk about at overlay? So an overlay is, when they come in from, planning zoning, and they put in, like, you know, they figure out the properties that they want to address. And they put in an overlay, and they're like, okay. So here's the overlay. When you make improvements that is over 50% of your value Mhmm. You have to your architecture has to look like this. Okay. Which I'm like, that's an awesome plan Yeah. Except for I'm not fixing anything. Right. That that that's what I'm trying to do. Business. Yeah. I'm running my business.
[01:23:46] Unknown:
And if and if I wanna improve my infrastructure
[01:23:49] Unknown:
above 50% Yeah. I'm just not gonna do it. Right. Yeah. So, like, I'm gonna pave my parking lot and Yeah. And that's it. Yeah. Yeah. So so That's a tricky one, though. It is a tricky one. I'm not saying I have the, you know, the the right away answer, but I'd love to look into it further. You know, we talked about, the city did a match for home improvements. Okay. So, like, if you were gonna redo a roof, and it was just in one neighborhood. For homeowners? Yep. For homeowners. Okay. The city, if if you were gonna approve your house, the city, you could apply to the city, and they would, put up 50%. Really? That's kinda nice. Isn't it? That's a nice program. Yeah. And it I mean, it helps the property value too. Benefited the whole, you know, the whole community Yeah. Benefited that neighborhood. Especially if you need a roof or something like that. Yeah. So, yeah, so, so, anyway, that's something that we should probably look at for businesses. Like, hey. How can we come together? You know? And do you guys would have to find grant money for that? But, you know, if you went if because businesses would love to improve Yeah. I mean their looks, but if they could do it at a discount price or if if we, you know, bought in halfway. So trying to find more of a carrot than a stick. Yeah. You know? Exactly.
[01:24:58] Unknown:
Oh, no. I forgot. I thought I had a really good question. Oh, I'm sorry. Forgot it. So what how would you know, you have a magic wand Mhmm. For this corridor. Mhmm. What would you want it to look like? I don't have that much money. You know? No. You have a magic wand. I am. So you you get yourself billions of dollars with your magic wand, and then you
[01:25:20] Unknown:
so that would yeah. So it would be, to to put in exactly what we're doing. What the plan is right now to have that path, but I'd love to have that you know, if if I actually had the magic wand and I wanna go out there, I would talk about, a European style city Mhmm. Where you have the road in the center. Yeah. Yeah. You have a curb, and then you have your bike lane, then you have another curb for pedestrian. Okay. So it'd separate the three modes of transportation.
[01:25:45] Unknown:
In Europe, don't they do it too where you can, like there's a parking lane and then the bike lane? Uh-huh. So it's you can drive, and if your car goes crazy, it's not gonna hit the pedestrian. Correct. And that's yeah. Yeah. That's what we're looking at. So that would be the one thing I would, if I had a magic wand, fix that, and then also just, you know,
[01:26:03] Unknown:
make it to the business. We could change all that, a lot of the looks of those businesses downtown or not downtown, but in the Loveland Corridor. Mhmm. Just, you know, to do what
[01:26:13] Unknown:
to make that mon those monies available to change this, you know, the structures of some of those businesses to where it was, you know, more pedestrian bike friendly. And imagine that project would take in the absence of an actual magic wand, it would probably take years to Oh, yeah. Yes. Figure all of that out. Yeah. What kind of businesses would you like to see? Would you like to see kind of the same thing that love Downtown Loveland's got, or would you like to see a different mix of businesses? I'd like to see a different mix. You know, I'd like that.
[01:26:41] Unknown:
I like a diversity. I'd love to see the diversity of businesses down there. I would like to see, you know, a lot of that old, square, you know, the old time squares where it's like you have everything and, you know, gotta I was gonna start listing all the businesses, but but, you know, I currently get you know, I get my car repaired down on Lola Madeira, and it's part and it's one of these businesses that we're talking about. But it's, like, it's very convenient. So I literally drive my car down, and I either take my dog with me and walk back home Yeah. Or I walk back down. You know? So it's like
[01:27:20] Unknown:
that style of of you know? You probably wanna keep that. Yeah. I just wanna make it look a little better. Correct. Yeah. Yep. So not necessarily putting a whole bunch of bars and restaurants and entertainment things, but things like Yeah. Car repair shops Right. Barber shops or whatever it is, lawyers, I bet, or insurance agents, things like that. Yep. Yep.
[01:27:41] Unknown:
Yep. Exactly, Cyril.
[01:27:43] Unknown:
Nice. Financial planning. Financial planners. Yeah. They they always need Yep. An office, I guess. Right?
[01:27:49] Unknown:
Does anyone need an office anymore?
[01:27:51] Unknown:
I don't know. I don't I mean, I work from home. Yeah. Which is a blessing. Mhmm. Because I don't know if a lot of people can because I worked at Milicron during COVID. Like, COVID hit. Wow. And Milicron, I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's a big industrial manufacturer. And it was a a kind of a point of contention because I didn't work on the shop floor. I've worked in an office. And they sent us all home. They were like, go home, but it you know, you can't stop production. So all the shop guys were having to like, they can't work from home. And so create a little bit of tension between the the office people and the shop guys because and I get it. You know? I
[01:28:33] Unknown:
everybody, I think, would want to work from home if they could. Yeah. But you can't build a plastic injection molding machine in your garage. You know? So you kinda need to be there. I mean, someday. Yeah. But Right. No. I'm kidding. Yeah. No. I can see that being a a point No. Of that. Yeah. That's Which again is another completely fine. Myself, I cannot work from home. I need to go to where, you know, it's convenient to bring me to where the sound needs to be recorded. All the wires and things you gotta plug in. Yep. So I find myself traveling and and moving to places. And
[01:29:03] Unknown:
Well, that's why I say it's it's a blessing, but Mhmm. You know, after six, eight hours in my office, I'm kinda crawling up the wall. Yeah. And then I go downstairs, and it's like, oh, I'm in the same place. I've been in the same place for months. Yes. And I'll just look at my wife and go, I gotta go somewhere. I don't know where that is. I just need to get in the car and go somewhere. We don't even have kids anymore, but I've we've been in the same boat. Yeah. You know?
[01:29:28] Unknown:
Cindy works here, two days a week, and she comes down. She's like,
[01:29:33] Unknown:
I just gotta go somewhere else. Yeah. No. I mean, it's it like I said, it's great because it's not like I have to drive home, but it's not great because I don't have to drive home. You know? Like, I Right. I don't get out. And it you know, people talk about it. And, again, complete aside, but I always because in during COVID, right when COVID hit, we were out in Felicity on, like, 10 acres in the middle of nowhere. Like, it took us forty minutes to get to a Kroger. So I had friends who lived in large cities, and I imagine your experience was very similar too where you're cooped up in the house, and you're crawling up the walls. And it's just like we gotta we aren't seeing anybody. For me, I I always felt a little spoiled because it's like, oh, I'm on 10 acres. I'm just gonna go out and cut my grass and just have a nice day in the yard. And I talked to friends. I'm like, why are you so stressed out? This is great.
I'm having a wonderful time. I don't have to leave my beautiful 10 acres of land. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't really know where I was going with that. But Oh, but yeah. And that's and that's where, you know,
[01:30:34] Unknown:
I started realized that we needed our trails improved in in Loveland, and that's you know, it goes back to when I was looking in on the map at at the for cross country spaces, and I that's when I discovered all of our green spaces in Loveland. Yeah. How much green space do you have? Do you I Or do you have, like, a rough guess? Yeah. So I think the last thing I saw, someone said it was over 2,000 acres In Loveland. I'm sorry. Yeah. Is it 20? Yeah. And so and then but the caveat is is that they included, the Cardinal property, and I think they also included the new Clermont property. There are two parks going on. Are you familiar with those?
In on the Clermont side? Yep. I'm not. There's gonna be two giant parks that are gonna be going up right up the I think they both are planning to open up at 2026. Okay. Like, actual parks or, like, conservation? Yeah. Large because I know that it's a county parks department. They do a lot of conservation. So, yeah, it's a county park and to be large. And then right next to it is another park that's run by a conservancy, the Cardinal Conservancy. Okay. And then, and then across the street from there, it's the Braille property. Have you ever heard of the, the Grailville?
[01:31:45] Unknown:
I have. I actually saw I interviewed, Kaye Skiff and Chris Klingman Oh, okay. From the Claremont Parks. Okay. And I think Kaye said I should talk to the Grail grillville. Yep. Yeah. Yep. You should. So I've heard of them. Okay. I I don't I don't know much about them. They're it's,
[01:32:03] Unknown:
they have an awesome history an awesome history for Loveland. It's it's fascinating to to know that they're here and, to have them, and I I appreciate them for for everything that that goes on over there. Mhmm. And, yeah, then it's probably one of the first concern you know, conservancy projects. I'm sorry. I missaid that. That is not what they do. They're not a conservancy, but they had a lot of property that Yeah. No one built on. Yeah. So by default, they, you know, saved a lot of land, and then, that's how the cardinal thing came up because And cardinal conserve
[01:32:40] Unknown:
I feel like I think I was at a commissioner's meeting where they were talking about is do they go around and kinda buy land Yep. And then essentially conserve it. Correct. Okay. So I think I think they were talking about they they specifically look for kind of smaller operating farms Yes. And and some to buy that Mhmm. And they'll, again Yep. Conserve it. Do you know anything more about them? Because I'd I'd like I said, it was just a brief presentation that they can speak of authority, but I can definitely connect you with people that That'd be great if you could. Yeah. Because, yeah, it's really interesting what they do and what they can do and and, you know, saving. The project they were talking if it's the same group Mhmm. The project they were talking about was so I can't remember the exact spot in in Clermont County, but they said it was, it was like a very rare ecosystem where we because it's kinda swampy. Yep. It it's like a weird wetland. Yeah. And there's, like, a specific tree that only grows in this very specific kind of wetland. So they were proposing to the county something or other, and there was, like, grant timing that they needed. I know that they had a similar property where of where it was a wetland. They were trying to revert trying to keep it a wetland. Yeah. And Well, wetlands, I don't know if people know too much about them, but they're incredibly important. Mhmm. I mean, I think, if I'm not mistaken, they almost act like filters. Yeah. Like like, they take a lot of things that are, you know, not great in the water Mhmm. And they'll kinda filter them out. Yes. Yep. Which I don't know if that's great for the wetland, but it's I guess it's good for everybody else. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It is.
They're they're very important to our environment in that. Yeah. Especially when you talk about, like, runoff and Yep. And all kinds of things like that. So, yeah, a good wetland
[01:34:20] Unknown:
can, you know, help a community out Yeah. You know, as far as, like, flood control and all that. Yeah. You know?
[01:34:26] Unknown:
Which especially when you talk about developing and building things, it's Mhmm. It's, again, something I've interviewed, soil and water, John McManus, and you just don't think about these things. Yeah. Like, you don't think like, oh, when you build a massive development Mhmm. Where's all that rainwater going? Because it's just you've got pavement, and it's just running. I got to experience that in, we lived in,
[01:34:47] Unknown:
North Carolina Okay. In Wilmington and out on the coast. And they had like, ten years before we got there, they just finished I 40 all the way to the coast. It, like, they had, like, 40 miles they couldn't get through, and they just finished it. So then so they were experiencing a boom. Yeah. And, and that was where I was I was you know, that's when you realize how important government is Yeah. Planning zoning is Yeah. And all these things. And they were just, like, mowing down forests, putting up parking lots for you know, it was a mix of, you know, corporate, residential, but everyone needed a parking lot.
So during the day A parking lot when it rains, yeah. So every day when you're on the coast, you get that storm, like at 03:00. And I was experiencing, you know, intersections under, like, four inches of water Easy. Yeah. Because no one had made a plan Right. To where the water was supposed to go. You build a parking lot, but you didn't put a retention pond next to it. Right. You know? And it's like, oh. Yeah. Oh, oops. These things are important. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And And that's one of the things, especially, because like I said, I don't think it's a big secret or anything, but Claremont
[01:35:55] Unknown:
is growing very, very quickly. Mhmm. And one of the things I always like to keep my eye on, because I've you listen to Deidre's episode, I'll do a little bit of news in the beginning. Yeah. Are these developments? Because we gotta grow. It it's coming. It's absolutely coming. But if you rush into something like that way too fast I mean, you're like I said earlier, the decisions you make aren't aren't just two year decisions. They're twenty, thirty, forty, fifty year decisions my children are gonna have to deal with. And so if you don't think through them properly Mhmm. And you just grow, grow, grow,
[01:36:30] Unknown:
you're gonna be in a tough spot. Mhmm. At least that that's what I think of. Yeah. No. I think you're exactly right. You know? It's, there's plenty of cities around to, you know, watch and see how that happened, you know, in this eighties and nineties. Yeah. And, and, you know, some did well, some didn't do well, and there are lessons to be learned Yeah. When you're trying to figure things out. And that's why, you know, don't be afraid to look at what other accounts are doing, what didn't work, what was the you know, was it a multifaceted problem, or is it just the one thing? You know? It's like
[01:37:03] Unknown:
you know? But let's look at it at every angle we can. Right. You know, while you're trying to Especially before you make a massive decision. Right. You know? Right. It's like take a breath. Let's Mhmm. Let's do our traffic studies. Let's do our environmental studies. Right. Let's really make sure we're gonna be able to accommodate whatever we're trying to do. Yes. Yep.
[01:37:21] Unknown:
Absolutely.
[01:37:23] Unknown:
Absolutely. Well, I don't I don't think I have any more questions for you. But I will give you the last word to just make your pitch for council and and tell people why they should talk about beer. Well, maybe that's why. When's the beer pod last coming up? Did you wanna talk more about beer? I'm happy to talk about beer.
[01:37:41] Unknown:
Tell you all about Mead if you want. I would like to hear about Mead. Oh, would you? Yeah. But we can do that often. Okay. That's fair. I'll finish this real quick. Yeah. So I'm running for city council. I would appreciate anyone's vote, who lives in Loveland. I'm gonna work hard for our city. I'm proud of our city. I wanna continue to be proud of our city. And so I'm gonna make the correct changes to keep us moving forward. I'd love to work on all the problems that we faced with traffic and parking. I'm looking at all options, you know, as far as, you know, pedestrian, cycling.
Everything's on the table. I'd love to keep working to make us better.
[01:38:22] Unknown:
Awesome. Well, with that, I'm gonna I'm gonna thank you, and I'm gonna call it a successful podcast. Alright. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview, and we'll thank Jim one more time for sitting down with us, and wish him the best of luck come November. So let's talk about some events. Like I said in the intro, this is gonna be a very similar event list from last Thursday. I've obviously taken off the events that have already come to pass. So on Thursday, we'll get a nice fresh list of events for everybody. But let's start things off with Batavia Farmer's Market. This is gonna be October 18 from 9AM to 2PM at the corner of Main Street and Depot Street in Batavia.
It's a seasonal open air market featuring local farmers and artisans. You can browse fresh produce, farm raised meats, baked goods, honey plants, and handmade crafts. It is family friendly and free to attend and a great way to support local vendors and enjoy a Saturday morning in downtown Batavia. Next up, we have birding to change the world conservation talk and book discussion. This is gonna be October 15 from 7PM to 08:30PM at the Cincinnati Cincinnati Nature Center. It is an evening conversation on community based conservation featuring Trish O'Kane, author of Birding to Change the World, a Memoir, in discussion with Connie O'Connor, the Nature Center's Director of Applied Learning.
The program is aimed at adults and explores how connecting people through shared interests like birding can drive grassroots environmental activism and foster conservation civics. Next, we have the community costume swap, October 16 at 5PM at Sycamore Park. Give a costume, get a costume. This free community swap invites families to bring gently used Halloween costumes and exchange them for something frightfully fresh. All ages from little monsters to grown up ghouls are welcome. It's a great way to refresh your costume without scaring your budget. I have to say I really enjoy that that bit of spooky Halloween copy.
Good job whoever wrote that. Homeschool Discovery Days, fall leaves. This is gonna be October 17 from 1PM to 2PM at the Catherine Stagmore Park. It is an educational nature program tailored for homeschoolers but open to all families. Kids will learn about the science behind autumn leaves, why leaves change color, and how trees prepare for winter through hands on activities and games. It will be held out it will be held outdoors in the park, and the hour long program combines science and fun to explore the fall season. Admission is free, but advanced registration is required, and I imagine you can do that on the park's website.
Yoga in the park, October 18 at 9AM, Sycamore Park. Start your Saturday with a calming morning yoga session in nature. This free class, no registration needed, is open to adults and teens of all skill levels. An instructor will lead gentle poses and breathing exercises on the lawn at Sycamore Park with the backdrop of trees and the East Fork River. Beginners can learn the basics, while experienced yogis can enjoy practicing in a serene outdoor setting. Be sure to bring a yoga mat or towel and some water. The session will last about an hour. We have BooFest, Clermont County YMCA Halloween Festival, October 18 from 12PM to 2PM at the Claremont Family YMCA.
It's a free community Halloween party hosted by the y. Families are encouraged to come in costume and enjoy trunk or treating, music from a DJ, games, kids dance activities, and snacks in the YMCA's West parking lot. There's even a costume parade for youngsters and prizes awarded to the best decorated car trunks. It's open to the entire community, and you don't need to be a Y member to join the fun. That's all the events that we got, and I'll give another quick notes on events. I do my best to find as many as I can, but I I'm almost certain I don't get them all. So if you have an event or an event you'd like people to know about, something like that, just send an email. I'm Not gonna promise I'll read out any event that that I get sent just because I'm sure there's some wacky ones out there. I don't know.
But on balance, I I'd like to know what's going on in event wise. So please write in. And we'll close out with our final pitch for value for value. We are a value for value podcast. And what that means is if you find value in what we're doing, we just ask for a little value in return in the form of time, talent, or treasure. For For time and talent, get in touch. Let us know what's going on in your neighborhood. Let us know who you'd like us to interview. We had a producer right in, and we're gonna try to get the chief CJ Fett on CJ Fett on, so that's great. And think about that question. You know, what is the character of our county, of your township, of your village? What are we trying to preserve in the face of all this development pressure? I'd really wanna hear from people about that.
For treasure, go to the website, www.let's talk claremont.com. Click the donate tab. You can donate via PayPal or Stripe, and any dollar amount is greatly appreciated. And, again, thank you to all the donors who came in under $50 for reasons of anonymity. Like I said, any dollar amount's greatly appreciated. But for donors over $50, you'll get a special mention on the show. And for donations over $200, you will become an executive producer for that show, a title I will vouch for, and I'll read your note on air. And the note can be anything. It can be what's going on with you. It can be an ad read for your business or that Nastygram that I keep pushing. I really wanna do a dramatic reading of just a really nasty letter, I think. I think that'd be funny. And please connect with us on Facebook, Let's Talk Claremont podcast on Instagram at Let's Talk Claremont, and sign up for that newsletter. It's a fun little thing. We appreciate everybody that's already signed up for it.
And, of course, follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever it is you happen to use for podcast. It helps to show up, and it also helps you out because you will get notified whenever there is a new episode, which will be especially useful on this kind of accelerated publishing schedule that we're on. And, of course, if you just wanna get in touch and say hi, info@let'stalkclairemont.com. Well, thank you everybody for listening, and thank you for all the new listeners that that we're getting. This is it's really been awesome, and I really hope you enjoy the show. And we'll see you tomorrow.
We've been living in it since so long. All
[00:00:19] Unknown:
Welcome to episode 29 of Let's Talk Claremont. I am your host, Patrick, and I'm happy here. Thank you for listening. I am I'm happy in general because as I've been talking about probably too much, I love fall, and it is very fall like outside. In fact, I think it was yesterday, I got the very first whiff of fall. I I was it's that smell of, you know, like, dried leaves and a bonfire. You know, the air is a little crisper. I'm it's just put me in a really great mood. So I hope you're in a good mood too. So today is Tuesday, not Thursday, when we normally come out have an episode come out. And, this is normally when I'd say if you're new, here's what we do, but this is new to everybody. So I thought I'd just briefly talk about, the plan leading up into the fourth, because we're on accelerated publishing schedule.
We've got a lot of candidate interviews. We've even got the some ladies from Child Protection Services to talk about their levy. I'm hoping to get the fire chief on to talk about the fire levy. So there's gonna be a lot of candidate interviews and a lot of, talking to people about what's on the ballot. And if it comes out after November 4, well, that doesn't do anybody any good. So I had to think about what are we gonna put in these intro sections because I don't know that a whole lot of news is gonna happen between, you know, you know, last Thursday and today. And we're gonna have an episode come out tomorrow, and I almost can guarantee you that there's not gonna be a whole lot of news between today and tomorrow.
So also, it's a it's a lot of work to to do that. So just to keep something in this intro and to kinda lighten my workload, we're gonna do something a little different. We'll still do a news roundup, but we're gonna save that for Thursday. Newsletters still only gonna go out on Thursdays because I don't wanna flood everybody's, inboxes with a bunch of newsletters. So for some of these intros, what I thought we would do is look back at some of the bills in the Ohio State legislature that we've previously talked about to refresh our memory because some of them are relevant to the discussions we're having with candidates, and just to see where they're at in general.
You know, are they still in committee? Have they passed the house? Passed the senate? Or have they been signed into law? We're just gonna kinda do a do a recap of them. And as far as events goes, we're gonna keep the same list of events, from Thursday to Thursday. And every Thursday, there'll be a new set of events at the end of the episode. So, again, that's just trying to keep things consistent and to kinda lighten my my workload because it is it actually is quite a bit of work to try to find all these events because they're all over the place. But after the fourth, we'll be back to our normal publishing schedule, and I'm still gonna try to get people from public office and, you know, like sheriffs and things like that. People in public life.
But I'm also gonna go we're gonna go back to, you know, interesting people, doing interesting things, you know, cool businesses, stuff like that. So so that's where we're at. I hope you'll stick with it. So today, I thought it would be good to talk about house bill one thirteen. And we talked about this way back in episode four, I think it was, when we interviewed Tom Lemon at the Cardboard Boat Museum, which is a really fun interview. And I would suggest if you've got the time, go back and listen to that. But house bill one thirteen, it has to do with annexations, which given all the development talk and and the, I guess, debate that the county seems to be having about development, it would be a good idea to to look at this again.
And to start off, we're just gonna do a brief overview of what annexation even is. So in very simple terms, if you're a village or a city, I think townships can annex land, but it might be a little different or more difficult for them. But cities and and villages, if you want to expand your territory, or if you're an individual and you wanna be part of a village or a city, annexation is how you do it. This it it is the way that villages and cities grow, at least in terms of land. And it's a way that people can say, like, yes. I would like to be part of this village, or I would like to be part of this city. And there's a couple of different ways that you can actually annex land in Ohio.
Now there's a regular annexation, and there's lots of steps to that, and it takes a while depending on appeals and whether or not there's a referendum. The process is around a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty days. And we're not gonna talk a whole lot about regular annexations in this discussion because house bill one thirteen deals mostly with these other types of annexations, which are expediated annexations. There's three types of them. You've got type one. For type one annexations, petitions must be signed by all property owners within the within the territory proposed for annexation. So if a village wants to annex your property and they wanna do it in a type one way, you're gonna have to sign a petition saying, like, yes. I would like to do that.
It also requires consent from both the municipality and the township or townships if there's multiple townships. It can be any size of land, and commissioners grant this automatically at the next session. There is no hearing, and these take about fourteen days. The next one is type two. Again, petitions have to be signed by all property owners within the territory proposed for annexation, but these do not require consent from the township. It also must include upwards of 500 acres, and it must have a contiguous boundary with the municipal corporation for a length of at least 5% of the perimeter of the total of the territory proposed for annexation. And we're gonna talk a little bit more about what that means when we get into what house bill one thirteen changes.
Now if the township or city objects to it, the commissioners have thirty to thirty five days to review the annexation. But at this point, they're only looking for mistakes. This is gonna be stuff like improper petitions or not meeting, the land or contiguity rules. Unless there's a mistake, type two annexations go through pretty much without a hitch. And those will take about thirty days. Now for type one and type two, if you sign one of these petitions, you waive your right to appeal the annexation. So somebody comes to your door and says, hey. Would you like to be part of this village? Sign here if you'd like to be annexed, and you sign the petition, you then cannot appeal the annexation.
And I think that's important to note. And the last type of expediated annexation is type three. For these, over 50% of the owners have to sign a petition, and it needs to be a significant economic development project. It can be land of any size, and commissioners must approve within thirty days unless, again, there's kind of a mistake in the paperwork, and that's things like improper petitions or missing service plans, things like that. And type three annexations take about forty five to sixty days. So as you can see, these expediated annexations go much faster than a regular one. So what does house bill one thirteen change?
Well, it's gonna add a general good or a benefit versus detriment test to every expediated petition, and it lets the commissioners deny it if it fails that test. Right now, type one and type two are almost automatic. With house bill one thirteen, commissioners are gonna have a greater say. The next thing is it's gonna tighten up type two parameters. So that acreage cap is gonna get cut from 500 to 200 acres. The contiguity bar is gonna be raised from 5% to 20%. So what's that mean? That means what they're gonna look at is they're gonna look at the shared boundary between the municipality and the property being annexed.
They're going to take that number, and they're going to divide it by the total perimeter and then multiply everything by a 100, and there you get your percentage. This aims to stop annexation of large strips of road to connect municipalities to developments. So you can almost think of this like gerrymandering. Municipalities right now can annex a long strip of road to get to whatever land that they want, whatever development that they want, and then that'll be part of the municipality. This would would make it significantly harder to do that. Also, house bill one thirteen is gonna change the petition language, so it now forces signers to acknowledge that they don't have appeal rights for types one and type two annexations.
Additionally, affected school boards will need to be notified and provided a written service plan, and it adds a mandatory school board approval step for residential CRA property tax exemptions. Now there already are, there already is rather, a mandatory school board approval step for abated properties, but it is only for commercial and in industrial abatements. And the last big thing that it'll do is, right now, elected officials and high level appointees, they have to file annual ethics and financial interest statements so that whenever one of these developments happens, we can all look at it and say, okay. There's no conflicts of interest or any kind of ethical problems with the people involved in this deal.
It's gonna add to that to that list of people, and I can't I don't know who has to do it now, but it's gonna add city managers, assistant managers, village administrators, and assistant village administrators to the mandatory filer list. So what is what is house bill one if it passes, what is this how is this gonna affect us? Well, it's gonna turn expediated annexation into a merits based decision, not just a paperwork exercises. It's gonna make types one through three more aligned with regular annexations and will probably slow down the average approval cycle. Also, like we talked about, by capping type two annexations at 200 acres and increasing the contiguity man, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Contiguity threshold, it's going to hinder the practice of annexing narrow, road strips of road, to reach distant subdivisions.
It's also going to give school districts more power. It's gonna require that school districts approve any residential property tax exempt exemptions within a CRA, and it's gonna give districts a more significant role in local development decisions that could affect their financial health. So I think this is important because of the, you know, the kind of contentious, issue at in Batavia. What happened there was there was a piece of property, that the owner sold, and they wanted to do a development. So they went to the township. Township said, no. We don't really wanna do this. They took it to the the commissioners, and the commissioner said, no. You can't do this. It's not good. And so then they went to the village, and they did a type two annexation, which nobody could stop. So, regardless of your opinion of that, that's how that happened. And under house bill one thirteen, it would be more difficult for something like that to happen.
I think it's also important to note that this is just an overview. There's a lot of other things that house bill one thirteen changes. But in terms of annexation, this is what I found most interesting. And I'm also not an expert. I think by now, I've talked to enough people about this that I know much more than I did back in episode four. But in the future, I would like to keep having people on that are zoning experts and to talk a little and maybe even Adam Bird himself to talk more about this bill and, you know, what it's what it's doing. And I say Adam Bird because he's one of the primary sponsors of this bill and, one of our state representatives, which, brings up a good point. If this is something you like or if it's something you don't like, get in touch with the representatives. Tell them you really want this or you really don't want this. Talk to your local representatives, your trustees, your council members. They talk to people in Columbus.
Let them know that this is something you want or that you don't want. And and, you know, we'll see what happens with it. Right now, the bill has been introduced to the house, and it's working its way through the house local government committee. And if it gets to the committee, it'll go to the house for a vote. If it passes that vote, it'll go to the senate, or it will have to go through another committee, and then the senate will vote on it. And if all that happens, it'll finally go to the governor to either be signed or vetoed. So that's what I got for you on house bill one thirteen, which will bring us to we are a value for value podcast.
And what that means is if you find value in what we're doing, we just ask for a little value in return in the form of time, talent, or treasure. For time and talent, get in touch with us. Let us know what's going on in your community. Let us know who you'd like to be interviewed. I wanna talk to the people you wanna hear from, and I wanna talk about the things that are important in your community and let other people know what's going on there. And, also, keep thinking about that question I ask. What is the character of our county, in in looking into all this zoning and annexation and development stuff?
A lot of people and a lot of documents say we're trying to preserve the character of our county, of our village, our township, our city, whatever the case may be. But what is that character? What are we trying to preserve and protect in the face of all of this development pressure? I'm not sure I have a good answer for that, but if you do, please write in. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are. For treasure, go to the website, www.let'stalkclaremont.com. Click donate. You could donate via PayPal or Stripe, and I think this is a good opportunity to thank all the donors that came in under $50, and that's for reasons of anonymity.
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That all said. For donations $50 and above, you will get a special mention on the show. And for donations $200 and above, you will get an executive producer credit that I will vouch for, and you can put on resumes, whatever you want. And I'll read a note. Well, not live on air because I prerecord this, but on air. And it can be anything. It could just be what's going on in your life. It could be an ad read for your business. So I'm gonna keep pushing it. I'm gonna keep pushing nasty grams, so I can have a very dramatic reading for everybody. I don't know why I think that'd be fun. I just think it'd be I just think it would be fun. I don't know why.
And connect with us on Facebook, Let's Talk Claremont podcast. We're on Instagram at Let's Talk Claremont, and sign up for that newsletter. Another note about the newsletter on Thursday, it'll have all the episodes that have come out in this week. So, if you're if you get kinda lost and you don't know, you know, what's new and what isn't, that newsletter will still come out on Thursday, and we'll have every single episode from the week. And we're gonna keep doing that through the fourth. And please follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever it is you happen to use for podcast. It helps the show out, but it also helps you out. Because every time there's a new show, you will be notified.
And as always, if you just wanna get in touch and say hi or, I don't know, whatever you want. Info at let's talkclaremont.com. Write in. I love hearing from people, and I'd love to hear from you. Alright. So to talk about the posting schedule this week, we're obviously, I have an episode today, Tuesday. We're gonna have an episode tomorrow too, and we're gonna have another one on Thursday. And like I said a little earlier, we're gonna do that full news rundown and a fresh list of events on Thursday, and that newsletter will only go out on Thursday with all the episodes linked. Another good reason for the newsletter.
So let's talk about who we're gonna be talking to tomorrow. It's gonna be Bob Raab, an officer for the Kiwanis Club in the East Fork region. Now he's not a candidate for office or anything like that, but the Kiwanis are putting on an event called fields of honor. And it's a really nice event. It lets you sponsor a flag, and they're big flags, like full size flags, and I think he said seven foot flag poles. But you get to sponsor one of those for a veteran or a first responder, and it those will be displayed in various locations across the county. It kicks off November 1, So I thought it'd be nice to try to let people know about it. And because of that, we're gonna have to lump him in with all these, candidate interviews.
We also talk about the Kiwanis in general, which was great because I've heard of the Kiwanis before. You know, you drive into a town and you always kinda see that Kiwanis sign, and it'll be next to things like the Lions Club, which I'm not sure what the Lions Club is either. So if there's anyone involved with that, let me know. I'd love to talk to somebody from that organization to see what they do. But I wasn't entirely sure what Kiwanis do. And overall, it seems like a really great organization. It's focused on community projects and projects that, in particular, were for kids, which, you know, that's great.
So tune in tomorrow for that. But today, we are talking to Jim Daumeyer, candidate for Loveland City Council. I had a really good talk with him. We discussed his volunteer work with, Loveland's parks and some of the things he'd like to do for the parks as a council member, talk about some ways to relieve some of the traffic in Downtown Loveland. We also get into better communication and just development in general, which if you've been paying attention, has been a common theme among most, if not all of these candidates. So and we even get into brewing beer a little bit. If you've been listening, I brew mead myself. So whenever there's a fellow brewer, I can get a little nerdy and nerd out on brewing alcohol. So, and I this is important to note, and I think we talked about it in the interview. But I, I actually worked with his wife about fifteen years ago at this point. It was a while ago. And I really enjoyed working with Cindy, and I just thought it would be let everybody I thought it would be a good idea to let everybody know that for transparency's sake. I don't think it impacts the questions that I asked him, or the interview at all, but for the sake of transparency, I just want to let you know that.
And thanks again to Jim for sitting down with me, and we are going to wish him the best of luck come November. And I know I've said about all the candidates, but, you know, win or lose, I think, well, I'm back on. He's, he's also a sound guy, so I might bug him for some audio advice. But, you know, outside of all that, let me just talk about brewing beer and brewing meat and parks because he really likes parks. So thank you to Jim, and I really hope you enjoy the interview. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and start this, like all my interviews start. Why don't you just tell us who you are and what you are doing?
[00:20:34] Unknown:
Jim Daumeyer. I'm running for Loveland City Council. Nice.
[00:20:37] Unknown:
But I'm I'm assuming you have a day job. I do. What do you do for work? I freelance in film and video production. Nice. What do you what's that entail?
[00:20:46] Unknown:
That entails, a lot of things.
[00:20:50] Unknown:
Like, you know Which is good because I think council entails Yeah. Exactly. So I work in commercials,
[00:20:55] Unknown:
doing sound while I, you know, record talent. I will go out for, like, an ESPN or NFL network when they're doing long format interviews. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll set up the microphones to make sure they get to the camera. I'll do, for, like, the Bengals, I'll go down to pre and post game. You do a lot of work with the Bengals. Are you a Bengals fan? I am a Bengals fan.
[00:21:16] Unknown:
How are they doing this year? I don't follow. They're so far okay. They are,
[00:21:20] Unknown:
two and o. They won the first two games. It was a lot better than last year where they lost the first six. Yeah. That's that's a much better start. Joe Burrow got injured, so we're waiting to hear what happened to him. Yeah. It's turned How do Joe Burrow always? He's the quarterback. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, so, yeah, so I do that, and then I do other things. I'll do corporate videos, communications. I find sometimes I find myself in CEOs' offices recording messages to just internally. Yeah. And then industrial is another thing that we do, where we go out and usually it's, you you know, how to videos inside the plant or wherever, like, you
[00:21:57] Unknown:
know, proper safety. Yeah. Yeah. All kinds of things. At Milicron. We had stuff like in marketing, obviously. Yeah. We did stuff like that all the time. Yeah. Obviously, we didn't hire you. But no. I was available, though. Yeah. As a freelancer, I know that. Yeah. Like, yep. I'm available. Yeah. What do you need? Yeah. So yeah. And so I'll travel, I do a lot locally, then I'll travel regionally,
[00:22:19] Unknown:
you know, OSU or Louisville, Lexington, you know, horses. Oh, you do. Like the races. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would go down and do behind the scenes, you know, out in, you know, to the barns where the horses are. I've done a lot of those stories down there. Nice. Yeah. So it's
[00:22:37] Unknown:
the background of production is diverse in this region to, you know, to make a living. So I feel like Cincinnati is doing and we'll get to the council stuff. I don't know. Yeah. Are they still in Cincinnati doing a pretty big push for video, like, to bring movie production to They are. How's that going? That's going pretty well. Yeah. It's going really well. Yeah. You get jobs down there for So I don't do movies as much. Mhmm.
[00:22:58] Unknown:
There's a lot of sound people in the town, which is great. So there's certain people who do movies, and then there's others. Is it hard to get your foot in the door for movie stuff? I don't I mean, it's just something I haven't desired. So I did the last movie I did was, like, 02/2015. Okay. And, we when, we did the last scene of the last day, and it was an and it was the finale of the thing. So the, you know, they basically burned down a barn. Oh, really? Yeah. Like, they caught a barn on fire. They yes. Caught a barn on fire for the for this finale of the movie. Oh, wow. And so, you know, it was a great night, but I'm just, like, driving home at 05:00 in the morning. The sun's coming up. Yeah.
And my wife had to go into work. Yeah. And I was on kid duty. Yeah. All day. Yep. And I was like, maybe I can I need to stop doing movies?
[00:23:48] Unknown:
Maybe I shouldn't be driving home at four in the morning after a barn burning. It was a great experience, but, you know, practically,
[00:23:54] Unknown:
when you're trying to raise a family, it wasn't as
[00:23:56] Unknown:
it wasn't as good. Yeah. Yeah. I can I can see that? Yeah. So let's talk about Loveland, and let's start with,
[00:24:03] Unknown:
how long have you been here? I've been in Loveland for over twenty years. Where were you before Loveland? Pleasant Ridge. Okay. Great. So so you've been around Yeah. Cincinnati area. I have been, yeah. I got I went to high school. It's I got a degree at Sycamore High School. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One. Yeah. I want Sycamore and then Xavier after that. That's great. Got a degree in communications, electronic media. Okay.
[00:24:23] Unknown:
So so what made you wanna move to Loveland twenty years ago? So Well, best then. Yeah. Why don't we give you a double barreled question? So So we, we live in Pleasant Ridge. We just had our son, and we are looking at,
[00:24:35] Unknown:
schools. Like, you know, just like where you know, what do we wanna do for education? Both my wife and I grew up in a in a suburban setting. Yeah. And we kinda wanted to emulate that. Yeah. So we are looking around at the schools, and, and Loveland kept coming up. And they had a great school, and, so we decided to move here. Okay. So the school. So our love and school is still pretty good. I don't know. Schools are still they're awesome. Yeah. They're good. They are, yeah, the top 10%. Oh, really? They just had a a review
[00:25:08] Unknown:
last year, and they did really well in it. That's awesome. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Like I said, I'm on Batavia, so I don't really Okay. Yeah. Get out of here too much. What was it if you could just compare and contrast what Loveland was like twenty years ago to where it is now, what what's changed?
[00:25:25] Unknown:
So, the changes that I've seen, in Loveland are probably, our downtown has built up a little bit. Mhmm. We have a lot more, we have more apartment buildings downtown, which is a a difference. When we first moved here, it wasn't that. It was, everyone lived in houses on the, you know, edges of the town. Yeah. And then our downtown area across the bridge, in Claremont has probably, twice the amount of of, apartments that they had when we first moved in. In the Claremont side? Yep.
[00:26:00] Unknown:
Yep. That makes sense. Claremont's
[00:26:02] Unknown:
Yeah. So focus on growth. So there's a lot exactly. So it was a huge buildup downtown, as far as apartments and then also, you know, getting restaurants and and everything in. And then there was that fire that happened about four years ago. Four years ago downtown. But I talked to Dietra about the fire. I don't think you talked to her about the fire. I don't know about the fire. Yeah. What happened? Huge fire, on, West Loveland. It took a whole city block out. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's a serious fire. It was a serious fire, and, it was, it was a high impact for the community to see that happen. Yeah. What what was the I mean, what was the economic impact of that? Do you know? That I don't know. I don't know. I know we lost, you know, they're, basically, they were in there were three restaurants and then, four apartment building four apartments above the restaurants. Mhmm. Do was everybody safe? Everyone was safe. Okay. That's cool. Yeah. And then Did they know it started it? Was it, like, Bessie kicked over the fire extinguisher?
[00:26:59] Unknown:
What that was, but I'm sure they do. I bet it was electrical if it was anything. Yeah. Were they older buildings? They were. And that was the hard part, you know, to see, like, your historic
[00:27:09] Unknown:
community buildings go, and you're just like, and then and then they rebuilt. They did a really good job architecturally matching what we had before and then improving on the space that we could or they could. Yeah. Because I just sat and watched. Yeah. Had nothing to do with it. Yeah. But I appreciate what they did. That's good to know. Yeah.
[00:27:30] Unknown:
So you're running for council, and I think the first obvious question anybody would ask is why are you doing that?
[00:27:36] Unknown:
Why? I'm I'm I'm running for council, for a few different reasons. One is I think I could help Mhmm. You know, make us better. We are, there's a lot of things that I've seen in the past, eight years, ten years of just volunteering at at, in Loveland, and just kinda going to some of the meetings, the, committee meetings for, tree environment, parks and rec, and just how Loveland communicates with Loveland Mhmm. And residents and that messaging. And it's like, we're continuing having this education problem of, like, teaching people what's going on in our community. Yeah. And so, like, this big hurdle of, like, you know and it's even from, like, one committee to another or from council to committee. It's like, you know, no one's really aware of what each are doing. So Oh, yeah. It's a communication thing that I like to talk about. Unique problem. Right. Right. Like in Batavia right now, there's
[00:28:36] Unknown:
a whole big thing with some development that's going in and the township and the village and the airport. Everybody's at each other's throats. And it's I think a big problem is communication. Mhmm. Is is nobody's
[00:28:47] Unknown:
clearly communicating with each other. Right. And so it all gets spun up into this big mess. Yes. I imagine there's stuff like that in Loveland that happens. Yeah. Exactly. It's, yeah. So so if things aren't communicated correctly or on time, and then things start to happen, and then everyone's like, what's going on? And they feel like, you know, people are trying to pull the wool over their eyes and do something Yeah. You know? And it well, that's That's exactly what's happening. Yeah. It might not be the case, but, you know, you know, you weren't it wasn't communicated correctly. Yeah. We have a a really good for instance, that happened, on our school board eight years ago Yeah. Where, you know, there was a levy, and then it wasn't communicated correctly. And then everyone thought that everyone's stealing money from the school board. And I was just
[00:29:31] Unknown:
Well, it's crazy. This is like, when you don't give people information, they create their own. Yeah. Yeah. And they'll connect their own dots. Right. Whether that's positive or negative. Yeah. They'll just do that. Right. I do that. Yes. You know? If I don't have information, I look at the information I have and start connecting dots. Yes. Exactly. And if I'm missing a dot, then Make it up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I Yeah. That's that's what I do. You you infer. Yeah. Which you kinda have to do because if you don't have that information, you gotta figure out a way to interpret what's going on in your local government. So Yep.
So what are the other reasons?
[00:30:03] Unknown:
The other reasons are, I want the improvements that I would like to do in Loveland, I feel I can do at the, you know, at on the, at a council member level. Yeah. You know? So currently, I've, been volunteering building, paths and trails in, our green spaces and parks. Okay. Which is why I meant train environment committed me and why I show up at the, parks and rec. Yeah. Just to let them know what I'm, you know, what's going on and make sure I what I'm doing is okay with them. Mhmm. And, so that's been going really well.
[00:30:36] Unknown:
How many trails have you built and everything? I'm on, like, three. Nice. Yeah. Nice. It's been So does Loveland have its own parks district? I guess it would have to. They don't have their own parks district yet. Okay. So Are they are they looking to get one? No. Or are you looking to get one? I'm looking no. I wanna start one to figure out how to how to help them out. So our public service,
[00:30:57] Unknown:
team does a really good job in our parks, and so it's they haven't really separated it out. Yeah.
[00:31:02] Unknown:
But the Oh, so so Loveland can because, like, in Clermont Mhmm. Very, very few townships and villages own their own parks. Right. It's mostly done at the county level. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. That's why I was asking. Do
[00:31:16] Unknown:
have our own parks. But we don't have, like, a, you know There's not, like, a park in charge of, yeah, parks. Gotcha. Kinda everyone takes their responsibility at at public parks, and they do what they need to do. Yeah. It's been it's great. So what's your favorite park? Simpson Nature Preserve right now is my favorite park. Why do you like that? Just the diversity of, the terrain in there. It's not like you know, a lot of parks are very level. Yeah. Soccer fields, baseball fields. Yeah. Yeah. And then, this one has an elevation change
[00:31:49] Unknown:
of probably 200 feet. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. It's I mean, it's not Mount Everest. No. It's not. But But it's still a little bit better than just walking around a flat field. Correct. Yeah. Do you like hiking? I do. Okay. I do. Like hiking.
[00:32:02] Unknown:
I've been out to Colorado a few times. Nice. Hiked out there. Yeah. I went to a conference in Denver, and
[00:32:09] Unknown:
it's wild to see those mountains in the distance. Yeah. Like, I've never been backpacking out there. I'm not a huge outdoorsman. Yeah. But, yeah, it's it's good. It's not for everyone, but, you know, I enjoy it. I you know, getting away.
[00:32:21] Unknown:
And, yeah. So I started working on trails around here to kinda bring that to here. Mhmm. And, right after COVID, I realized that we needed more of that. Yeah. So started working on that. And, so yeah. So I've built, about two I'm I'm up after this third one, it's gonna be, like, three miles of trail.
[00:32:41] Unknown:
Nice. Yeah. And you just do that on your free time. I do. Yeah. So, originally, I started,
[00:32:48] Unknown:
I eight years ago, I started, at the my kids were in cross country. Mhmm. And I was at one of the cross country meetings, and I had, the coaches were talking about how they didn't have their home meet. Yeah. So we used to have a home meet. It was at the high school. You ran around the back field. You went out the front. You came back up and, you know, finished in the track, and it wasn't I'm also a runner, so it wasn't very exciting Yeah. To me. You know? Yeah. I'm like, so I took it upon myself to, to work on making a cross country invitational for Loveland. Yeah. So I started looking around at maps around, like, where's a good place to have trails, have a good ball field, have parking for 30 buses, have enough parking for everyone who's gonna show up to watch.
So I started, looking around. I came up with Home Of The Brave, which is in Symmes Township. Okay. But it's, less than a mile from the high school. Okay. So less than a mile from the middle school. And does the high school and middle school still use it for cross country? They do. Nice. We just had our eighth invitational Nice. Over Labor Day weekend. That's awesome. Yeah. So, so that's when I started getting to building trails. And so So I don't mean to cut you off. No. You're
[00:33:56] Unknown:
What does it actually take to build a trail? Like, what's that work look like? So that work,
[00:34:01] Unknown:
initially for me is I'm just going through and I'm just, taking out the invasives. Mhmm. And so Like the branches? Honeysuckle. Oh, man. Yeah. So honeysuckle. So I'm going at and I'm going at the root level to to tear them out. That stuff is So they don't grow back. Yeah. And, generally, so you can build a trail through honeysuckle and still have honeysuckle on the side. You know, they're so invasive here. Oh, yeah. And and that's what our initial plan right now is is building these trails so that we can have volunteers come through and clean the rest of the honeysuckle that's not, you know. Yeah. But to get to it on the trail is is probably a little bit safer than just to go through the woods and not have a you know, and just, like, clear out acres. But if you go through a trail and you identify all your invasives, you know, your your pear and, you know, your autumn olives and just and also take those out, It'd be, you know, so we're working like that. So that's what I'm doing when I'm doing trails. Man, you're fighting honeysuckle.
[00:34:55] Unknown:
That's so fun.
[00:34:56] Unknown:
It isn't. I've learned to enjoy it. Yeah. You know, yeah. For some reason, it's just it's very soothing to me, be out in nature. I'm usually by myself when I'm working on these trails, and, you know, I just have a direction that I'm heading towards, and you can't You can't stop. You're in the zone? You are in the zone. Yeah. And just yep. I always like things like that. It's like a meditation.
[00:35:17] Unknown:
You know? Yep. I I think there's a I don't know if it's Zen or something like that, but, like, small repetitive tasks.
[00:35:23] Unknown:
When you do them, you're it, like, frees your mind. It does. It does. Really enjoy stuff like that. Right. And that's that's exactly where I'm at when I'm when I'm out there doing them just, you know, just cleaning things out. And then I thought I would only enjoy it in the summer, but then I found out I enjoy it in the winter. Oh, you go out there in the winter too, and it's cold. Yeah. So I found out that my one of my discoveries was, it's sometimes easier when the wet when the temperature's below 30, you know, when it's freezing Mhmm. Because, all the molecules are frozen. So everything you've, you know, just explodes. Just snaps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so much easier. Yeah. A little colder. It is a little colder. Although, I don't know. I would because I hate the heat. Well, yeah. I I find, yeah, when you're doing the work, you're gonna sweat no matter what Yeah. How much you're wearing. So I, you know, just get that, and it's, it's good. It's make be smarter on how to identify the invasives without leaves. Mhmm.
Leaves are important when you're identifying. Leaves are really helpful Yeah. To me. Yeah. So but when you're out there now, I know what honeysuckle looks like when it's with no leaves. It sounds like you might be a bit of a honeysuckle expert at this point. I feel like I yeah. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. The the irony is write a book about The irony is is that before I got into this is that,
[00:36:30] Unknown:
honeysuckle was, like, one of my favorite plants. Yeah. Like, I love the fragrance. Yeah. I mean, they're rooms. Yeah. They're beautiful plants, but they just we lived out in Felicity, and it was honeys we we had about 10 acres. Mhmm. And the honeysuckle, man, is was just everywhere. And you try to cut it back, and it would just come back twice as hard. It would wrap itself around existing plants and choke them out. Mhmm. It's such an aggressive plant. Yeah. That's why it's funny. People look at nature, and they're like, oh, isn't that all beautiful? And then you dig into it. It's like, oh, no. Everything out here is trying to kill each other. Yeah. Like, it's it's kind of a brutal place. It really is. It really is. I mean, you know, brutal and beautiful. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's absolutely beautiful. Yeah. But it's I mean, it's not it's not like some idyllic,
[00:37:15] Unknown:
you know, like wonderland that you can just go skipping through. Yeah. And that's yeah. But that's where I'm at now where I where I see a native plant now and identify a native plant, I you know, it brings joy to my heart. Yeah. You're making it, buddy. Yeah. Stay away from that funny cycle. Yeah. But that's where yeah. And that's when I realized that you you can't just cut the limbs off. You gotta go and pull out the root system and make sure it's not gonna come back. Yeah.
[00:37:37] Unknown:
So you've got communication, parks. Mhmm. What else? What what else are you running for?
[00:37:44] Unknown:
So, oh, that leads into so the parks, which are you know, I'd love to improve some of the parks that we're that we have. The other thing is is, when I get on council, I can, you know, build trails all day long, but I can't build sidewalks. Sidewalks. So one of the things I'm running on is just, like, now that I've I've become a map person as well, just look at the maps. Have you gotten into GIS at all?
[00:38:08] Unknown:
No. Oh, man. That'll change your life. Really? It's really fun. Sends for geographic information services. You can go and get data all kinds of different data sets, and you gotta learn a program. Okay. And then you just basically take maps and overlay the data, and it you can get it gets pretty wild. I I can imagine. I would probably enjoy that then. Yeah. I've done orienteering.
[00:38:30] Unknown:
Okay. You know what that means? Basically finding your way through woods. Yeah. Right? With a map and a compass. Yep. Mine two love. So mapping and then running Yeah. Because it's a timed it's a timed event. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah. So, looking at all the maps, I'm just studying, like, ways for people who live closer to town could walk in or ride their bike in. Mhmm. I don't know. I'm not gonna go as far as I don't think it would be helpful to have bike lanes Yeah. Yet. It would be great to have sidewalks that were appropriate for bikes Yeah. Because we're not talking about
[00:39:01] Unknown:
high end cycling. Yeah. It's not like the guys in spandex with little meters on there. Right. Yeah. It's like a guy in a Right. Just a single gear that's just trying to get to the brewery or something. Right. Exactly. So,
[00:39:13] Unknown:
so I've been looking at improving our sidewalks and and making them get our, residents into town Mhmm. Better, safely. I know that, Deidre talked about that with you last time. Yeah. Because a lot of these sidewalks are over in Clermont. Yeah. I'd like to fix that, get us down there, and then there's a few sidewalks here. Even at the front of my subdivision, we could use a sidewalk down, and then, you know, we're, like, a I'm two miles away from the city center. Mhmm. I ride my bike down there freak not frequently, but I have. I did notice on the way in, were there any sidewalks on the We don't have sidewalks in this community. And then, you came in on Loma Madera. There's no sidewalks out there. So and then this so Symmes Township is what you drove through Mhmm. Until you got to my subdivision, then it switched over to Loveland. Okay. And so that's the other thing too is, on city council, I'd love to work with Symmes Okay. And figure out how to get, you know, their pockets of of Sim Town Symmes Township that is, on the thoroughfare that we can we need to build sidewalks through Mhmm. You know, to help both of our residents Yeah. You know, travel. That seems like a win win. It would be. Although, you know, when you're dealing with different government entities, you don't really ever know. Yeah. And that's what, you know, and that's why, you know, I got to work with Symmes to build the cross country
[00:40:30] Unknown:
race. I think we're good. Yeah. Sometimes it does. Alright.
[00:40:33] Unknown:
I got to work with Symmes, township to work on the cross country race, and they're, you know, they're great to work with. And so, you know, it's I'm not afraid. We share a fire department. We have a Loveland Symmes fire department. So, you know, it's not outrageous for us to think that we can't Right. Work together.
[00:40:49] Unknown:
So so you've got parks and sidewalks and communication? Parks, sidewalks, communication,
[00:40:55] Unknown:
traffic. Traffic? Traffic.
[00:40:58] Unknown:
I haven't driven I I haven't driven through Downtown Buffalo many times, but when I have, it is pretty congested. It is. So,
[00:41:05] Unknown:
it's interesting. I've been walking the neighborhoods, talking to residents, and one of the things I get back is, you know, we start talking about traffic. I'm like, oh, what do you think? You know? And then the answer I get from them is, like, I don't even drive there. Yeah. They just go the opposite way. Yeah. And I was just like, well, what does that mean, you know, as a resident of a town that you avoid Yeah. Your own town?
[00:41:26] Unknown:
It's not a good No. No. Yeah. So I mean, especially you want people Right. Like, it's there for people to work. You know, this is you know,
[00:41:34] Unknown:
your taxes are paying for this, and you wanna avoid it because Because it's too too much traffic. Yeah. So, and then parking is always has been a problem too. And this is what I would hope that, you know, If I come at it with sidewalks and, motivating, cycling to town, I'm not saying everyone's gonna do that or needs to do that, but there's probably 10 to 20% of us that would. Yeah. You don't have to be need especially cycling. Like, you don't need many to alleviate the traffic issues. You know? Right. So I'm just you know, if if there was a few of us that, you know, it would walk when you could and rode your bike if you could, you know, that would be it would alleviate some some of those stresses that we have of that.
[00:42:16] Unknown:
Well, parking's not I mean, that's not, again, unique to Loveland. I was I was listening to and it might have actually been Deidre's episode that I went over the parking issues they're having in Milford. Okay. In Old Milford, I think what they've actually found is it's not so much the people from the city that wanna come in and eat and drink and do whatever. It's the people who work there. So when workers come, they're gonna take up a parking spot for six, eight hours. And if you have enough people working, it's really gonna take a chunk
[00:42:46] Unknown:
out of your parking. That's an interesting I don't know if that's the same for Loveland, but I'm sure we have know if I'm trying to figure out. Yeah. I'm sure that we have I mean, we have restaurants and bars and employees, and, so I'm sure that that could be Yeah. That's an interesting, thing to come at. Yeah. Because, yeah, that's one of the things I have with the cross country event is, like, you know, I have a 100 volunteers.
[00:43:09] Unknown:
Yeah. Like, it's always like I'm like, can you can you park somewhere else? Just let everyone who's coming into the event. Well, and it's a tough nut to crack. It is. Because because you're asking for volunteers. Well well Yeah. Or And, well, and with the parking too, it's like these businesses need employees. Mhmm. And you don't want your employees parking five miles away. Right. But at the same time, you need customers. And so it's and I think Milford's idea was a charge for parking, and people got irate about that. Yeah. But it was nice to watch because it was like local government in action. Right. All these people came to a council meeting, and they said, this is a terrible idea. We thought about this, that, and the other thing. Yeah. And the council went, no. So let's not do the paid parking. We'll figure something else out. That's good. That's good. Yeah. I have heard some negatives about our paid parking. Yeah. They're like, we're residents, and we shouldn't have to pay to park. And I'm like, I agree. Yeah. I I would agree with that. Yeah. You know? So And I don't really think it helps the problem really. Because, I mean, if, again, if your problem is employees taking up spots Mhmm. You need to figure out Right. Or, you know, get in charge for parking to to build more parking or a little better structure
[00:44:13] Unknown:
or Yeah. Then it might make sense, but, you know,
[00:44:18] Unknown:
it doesn't make a lot of sense. So or or I don't want me to cut you off. No. You're fine. I was Are there any other besides those, I guess, you'd three or four? Yeah. Three or four, and then, yeah, parks and sidewalks, traffic. Transparency,
[00:44:32] Unknown:
which kind of is that communication thing. Yeah. And then, you know, keep an eye. I'm, you know, fiscally conservative. Yeah. You know? So I don't like wasting money. Yeah. I don't like it when I see my tax money getting wasted. Yeah. Nobody does. No one does. No one does. So Especially with property taxes. That's what they are. You gotta get in. You can't sleep on anything. You gotta make sure that, you know, everything's happening.
[00:44:56] Unknown:
And then, yeah. So just and but at the same time, not being afraid of growth and and keeping us quaint. You know? Well, we'll put a pin in the growth part because I do wanna ask you about that. Okay. But I'd like to circle back to all of the things that you're running on and just we'll start with communication and transparency. Mhmm. What do you think is working, and what do you think should be changed, like, concretely? Right.
[00:45:18] Unknown:
So what is working, is the, you know, is our the website, you you know, as far as communication goes. So what's not working is, you know, getting that website seen, you know, getting it, you know, where, they did start an app, that you could sign up for. And then, but, you know, it's getting that done. I've been on the way I'm on the website all the time now, and it's I'm challenged by it. Yeah. Trust me. I've been after starting this podcast, I've been on a lot of
[00:45:48] Unknown:
village and city and township websites, and they're all Right. Challenging to navigate. Yes. Yeah. And so and then that's a challenge,
[00:45:55] Unknown:
that we've gone through, and I'm I'm watching, you know, you know, the hiring. You have to find somebody who specializes in, you know Yeah. In computers. Yeah. It's a skill. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's like you can just get some guy and It's fix this for me. Yeah. And it's a skill set that is I don't know if it's built for, you know, for government. You know? So it's, you know, and it's it's also something that it's not tangible. So to spend money on that,
[00:46:24] Unknown:
to say that we're better communicating Trust me. I'm in the digital marketing world. Like, it's tough to sell somebody on a website Right. Like a a real structural change in how your information is presented Yes. Because it's time consuming and expensive. A lot of people just like, well, let's just make it look prettier. It's like, oh, okay. It looks pretty, but Exactly. You can't get the information. Right. Right. So, you know, is it so one of the quick ones would be just like, you know, we need to have our own Instagram account. Oh, Loveland doesn't even have an Instagram account. They do. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. I need to do a quick check. Just make sure.
I'm assuming they have a Facebook page. Or Yeah. Yeah. But, you know,
[00:47:06] Unknown:
you know, just get updates on your whatever what's going on.
[00:47:11] Unknown:
There it is. We'll do a a quick check and see if they have an Instagram account. Well, while you're looking, I'll ask you a question Yes. To think about. So outside the website and social media, what are some of the other things that you would and, actually, I'll I'll ask this kinda more specifically. Because I think part of communication is in the marketing world, we call it voice of customer. You know, like Mhmm. Taking the temperature of customers, what's working with our product, what isn't, what would you like to see, what features do you need. I guess for a government, you'd call it voice of constituents.
How would you try to capture what your constituents are feeling and wanting and react to it? Do does that you does that make sense?
[00:47:56] Unknown:
Yes. So you're, we're talking from the residence up. Yeah. Like, how how do
[00:48:02] Unknown:
you how do you get what people are thinking and and what they want in a in a broad sense? Mhmm. I mean, outside of, you know, the council does something nobody likes and 500 people show up. Right. You know, you you don't want it to get to that point. Yeah. You wanna understand what people really want. Right. So,
[00:48:16] Unknown:
basically, just, you know, it's for me, it's one on one talking, you know, finding out about but then it's not there's, like, stopping at the first or 10 people who are also in your, you know, in your set. You know? You need to reach out to talk to people who are not in your income bracket. Talk to people who are not in your neighborhood. You need to talk to people who are you know, everyone what's you know, what are they experiencing? You know? It's like, you know, we were talking about traffic earlier. It's just like it's it impacts me differently here in Hamilton County than it does everyone over on the other side of the bridge, because we were talking about cycling earlier, and that might alleviate things, but not during school time. Yeah. You know, not in the morning when, you know, everyone's gotta drive across the bridge to go to high school. Is that the infamous eight foot tall bridge? Yeah.
Yes. Is that the oh, that's the, that's the trestle. The trestle. The trestle. So a different bridge. Yep. So a bridge. That's alright. Very not familiar with this area. So, yeah. So just, you know, in in the morning, you know so no one's riding their bike in the morning or to school, but, you know, is that something we could change? Maybe. You know? Okay. But, anyway but yeah. So just continuing on to talk to people and finding out what's going on out there. And then, you know, if you, you know I was trying to bounce ideas off that they seem awesome to me. Yeah.
[00:49:36] Unknown:
Like, I've got this great idea. Hear me out. Monorail? Yes. Little Simpsons reference for anybody who Yeah. Who watches the Simpsons. Yeah. So,
[00:49:47] Unknown:
yeah. And I do stand corrected there. I do have an Instagram account. Okay. So I I apologize. No. That's fair enough. I will now I will now join.
[00:49:55] Unknown:
I don't think everybody's gonna string you up for that. Okay. So that's kinda communicate. Is there anything else in terms of communication and transparency that you would like to see outside of, like, a website and just better social media presence?
[00:50:10] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, just a, yeah, better presence. You know? It'd be great to figure out a way just to you know, where messages are received. You know? It's just an email to the city manager, I think, currently, is one of the best ways to Yeah. Communicate, which is great. Our city manager is awesome. David Kenny
[00:50:26] Unknown:
usually replies. Good that he's responsive. Yes. I don't know if that is Yeah. I don't know if that is characteristic of Oh, that's a good point. Yeah.
[00:50:33] Unknown:
But, but if you would email from, people I've heard of with some certain issues Mhmm. You don't get a reply from council. Okay. You know? And I don't know. I'm currently not sitting on city council. I don't know if they get 2,000 emails a day. Yeah. I would say that they're probably not getting that many.
[00:50:49] Unknown:
Well, I so my father was on school board, and you'd be surprised. I mean Really? It's some of the things that people eat you know, I served in restaurants. Mhmm. And you will always be shocked at what people complain about. I we have worked in a Mexican restaurant, and this guy had a ground beef burrito. And he was irate that it was greasy. I was like, it's a ground beef burrito. And we've got the owner, and the owner looked at him like, I don't know what to tell you. It's a Mhmm. Ground beef burrito. It's gonna be greasy. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just saying, you know No. It's yep. You never really peep there's no accounting for people. You know? Yeah.
[00:51:23] Unknown:
Yes. Exactly. And that's the challenges of Yeah. City government Of city government. City government. Yeah. Yeah. General. Yeah.
[00:51:30] Unknown:
So let's move on to and I think you probably talked a little bit about it in your in your answer to the last question. But what do you think the, city is doing well with parks and trails and and sidewalks, and what would you like to see more of?
[00:51:45] Unknown:
The the city is doing well with, parks trails, because, I go down to the parks and rec committee meeting all the time, and I see what's going on. And they're doing a really good job. They evaluate their parks themselves. The committee does that, and then they send that list of things that need to get fixed and repaired to the city. And the city is super responsive Mhmm. And and, you know, to take care of those items. You know, we're talking about, you know, ADA ramps Mhmm. You know, to off the sidewalks into the park that needed to get fixed, and then the next day it was fixed. You know? So it's a you know, they're very responsive of getting things done. Currently, they just put up a fence around a tot lot over in one of our neighborhoods, which is gonna ask a tot lot? So a tot lot in Loveland Okay. Is, what some people refer to as a pocket park. Okay. You know, it's just a it's maybe less than an acre. Okay. So it's like a micro park. Yeah. It's a it's less than an acre, and it's got a playground on it. How many of those are there? There's two. Okay. Yeah. There's two. It's in, one of our older neighborhoods, and, they're both there. And then yeah. So we had someone ask to, that there be a fence around it, you know, to help children.
[00:52:59] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, listen. I've got a You know, there's five year old and a one and a half year old. And
[00:53:04] Unknown:
if we didn't have a fence around our yard Mhmm. Well, I'd be terrified. Right. I'd be absolutely terrified. Yeah. So it's you know, that's some of the parks, you know, got wind of and went and, you know, the I think it was one resident said this is my need. Mhmm. And then they're like, that's not a whole a horrible idea for everybody to have that need. Yeah. And so they went, you know, put a fence up. And so, yeah, took care of that problem, and then, our other parks are doing well. I'd love to improve them. Yeah. You know? But it sounds like for parks For parks, we're Sounds like
[00:53:37] Unknown:
everything's going pretty well with them and just more of, maybe just more. Yeah. I mean, yeah, just always more, always better.
[00:53:45] Unknown:
You know, we're, it's it's a challenging topic to talk about because I see how other parks are, and I would love ours to improve to that level, which we're not far from it. You know? We're doing a great job. We have a lot of, recreational sports activities that can be played on our parks, which is tremendous. You know, it's gonna come down to budget. It's gonna come down to, you know, waiting to see if you can make these changes happen,
[00:54:09] Unknown:
to make them happen. But, but What are some of the parks that you you'd like to emulate?
[00:54:16] Unknown:
The parks I'd like to emulate are in Symmes. Okay. So different tax structure, different payout structure. So we're talking about, you know, it's a township versus a city. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they have different hurdles to hit. Yeah. So their parks are, slightly nicer. Their bathroom, they're year round. Okay. So ours shut down because we don't have the we didn't do the infrastructure. Mhmm. Hopefully, we're gonna improve that in the next few years. I think that would be a great thing to have a a year round bathroom, something you didn't have to close down. Yeah. I do volunteer work. I ask for volunteers to come out. Sometimes it's in the winter, and I have to, you know, send out a message. I'm like, hey. We're gonna go work in this park. You should go to the bathroom before you get there. Yeah. Because Yeah. You know, there's no facility. Yeah. So, that's the only, you know, I find disappointing, for that. But yeah. So, I mean, that's something that we start budgeting for. Yeah. I'd like to start working towards that.
[00:55:11] Unknown:
Nice. And then the last one was traffic. What's what do you think is working, if anything, I guess? And what what do you think you could improve?
[00:55:21] Unknown:
So traffic, there's many ways to improve that. Again, I think we hit on this a little bit. Yeah. So but so the big ticket item is I think we really need a second bridge close to the city center. Okay. That is a big ticket item. That is a big ticket item. So and and it's not a great grants for that or something? Is that you could. So it would this would be Hamilton and Clermont County getting them together, and then it'll be Ohio Okay. Transportation. And then, Probably the army corps. I imagine they'll get together. Yeah. And then well, yeah. So early on so and we're also crossing the Little Miami River, so you have to do an environmental impact test Yeah. Yeah. Because there's a conservancy over that river. So we have to look and see what what we're doing and then what that impact is.
And then I I'm hoping that that comes back, you know, and Or is that already in the workplace? It's not in the workplace. It's gonna gonna be the first thing that happens. Yeah. You know, it's that, you know, they gotta do an impact study. And, and so I'm hoping that just helps have to do one and No. It would just it would just be a pure conservancy would probably do it, or we would pay to have it done from the Ohio State Gotcha. Find out what it is that we're talking about. And then I'm hoping the only impact that would be is would be how it's constructed, how a bridge would be constructed. Right. You know? Obviously, we're not gonna put pilings in the middle of the river. Yeah. Right. That practice is passed. Yeah.
But, you know, but I think, you know, just gotta really gotta figure out how to get a second bridge across,
[00:56:54] Unknown:
to alleviate that. So that bridge is a big, but again, I'm not Yeah. It's a bottleneck. That's right. It's a bottleneck.
[00:57:00] Unknown:
And then a few years ago, they came through that somebody did a, a study, and they decided that the four lane should be reduced to one lane. On the bridge? Not to the bridge, but for the downtown center. So they Okay. Close that down. And now it's decreased the speed. Oh, okay. But it also decreased the traffic flow because you went from four lanes to two lanes. You put up parking on the sides. So, yes, you did decrease the speed. Okay.
[00:57:28] Unknown:
Yes. You did. Dramatically, I imagine. Yeah. So
[00:57:32] Unknown:
that's, you know, one of the thing you know? But the bike trails right there, do you go you know? I don't think we should put four lanes back in. I mean Right. You know? But that would alleviate traffic, but then you're also gonna increase by, you know, twice the amount would be the, the cars and then, you know, the impact of people crossing over. So, you know, do we, you know, put a pedestrian bridge over the bike for the bike trail? Right. You know? Like, is that the next thing? Like, would that be simpler?
[00:58:00] Unknown:
I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a nice thing too. You know?
[00:58:04] Unknown:
I I don't know if people realize this or even people who are thinking about running for city government. It's not like you have to be an expert in all of these things. Mhmm. You know? Right. Like, there are gonna be people that will do these studies. Yes. It's your job to look at the look at all the facts and go, well, maybe, maybe not. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, yeah, and that's the thing too is, it's, you know, having these traffic studies done are great and having that and knowing, you know, to do those studies, to to look at the data, and to figure out what's best for our Loveland. Right. You know? That's and that's helpful when you lean on those Yeah. Studies a little bit Yeah. Which was yeah.
[00:58:37] Unknown:
So I think those were all the the items you mentioned. Mhmm. So let's talk about growth. Mhmm. Because at least from where I'm at in Clermont County, it's a big issue. It's coming to Clermont, and everybody's trying to figure out how do we grow, but how do we do it the right way. So what what are your thoughts on growth as it pertains to Loveland, and and how would you structure it or deal with it?
[00:59:01] Unknown:
So, yeah, I would like to see us well, we are working on still controlling, you know, our architectural and, the space. It seems like currently, because the property is, I'm not gonna say it's not it's people are willing to sell. Mhmm. Buyers are willing to take those properties, but they are also looking at a return Mhmm. On that property. And, like, their answer is to raise the property and put down four times as much, doors that were there. Yeah. You know? And then our job So just cram more people into the space. And, and that's what, you know, we could talk about another, you know, impact study and what that means to traffic, everything like that. So that's that's the growth that we're gonna be challenged with Mhmm.
For the next, you know, twenty, thirty years at least, you know, just because it's, you know, we're landlocked. We can't really expand too much further out. We were doing a great job conserving our green spaces, which I think is awesome. But, the land, to expand into is is minimal. Yeah. You know? So there's not, like when you say expand into, would you mean, like, annex more land? Or Oh, no. No. No. No. Not not necessarily that, but just what you have. Yeah. Just Just taking what we have. So, you know, if we were to, move down to our, you know, through our industrial edge of, River Road, which is next to the river and start, you know, heading that way and and picking up those pieces of properties, like, if they sell and then want to redo you know, then we'd have to I think it would be, oh, is it that would have to get rezoned. The planning and zoning would have to go look at that and, you know. Yeah. The whole process. Right. It's like what goes in there, and then we have another property currently on. It's called the Chestnut Property.
It's like five acres. The city's looking at trying to bring somebody in, to fill that as, like they're looking at industrial or business center type of thing, just a two or three story building, to bring more work into to Loveland. It's, it it sits on an old dump Okay. That got cleaned up, which is awesome Yeah. But didn't get clean enough to have residents on. Yeah. Yeah. So it's good for, you know, maybe a small a mini corporate park Yeah. You know, is what they're looking at, something like that. So with the I guess, when you when you're talking about growth
[01:01:30] Unknown:
and that industrial park and things like that, how do you see the balance of bringing in more residents and bringing in more businesses? Like, what what do you think the focus needs to be?
[01:01:41] Unknown:
That's a good great question because, you know, because we're our tax base is based off of income. Mhmm. So we always talk about bringing in more residents, bringing in more workers. You know, what does that look like? How do we diversify? You know? It's like bars and restaurants seems to be ruling right now, which is great, but it's like, what other things could we bring in, you know, that, you know, would help us income wise, you know, for taxes, what would have a better impact? Mhmm. How to maximize that for Loveland? And, so, yeah, trying to find those types of industries that are outside of our almost outside of the entertainment district, you know, and trying to fulfill those needs.
[01:02:27] Unknown:
So you think businesses, like, trying to bring in a bit more diverse set of businesses?
[01:02:32] Unknown:
Right. Right. Like, you know, we used to have a, more of a manufacturing
[01:02:37] Unknown:
core, and we've lost that over time. You know? As of many. Yeah. Yeah. That that's not again, something not quite unique, but Right. To to Loveland. But and that's one of the other things about doing this because I've been to all different kinds of towns across Claremont. And it's interesting because a lot of especially out in, like, the Batavia way, a lot of people are trying to figure out what do we do now, especially with downtown areas. And Loveland seems to have a great downtown area, but that's one of the big questions is how do we revitalize this downtown? Like, do we need more people or do we need more business? It's kind of a chicken and egg thing. It is. It is. I wanna say
[01:03:10] Unknown:
that we are fortunate in the manor right now that we don't have. We are our downtown is thriving Yeah. You know, which is great. It's great to have a traffic problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, it's a good it's like old old Milford. It's a good problem to have some people won't be there. So it's you know, and that's the continuing in. And that's where I feel like, you know, as city council, you gotta really, really navigate that well. Yeah. Because, you know, a couple wrong turns, no pun intended. Yeah. You know, you could end up, you know, ruining what you have worked for. On a lot of these decisions, you know,
[01:03:43] Unknown:
they seem immediate, but they have ten, fifteen, twenty year ramifications. You know? It's like, if you don't fix the traffic problem, well, ten years from now, that's gonna be even worse. Mhmm. And it's gonna be more expensive to fix. You know? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I would I would absolutely agree with that. And then yeah. So
[01:04:01] Unknown:
the problems yeah. That was not a not an easy fix to gotta thread that needle and continue on and make sure that, you know, you're continuing on. My thought was is that, you know, to keep us thriving, for, you know, for our downtown to continue on and to stay the way we are so that we don't have you know, we have a lot of visitors coming in from out of town, which is an awesome thing to have. And it's like, you wanna continue that if our traffic continues the way it does, people on the outside are gonna start avoiding Yeah. Loveland. And then, you know, it's gonna be a, you know, a downturn, and no one wants to see that. So we need to really figure this out as fast as we can, I feel? I mean, I I don't know if it's a one for one problem, but
[01:04:50] Unknown:
we live pretty close to Eastgate, and I avoid Eastgate like the plague Mhmm. Because it's just it's a nightmare to navigate. It always makes me angry because there's just so many people and there's construction and and, you know, it's that's just the way it is. Mhmm. But I think you're right. If you know, much like Old Milford, if you don't fix these problems, then you're not gonna get the influx. It's like your residents and people from the outside, which actually might fix your traffic problem. But Right.
And then yeah. Yeah. If you get nobody that wants to come to Levelyn, then Correct. Yeah. There goes your traffic problem. Exactly. But that's probably not the goal. Right. Right. Not the goal. Yes. Yeah. You want I want I would love the people to you know, when I tell people I'm from Loveland, you know, it's the, you know, like, oh, yeah. We were there, and they talk about other things they did here. Yeah. And that's awesome. Well, you've got I think a lot of kayakers come in from Yep. Again, much like Milford. I mean, the kayakers will come in. It seems like a really nice place, not just to eat Mhmm. Eat and drink and have fun, but there's a lot of outdoor activities that'll just bring you right to Loveland's front door. Right. Right. There are. Yeah. And that's,
[01:05:59] Unknown:
that's some other stuff. Yeah. I like to work on is, like, you know, reaching out to CORA, which is Cincinnati Off Road Association Mhmm. Which is biking, but it's not on a bike I mean, it's on a bike trail. It's trail riding. Yeah. Yeah. It's on It's like mountain biking if we had mountains. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But, but we have some, some green space that would, you know, be great for that too for, you know, cyclists who wanna, you know, do some trail riding to come out to Loveland and do that. Yeah. So and, yeah, just added to the tourism thing. You know? It's like, come on. Yeah. Hike, bike, and ride.
[01:06:32] Unknown:
Yep. So I'm I'm I don't even know I'm imagining that tourism actually plays a pretty significant role in Loveland's economy. Is it a big chunk of
[01:06:43] Unknown:
Yeah.
[01:06:44] Unknown:
I mean, not tourism in the sense that people are coming from, like, California to get some of them, but Right. People from, like, Hamilton County. Correct. Like, I think we are,
[01:06:53] Unknown:
an excellent, day trip Yeah. Destination. You know? It's, like, heading here to whether or not you're gonna go kayaking or meet up here to go cycling or cycle through, stop by, get lunch. Mhmm. You know, it's, it's definitely one of those, I would say, any given time, and it's 25%. You know?
[01:07:12] Unknown:
So what are some of and this is doesn't really have much to do with council, but, what are some of the places you like to go downtown? Oh, that's an excellent question. So, And this is almost a selfish question. Right. Because, like I said, I don't get to level them much, but I know you guys have really good food restaurants and Yes. We flat rooms down there. Right? Yes. Okay. That's pretty I haven't been there in years. But Yeah. You should go. Have you been there since they moved over to the West Loveland? No. I don't think so. They're they've, like, doubled their size. They're it's great. You should go down, visit sometime. It's a good record. So, I mean, I grew I didn't grow up, but, you know, I've worked obviously, you know, I guess I should probably say that. I worked with your wife years and years and years ago.
But when I lived in Cincinnati, the Shake It records is just Oh, yeah. I mean, that's like Yep. Yep. I think I think people do come from all over the country. They go Shaken. Yeah. When I grow up, we would, my friends and I drove down to everybody's records, which was in Pleasant Ridge. Yeah. I've driven past everybody. I didn't I didn't was that a record store? Because it it looked like it was more of like a recording.
[01:08:13] Unknown:
Oh, yeah. I don't know if they've changed there, but they were record thinking of something else. Okay. I might be thinking of something else. We used to, yeah, we used to go there, and then, so to have Plateroom here in Loveland is awesome. Yeah. People mention that a lot. Places I like to go,
[01:08:26] Unknown:
Narrow Path Brewing. Okay. It's a fun one. Is that a brewery? It is. It I mean, I'm assuming it has good beer. They do. They do. What's your favorite one?
[01:08:35] Unknown:
I'm usually an IPA guy. Yeah. So, yeah, usually, it's whatever the IP is. Tired of IP. I know. It's I'm waiting You haven't gotten tired of it? Been waiting to tire out of IPAs. I've I've been on, I bartended. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So and then nineties, and so I
[01:08:51] Unknown:
that's when, like, I think the first round of, microbreweries are coming out. And then I was, you know, super interested into that. I start I home brew now. Oh, do you? Yeah. Yeah. I make meat myself. Oh, do you? Yeah. What kind of stuff do you have? I'm sorry. This is not exactly doing counsel. We'll just give you a little bit of a personal Yeah. Personal background. What do you brew?
[01:09:10] Unknown:
I usually brew IPAs on it. IPA. So my favorite my favorite beer is, is, Mad Trees, rounding third. I don't know if I've had that. Yeah. It's an IPA, but it's made with it's a red. Okay. So Oh, it's like a red. Reds. Okay. Yeah. So it's kinda cool, but it's like my So it's like an Irish red? But A little bit. With a lot of hops. With a lot of hops. It's the yep. A lot of, No. Wait. Do you like the IPAs that were just like the hops blow your head off?
[01:09:37] Unknown:
So like a hardcore IPA guy? Sometimes. So,
[01:09:41] Unknown:
I lean into, the West Coast. If you wanna talk about nerd out on beer with me? Yeah. I mean, if you want to, we can talk more about counseling. Yeah. So the hops, you know, when you pitch them in later, it's more of a bouquet. Yeah. You know? So it's more floral. So when it's they go hot. When they go in early, it's it's more of a bitter. Okay. So I usually like them when they're pitched at the end. Okay. I like citrus IPAs. I like, you know, the tropicals. You know? So
[01:10:06] Unknown:
I've been working through them all. I'm trying to get burnout on it. It's been a journey. I hated them for at least ten years, and then I don't know what happened. And now that's all I can, I mean, drink? Yeah. Honestly, I've something about beer, I've just kinda moved away from it. Well, to be completely honest, with three kids running around have time. I don't have a lot of time to just sit around and drink. I did not I did not drink at all when my kids were younger. Yeah. It was just like, you know Especially as I'm getting older, it's like I'll have, you know, two or three beers. And then the next morning Yeah. I wouldn't say I'm hungover, but I'm certainly a step behind. Mhmm. Yeah. When I'm chasing after a five year old or something, I can't be a step back. I mean, you cannot. No. They're they're gonna wake up at 06:00 in the morning. Have room or not. Yeah. Whatever. They don't care what you did last night. No. No. My kids do not care. Mhmm. And they will have the same amount of energy no matter how I feel. Yep. Yep.
[01:10:54] Unknown:
I'm on the on the same way. But yeah. But Nerapat's a good beer, a good brewery. Are they distributed? Do they They aren't. No, really? They are, they're on the smallish end, which is why I like them. And, you know, not a lot until you go down in Loveland, you might not see them Yeah. Out and about, but they do good quality beers. They have nice little They have food. Casual outside patio. They have a truck. A food truck. They have a food truck. I'm not sure the affiliation if it's them or just, like, the same truck shows up every night. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, it's a taco truck, and people were telling me they love it. They rave about that.
But, yeah, Paxton's a good restaurant right downtown? Paxton's? Paxton's. I actually think I might have. Is it, like, a fancier looking place? No. That's the other one. Okay. That's a French Quarter. Okay. That's I mean, it's fancy looking to me. Yeah. There's a lot of fancy looking ones downtown. Like, I think E and O would be fancy.
[01:11:49] Unknown:
E and O. There there's an E and O in Hyde Park. Right? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I used to live in Hyde Park Okay. When I was working with Cindy. Oh, awesome. And I would walk all over the city. I walk by E and O all the time. Oh. Actually, I was I really like to walk. Yeah. I'm sorry. We're off That's alright. Script. So what I would do is on the weekends, I would I was in Hyde Park, and I would wake up really early on, like, a Saturday. And I would walk downtown or I would walk to North Side, and it it was really fun because you got to see places that you normally would never see, especially I think it's over it's over a highway. I don't know if it's 471 or 75, but that bridge that goes the pedestrian bridge that goes up over that Yeah. You'd always drive by it. You're like, what is how do you even get there? I know how to get there. Right. And it's really fun. Mount Adams. Yeah. And so then I'd I'd go and be in the city or I'd be in Northside, and I'd have fun because I was in my twenties.
[01:12:44] Unknown:
And then I just get an Uber home, and it was Oh, that's cool. So you don't even have to worry about, like, I think I've gone far enough. I need to start walking back? No. No. No. No. I just have I'd have my backpack, and I'd hiked downtown, and it burned off a lot of calories. And I was like, well, all good. I have a burger and a bunch of beer and go home. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I, Completely aside. I'm Yeah. No. It's, that's what I one of my favorite things to do when I travel to a city. I'm a I'm a runner. Yeah. I I get up in the morning, I go on a run. And when you visit a new city, I'm always, like, trying to map out, like, where I'm gonna go. You're running. But you discover
[01:13:14] Unknown:
things that you would never discover Oh, yeah. You know, on a pedestrian level. You know? It's like, oh, that was kinda cool. The other thing I've loved doing when I traveled to see because my mother was a flight attendant for a fair bit of time, so you'd get free flights. So I just fly to New York or I'd go to San Francisco and just walk around. But taking public transportation, especially buses, man, you'll just see the whole city. Mhmm. And you gotta figure them out, which was kinda fun for me. But Right. Yeah. I wasn't I'd I'd loved especially San Francisco, which had really good public transportation. They had this whole, like, BART system, and you could get, like, a pass. Yep. And just been on that. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good one. Yep. I like that
[01:13:54] Unknown:
one. Public transportation is an awesome thing. I'd love to talk about that further.
[01:13:58] Unknown:
Do you wanna bring public transportation to Loveland? I I do. Well, let's talk about that. You wanna talk about Yeah. See, there was a point to one of this. Yeah. We went from beer to public transit. Right. Yeah. How would you does it currently have a public transportation system? No. And then and this would be this would not I mean Well, even if it's not I'd love to figure it I'd love to figure it out how to do that in in Loveland.
[01:14:21] Unknown:
You know, so we lost our school busing for the high school. I didn't know that. Yeah. So last we didn't Was it just a budget thing? Yeah. Yeah. Levees if levees don't get passed Yeah. Yeah. You have to start making changes, and they chose, high school busing, so which digs into the traffic in the morning because, a lot of parents are letting you know, having their kids drive themselves to school, which is great
[01:14:44] Unknown:
from an independence level, from, you know There's a bunch of 16 year olds on the road. Then yeah. And I'm you know?
[01:14:51] Unknown:
Actually yeah. So and, yeah, my daughter was in high school still at the same time when they stopped that, so she So it's so it's actually been a little wild Yep. That they don't have busing for the high school. Yeah. So, you know, so to figure out how to do public transit and then all you know, figure out how to get that done is to, like, lean into, like, school board and be like, this would help everybody. Yeah. You know? This we could do routes in the morning and then just continue on all day long Yeah. From the city aspect. It you know? I don't know. That would be another solution, you know, whether or not we could get that done efficiently
[01:15:25] Unknown:
Yeah. Or have a third party come in and figure out how to get that done. Or you might even be able to I don't know who has public transit around here. I don't think I mean, there might be county systems that you can tap into Yeah. Something. Right. I mean, I have no idea. No. Right. The,
[01:15:41] Unknown:
I wanna say, the VA does stuff for their Veterans associate. Oh, okay. Associate. I mean, we I mean, we're just talking bear you know, they have buses that will let them, like, pick up, veterans, which is an awesome service, you know, if we're talking about public service. Yeah. Yeah. You know? I mean, this is kinda outside of what we're both talking about, but Yeah. You know, it's public. And, you know, if you're a member, you know, if you've been a veteran, you know, which is awesome, you know, take care of vets and get them to where they need to go. But other than that, Downtown Cincinnati, it's got their own public transit.
[01:16:14] Unknown:
They've got their own monorail. They do.
[01:16:18] Unknown:
I wanna ask you. And we do have and, you know, and and, they there's a a bus that comes out here, and over by our mire, which is over. Oh, that'll, like, take people from, like, Cincinnati? Literally just a straight shot. It's, yeah, it's the 71 Corridor, and it just comes out until you get downtown. Yeah.
[01:16:37] Unknown:
I bet there's a way to do it because there's funny enough, I'd I'd because I'm I'm in marketing communications, so I'll do a lot of blog post writing, and I do one for a transit, like a transit software company. And it seems like there's gotta be a way to use technology to enable a smaller transit system Mhmm. To run efficiently. Because I think that that would be the issue is the cost. Is it can you buy buses and pay people to drive them? Correct. Yeah. And if you don't have people on the buses, well, then you're not making money off of it. And Yeah. You know? Yeah. You've got yourself in a bit of a pickle. Yes. Yeah. And a lot of the Which is the same with it. Yeah. A lot of them are subsidized. Yeah. You know? A lot of public transit. You could find grants for that too. Probably. There's gotta be grants at the state level or even federal level. Right. I'm sure there's federal grants. Actually, almost positive there's federal grants for especially if it's I don't know what they would consider Loveland because you're you're close to Cincinnati, but you're also pretty close to rural areas. Mhmm. But I know that's a a big thing is, like, transportation, like, where I live out in Batavia.
How do you get people to where they need to be at least from the public side of things? Yeah. Because it's tough. Everybody lives much, much further apart. It's much more expensive.
[01:17:50] Unknown:
Not everybody's gonna use it. Yeah. So And that yeah. And that's the challenge also. It's like, you know, if you wanna have that one bus stop Yeah. But, you know, you have to walk a half mile to get to it. Yeah.
[01:18:00] Unknown:
What's the point? You might as well just walk wherever you're going. Yeah.
[01:18:04] Unknown:
Lose that that efficiency. Yeah.
[01:18:08] Unknown:
So what else I guess, I've probably asked this around about ways, but overall, with the direction Loveland is going, what do you think is positive about it? And and the overall direction, where where would you like to see it kinda move differently? On a, like, a big scale. Right. Not just, you know, communication or transportation or anything like that. Okay.
[01:18:33] Unknown:
It's a good question. The, the positives, that are go that Loveland has going for itself is still, the fact that it's received positively in all the communities around, I wanna say. Mhmm. You know, when I'm out and I'm explain telling someone why I'm from, you know, in Cincinnati and I say Loveland, it's received positively Mhmm. Which is awesome. You know? You have to have pride where you come from. You know? It's like, you know, it'd be different, like, you know? Yeah. I don't wanna talk about where I'm from. Yeah. But, you know, to be able to say you're from Loveland and have somebody reply with, oh, yeah. Was that the thing? Or, oh, yeah. The bike trail. Or, oh, yeah. I did that. And that's always a nice positive thing to have, you know, and, you know, pride in your own city Yeah. I think is probably what you know? But I think it's going great. I would say that's probably the foundation of a good city. Mhmm. Because if everybody's proud of where they live, then everybody's gonna wanna work together to make it better. Right. You know? Right. That's a big thing, and not a lot of cities are like that. Mhmm. You know? Right. Yeah. There's a lot of cities that are very disparaging of themselves. Yeah. That's a good point. Yes. So yeah. And so then, so the flip side of that is, you know, keep how to continue that and giving the residents what they need, you know, to continue to be here.
I think, as far as everybody, you know, we're talking about fixed income. We're talking about low income. We're talking about median income. You know, everybody. You know? What is it? Yeah. How do we do that for the most amount of people? Like, and and when I say most, I really don't wanna leave anyone behind. Right. You know, I want everyone to come together and and figure this out, you know, and and continue on to, enjoy our city, to make our city what everyone thinks it should become. Mhmm. You know? I think we are diverse enough in in, topography and, we think you're talking about maps and overlay.
Our businesses, I think we have a lot of things going on for us. I would love to continue that, you know, as we develop further. You know? And that's it. It just reminded me of another thing we haven't talked about yet. It was the Loveland Madeira Corridor that they're trying to improve, which I, you know, I will also try improve when I get to Can you explain what that is? Because So yeah. So it's, so to get into Loveland, one of the one of the thoroughfares, you get off 275, you get on Loveland Madeira Road, which is between Loveland and Madeira. Yeah. But you would go towards Loveland, and then it tees into West Loveland, and then you turn and you go into Loveland proper. Mhmm.
There's about a mile stretch of Loveland Madeira, which is kinda like strip malls, developed, you know I wanna say I came in on that road. You did. You just didn't go. I mean, I don't think you went that far. No. That's right. I know I got off a two seventy five. But yeah. I love that. I said yeah. So, yeah, you're on that road. So you continue in. You go into into town. Anyway, so, so we're talking about the corridor. We're talking about the traffic circle that's gonna go in in the next year or two. Okay. They took out a, they took out a glass factory to put the put an access into that Chestnut property. We also spoke about earlier that there's about four acres back there. So it's it's good improvement. But, so the city right now is trying to figure out how to change over the corridor to be a part of the same changes that we did downtown.
Okay. So it's extending that out, to businesses, and to you know? And I think everyone you know, you're just trying to figure out how to pivot from that, strip mall look Yeah. To, you know, more of a, you know, town kinda feel. Mhmm. More pedestrian friendly, more bicycle friendly. They wanna put in a it's gonna be a, it's still gonna remain two lanes, but they're gonna add in off to the side. The way the pictures are now is, a walking, biking path. Mhmm. It's paved. But just to, you know, to get commuters biking and walking and then, trying to change the businesses that have parking lots in the front to the parking lots in the back to be more of a pedestrian friendly town.
That seems like a pretty big overhaul. Isn't that yeah. That's a huge overhaul. Yeah. So,
[01:22:55] Unknown:
Are they working with businesses to do that? I mean, if if I had a business in a strip mall and somebody said, hey. I'm gonna demolish this strip mall. They are not yet, and that's something that we need to address when we get there is is,
[01:23:07] Unknown:
currently, the city has an overlay on it. I think that I'm not sure if it's if it's done yet. What do you talk about at overlay? So an overlay is, when they come in from, planning zoning, and they put in, like, you know, they figure out the properties that they want to address. And they put in an overlay, and they're like, okay. So here's the overlay. When you make improvements that is over 50% of your value Mhmm. You have to your architecture has to look like this. Okay. Which I'm like, that's an awesome plan Yeah. Except for I'm not fixing anything. Right. That that that's what I'm trying to do. Business. Yeah. I'm running my business.
[01:23:46] Unknown:
And if and if I wanna improve my infrastructure
[01:23:49] Unknown:
above 50% Yeah. I'm just not gonna do it. Right. Yeah. So, like, I'm gonna pave my parking lot and Yeah. And that's it. Yeah. Yeah. So so That's a tricky one, though. It is a tricky one. I'm not saying I have the, you know, the the right away answer, but I'd love to look into it further. You know, we talked about, the city did a match for home improvements. Okay. So, like, if you were gonna redo a roof, and it was just in one neighborhood. For homeowners? Yep. For homeowners. Okay. The city, if if you were gonna approve your house, the city, you could apply to the city, and they would, put up 50%. Really? That's kinda nice. Isn't it? That's a nice program. Yeah. And it I mean, it helps the property value too. Benefited the whole, you know, the whole community Yeah. Benefited that neighborhood. Especially if you need a roof or something like that. Yeah. So, yeah, so, so, anyway, that's something that we should probably look at for businesses. Like, hey. How can we come together? You know? And do you guys would have to find grant money for that? But, you know, if you went if because businesses would love to improve Yeah. I mean their looks, but if they could do it at a discount price or if if we, you know, bought in halfway. So trying to find more of a carrot than a stick. Yeah. You know? Exactly.
[01:24:58] Unknown:
Oh, no. I forgot. I thought I had a really good question. Oh, I'm sorry. Forgot it. So what how would you know, you have a magic wand Mhmm. For this corridor. Mhmm. What would you want it to look like? I don't have that much money. You know? No. You have a magic wand. I am. So you you get yourself billions of dollars with your magic wand, and then you
[01:25:20] Unknown:
so that would yeah. So it would be, to to put in exactly what we're doing. What the plan is right now to have that path, but I'd love to have that you know, if if I actually had the magic wand and I wanna go out there, I would talk about, a European style city Mhmm. Where you have the road in the center. Yeah. Yeah. You have a curb, and then you have your bike lane, then you have another curb for pedestrian. Okay. So it'd separate the three modes of transportation.
[01:25:45] Unknown:
In Europe, don't they do it too where you can, like there's a parking lane and then the bike lane? Uh-huh. So it's you can drive, and if your car goes crazy, it's not gonna hit the pedestrian. Correct. And that's yeah. Yeah. That's what we're looking at. So that would be the one thing I would, if I had a magic wand, fix that, and then also just, you know,
[01:26:03] Unknown:
make it to the business. We could change all that, a lot of the looks of those businesses downtown or not downtown, but in the Loveland Corridor. Mhmm. Just, you know, to do what
[01:26:13] Unknown:
to make that mon those monies available to change this, you know, the structures of some of those businesses to where it was, you know, more pedestrian bike friendly. And imagine that project would take in the absence of an actual magic wand, it would probably take years to Oh, yeah. Yes. Figure all of that out. Yeah. What kind of businesses would you like to see? Would you like to see kind of the same thing that love Downtown Loveland's got, or would you like to see a different mix of businesses? I'd like to see a different mix. You know, I'd like that.
[01:26:41] Unknown:
I like a diversity. I'd love to see the diversity of businesses down there. I would like to see, you know, a lot of that old, square, you know, the old time squares where it's like you have everything and, you know, gotta I was gonna start listing all the businesses, but but, you know, I currently get you know, I get my car repaired down on Lola Madeira, and it's part and it's one of these businesses that we're talking about. But it's, like, it's very convenient. So I literally drive my car down, and I either take my dog with me and walk back home Yeah. Or I walk back down. You know? So it's like
[01:27:20] Unknown:
that style of of you know? You probably wanna keep that. Yeah. I just wanna make it look a little better. Correct. Yeah. Yep. So not necessarily putting a whole bunch of bars and restaurants and entertainment things, but things like Yeah. Car repair shops Right. Barber shops or whatever it is, lawyers, I bet, or insurance agents, things like that. Yep. Yep.
[01:27:41] Unknown:
Yep. Exactly, Cyril.
[01:27:43] Unknown:
Nice. Financial planning. Financial planners. Yeah. They they always need Yep. An office, I guess. Right?
[01:27:49] Unknown:
Does anyone need an office anymore?
[01:27:51] Unknown:
I don't know. I don't I mean, I work from home. Yeah. Which is a blessing. Mhmm. Because I don't know if a lot of people can because I worked at Milicron during COVID. Like, COVID hit. Wow. And Milicron, I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's a big industrial manufacturer. And it was a a kind of a point of contention because I didn't work on the shop floor. I've worked in an office. And they sent us all home. They were like, go home, but it you know, you can't stop production. So all the shop guys were having to like, they can't work from home. And so create a little bit of tension between the the office people and the shop guys because and I get it. You know? I
[01:28:33] Unknown:
everybody, I think, would want to work from home if they could. Yeah. But you can't build a plastic injection molding machine in your garage. You know? So you kinda need to be there. I mean, someday. Yeah. But Right. No. I'm kidding. Yeah. No. I can see that being a a point No. Of that. Yeah. That's Which again is another completely fine. Myself, I cannot work from home. I need to go to where, you know, it's convenient to bring me to where the sound needs to be recorded. All the wires and things you gotta plug in. Yep. So I find myself traveling and and moving to places. And
[01:29:03] Unknown:
Well, that's why I say it's it's a blessing, but Mhmm. You know, after six, eight hours in my office, I'm kinda crawling up the wall. Yeah. And then I go downstairs, and it's like, oh, I'm in the same place. I've been in the same place for months. Yes. And I'll just look at my wife and go, I gotta go somewhere. I don't know where that is. I just need to get in the car and go somewhere. We don't even have kids anymore, but I've we've been in the same boat. Yeah. You know?
[01:29:28] Unknown:
Cindy works here, two days a week, and she comes down. She's like,
[01:29:33] Unknown:
I just gotta go somewhere else. Yeah. No. I mean, it's it like I said, it's great because it's not like I have to drive home, but it's not great because I don't have to drive home. You know? Like, I Right. I don't get out. And it you know, people talk about it. And, again, complete aside, but I always because in during COVID, right when COVID hit, we were out in Felicity on, like, 10 acres in the middle of nowhere. Like, it took us forty minutes to get to a Kroger. So I had friends who lived in large cities, and I imagine your experience was very similar too where you're cooped up in the house, and you're crawling up the walls. And it's just like we gotta we aren't seeing anybody. For me, I I always felt a little spoiled because it's like, oh, I'm on 10 acres. I'm just gonna go out and cut my grass and just have a nice day in the yard. And I talked to friends. I'm like, why are you so stressed out? This is great.
I'm having a wonderful time. I don't have to leave my beautiful 10 acres of land. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't really know where I was going with that. But Oh, but yeah. And that's and that's where, you know,
[01:30:34] Unknown:
I started realized that we needed our trails improved in in Loveland, and that's you know, it goes back to when I was looking in on the map at at the for cross country spaces, and I that's when I discovered all of our green spaces in Loveland. Yeah. How much green space do you have? Do you I Or do you have, like, a rough guess? Yeah. So I think the last thing I saw, someone said it was over 2,000 acres In Loveland. I'm sorry. Yeah. Is it 20? Yeah. And so and then but the caveat is is that they included, the Cardinal property, and I think they also included the new Clermont property. There are two parks going on. Are you familiar with those?
In on the Clermont side? Yep. I'm not. There's gonna be two giant parks that are gonna be going up right up the I think they both are planning to open up at 2026. Okay. Like, actual parks or, like, conservation? Yeah. Large because I know that it's a county parks department. They do a lot of conservation. So, yeah, it's a county park and to be large. And then right next to it is another park that's run by a conservancy, the Cardinal Conservancy. Okay. And then, and then across the street from there, it's the Braille property. Have you ever heard of the, the Grailville?
[01:31:45] Unknown:
I have. I actually saw I interviewed, Kaye Skiff and Chris Klingman Oh, okay. From the Claremont Parks. Okay. And I think Kaye said I should talk to the Grail grillville. Yep. Yeah. Yep. You should. So I've heard of them. Okay. I I don't I don't know much about them. They're it's,
[01:32:03] Unknown:
they have an awesome history an awesome history for Loveland. It's it's fascinating to to know that they're here and, to have them, and I I appreciate them for for everything that that goes on over there. Mhmm. And, yeah, then it's probably one of the first concern you know, conservancy projects. I'm sorry. I missaid that. That is not what they do. They're not a conservancy, but they had a lot of property that Yeah. No one built on. Yeah. So by default, they, you know, saved a lot of land, and then, that's how the cardinal thing came up because And cardinal conserve
[01:32:40] Unknown:
I feel like I think I was at a commissioner's meeting where they were talking about is do they go around and kinda buy land Yep. And then essentially conserve it. Correct. Okay. So I think I think they were talking about they they specifically look for kind of smaller operating farms Yes. And and some to buy that Mhmm. And they'll, again Yep. Conserve it. Do you know anything more about them? Because I'd I'd like I said, it was just a brief presentation that they can speak of authority, but I can definitely connect you with people that That'd be great if you could. Yeah. Because, yeah, it's really interesting what they do and what they can do and and, you know, saving. The project they were talking if it's the same group Mhmm. The project they were talking about was so I can't remember the exact spot in in Clermont County, but they said it was, it was like a very rare ecosystem where we because it's kinda swampy. Yep. It it's like a weird wetland. Yeah. And there's, like, a specific tree that only grows in this very specific kind of wetland. So they were proposing to the county something or other, and there was, like, grant timing that they needed. I know that they had a similar property where of where it was a wetland. They were trying to revert trying to keep it a wetland. Yeah. And Well, wetlands, I don't know if people know too much about them, but they're incredibly important. Mhmm. I mean, I think, if I'm not mistaken, they almost act like filters. Yeah. Like like, they take a lot of things that are, you know, not great in the water Mhmm. And they'll kinda filter them out. Yes. Yep. Which I don't know if that's great for the wetland, but it's I guess it's good for everybody else. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It is.
They're they're very important to our environment in that. Yeah. Especially when you talk about, like, runoff and Yep. And all kinds of things like that. So, yeah, a good wetland
[01:34:20] Unknown:
can, you know, help a community out Yeah. You know, as far as, like, flood control and all that. Yeah. You know?
[01:34:26] Unknown:
Which especially when you talk about developing and building things, it's Mhmm. It's, again, something I've interviewed, soil and water, John McManus, and you just don't think about these things. Yeah. Like, you don't think like, oh, when you build a massive development Mhmm. Where's all that rainwater going? Because it's just you've got pavement, and it's just running. I got to experience that in, we lived in,
[01:34:47] Unknown:
North Carolina Okay. In Wilmington and out on the coast. And they had like, ten years before we got there, they just finished I 40 all the way to the coast. It, like, they had, like, 40 miles they couldn't get through, and they just finished it. So then so they were experiencing a boom. Yeah. And, and that was where I was I was you know, that's when you realize how important government is Yeah. Planning zoning is Yeah. And all these things. And they were just, like, mowing down forests, putting up parking lots for you know, it was a mix of, you know, corporate, residential, but everyone needed a parking lot.
So during the day A parking lot when it rains, yeah. So every day when you're on the coast, you get that storm, like at 03:00. And I was experiencing, you know, intersections under, like, four inches of water Easy. Yeah. Because no one had made a plan Right. To where the water was supposed to go. You build a parking lot, but you didn't put a retention pond next to it. Right. You know? And it's like, oh. Yeah. Oh, oops. These things are important. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And And that's one of the things, especially, because like I said, I don't think it's a big secret or anything, but Claremont
[01:35:55] Unknown:
is growing very, very quickly. Mhmm. And one of the things I always like to keep my eye on, because I've you listen to Deidre's episode, I'll do a little bit of news in the beginning. Yeah. Are these developments? Because we gotta grow. It it's coming. It's absolutely coming. But if you rush into something like that way too fast I mean, you're like I said earlier, the decisions you make aren't aren't just two year decisions. They're twenty, thirty, forty, fifty year decisions my children are gonna have to deal with. And so if you don't think through them properly Mhmm. And you just grow, grow, grow,
[01:36:30] Unknown:
you're gonna be in a tough spot. Mhmm. At least that that's what I think of. Yeah. No. I think you're exactly right. You know? It's, there's plenty of cities around to, you know, watch and see how that happened, you know, in this eighties and nineties. Yeah. And, and, you know, some did well, some didn't do well, and there are lessons to be learned Yeah. When you're trying to figure things out. And that's why, you know, don't be afraid to look at what other accounts are doing, what didn't work, what was the you know, was it a multifaceted problem, or is it just the one thing? You know? It's like
[01:37:03] Unknown:
you know? But let's look at it at every angle we can. Right. You know, while you're trying to Especially before you make a massive decision. Right. You know? Right. It's like take a breath. Let's Mhmm. Let's do our traffic studies. Let's do our environmental studies. Right. Let's really make sure we're gonna be able to accommodate whatever we're trying to do. Yes. Yep.
[01:37:21] Unknown:
Absolutely.
[01:37:23] Unknown:
Absolutely. Well, I don't I don't think I have any more questions for you. But I will give you the last word to just make your pitch for council and and tell people why they should talk about beer. Well, maybe that's why. When's the beer pod last coming up? Did you wanna talk more about beer? I'm happy to talk about beer.
[01:37:41] Unknown:
Tell you all about Mead if you want. I would like to hear about Mead. Oh, would you? Yeah. But we can do that often. Okay. That's fair. I'll finish this real quick. Yeah. So I'm running for city council. I would appreciate anyone's vote, who lives in Loveland. I'm gonna work hard for our city. I'm proud of our city. I wanna continue to be proud of our city. And so I'm gonna make the correct changes to keep us moving forward. I'd love to work on all the problems that we faced with traffic and parking. I'm looking at all options, you know, as far as, you know, pedestrian, cycling.
Everything's on the table. I'd love to keep working to make us better.
[01:38:22] Unknown:
Awesome. Well, with that, I'm gonna I'm gonna thank you, and I'm gonna call it a successful podcast. Alright. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview, and we'll thank Jim one more time for sitting down with us, and wish him the best of luck come November. So let's talk about some events. Like I said in the intro, this is gonna be a very similar event list from last Thursday. I've obviously taken off the events that have already come to pass. So on Thursday, we'll get a nice fresh list of events for everybody. But let's start things off with Batavia Farmer's Market. This is gonna be October 18 from 9AM to 2PM at the corner of Main Street and Depot Street in Batavia.
It's a seasonal open air market featuring local farmers and artisans. You can browse fresh produce, farm raised meats, baked goods, honey plants, and handmade crafts. It is family friendly and free to attend and a great way to support local vendors and enjoy a Saturday morning in downtown Batavia. Next up, we have birding to change the world conservation talk and book discussion. This is gonna be October 15 from 7PM to 08:30PM at the Cincinnati Cincinnati Nature Center. It is an evening conversation on community based conservation featuring Trish O'Kane, author of Birding to Change the World, a Memoir, in discussion with Connie O'Connor, the Nature Center's Director of Applied Learning.
The program is aimed at adults and explores how connecting people through shared interests like birding can drive grassroots environmental activism and foster conservation civics. Next, we have the community costume swap, October 16 at 5PM at Sycamore Park. Give a costume, get a costume. This free community swap invites families to bring gently used Halloween costumes and exchange them for something frightfully fresh. All ages from little monsters to grown up ghouls are welcome. It's a great way to refresh your costume without scaring your budget. I have to say I really enjoy that that bit of spooky Halloween copy.
Good job whoever wrote that. Homeschool Discovery Days, fall leaves. This is gonna be October 17 from 1PM to 2PM at the Catherine Stagmore Park. It is an educational nature program tailored for homeschoolers but open to all families. Kids will learn about the science behind autumn leaves, why leaves change color, and how trees prepare for winter through hands on activities and games. It will be held out it will be held outdoors in the park, and the hour long program combines science and fun to explore the fall season. Admission is free, but advanced registration is required, and I imagine you can do that on the park's website.
Yoga in the park, October 18 at 9AM, Sycamore Park. Start your Saturday with a calming morning yoga session in nature. This free class, no registration needed, is open to adults and teens of all skill levels. An instructor will lead gentle poses and breathing exercises on the lawn at Sycamore Park with the backdrop of trees and the East Fork River. Beginners can learn the basics, while experienced yogis can enjoy practicing in a serene outdoor setting. Be sure to bring a yoga mat or towel and some water. The session will last about an hour. We have BooFest, Clermont County YMCA Halloween Festival, October 18 from 12PM to 2PM at the Claremont Family YMCA.
It's a free community Halloween party hosted by the y. Families are encouraged to come in costume and enjoy trunk or treating, music from a DJ, games, kids dance activities, and snacks in the YMCA's West parking lot. There's even a costume parade for youngsters and prizes awarded to the best decorated car trunks. It's open to the entire community, and you don't need to be a Y member to join the fun. That's all the events that we got, and I'll give another quick notes on events. I do my best to find as many as I can, but I I'm almost certain I don't get them all. So if you have an event or an event you'd like people to know about, something like that, just send an email. I'm Not gonna promise I'll read out any event that that I get sent just because I'm sure there's some wacky ones out there. I don't know.
But on balance, I I'd like to know what's going on in event wise. So please write in. And we'll close out with our final pitch for value for value. We are a value for value podcast. And what that means is if you find value in what we're doing, we just ask for a little value in return in the form of time, talent, or treasure. For For time and talent, get in touch. Let us know what's going on in your neighborhood. Let us know who you'd like us to interview. We had a producer right in, and we're gonna try to get the chief CJ Fett on CJ Fett on, so that's great. And think about that question. You know, what is the character of our county, of your township, of your village? What are we trying to preserve in the face of all this development pressure? I'd really wanna hear from people about that.
For treasure, go to the website, www.let's talk claremont.com. Click the donate tab. You can donate via PayPal or Stripe, and any dollar amount is greatly appreciated. And, again, thank you to all the donors who came in under $50 for reasons of anonymity. Like I said, any dollar amount's greatly appreciated. But for donors over $50, you'll get a special mention on the show. And for donations over $200, you will become an executive producer for that show, a title I will vouch for, and I'll read your note on air. And the note can be anything. It can be what's going on with you. It can be an ad read for your business or that Nastygram that I keep pushing. I really wanna do a dramatic reading of just a really nasty letter, I think. I think that'd be funny. And please connect with us on Facebook, Let's Talk Claremont podcast on Instagram at Let's Talk Claremont, and sign up for that newsletter. It's a fun little thing. We appreciate everybody that's already signed up for it.
And, of course, follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever it is you happen to use for podcast. It helps to show up, and it also helps you out because you will get notified whenever there is a new episode, which will be especially useful on this kind of accelerated publishing schedule that we're on. And, of course, if you just wanna get in touch and say hi, info@let'stalkclairemont.com. Well, thank you everybody for listening, and thank you for all the new listeners that that we're getting. This is it's really been awesome, and I really hope you enjoy the show. And we'll see you tomorrow.
Fall vibes and accelerated publishing plan
Format changes: news roundup, events, and bill recaps
Upcoming interviews and post‑election show direction
Primer on Ohio annexation and expedited types
What House Bill 113 would change
Impacts: merits tests, road strip annexations, and schools
Local example from Batavia and bill status in the legislature
Civics call‑to‑action and how a bill becomes law in Ohio
Value‑for‑value support and how to donate
This week’s release cadence and Kiwanis Fields of Honor preview
Guest intro: Jim Dahlmeyer for Loveland City Council
Interview start: Jim’s background in film and sound
Why Loveland: schools, changes over 20 years, and the downtown fire
Motivation to run: communication and community trust
Parks and trails volunteerism and building paths
Invasives, trailbuilding craft, and winter work tricks
Sidewalk connectivity, intergovernmental coordination, and safety
Traffic and parking pain points for residents
Transparency, digital communication, and city responsiveness
Civics reality: constituent feedback and respectful discourse
Parks performance, pocket parks, and year‑round amenities
Traffic solutions: second bridge, studies, and constraints
Growth, land use, Chestnut property, and economic mix
Balancing residents, employers, and a thriving downtown
Outdoor recreation, tourism, and local favorites
Exploring public transit ideas and school transport gaps
City identity, inclusion, and long‑term planning
Loveland‑Madeira Corridor vision and redevelopment tools
Carrots vs. sticks: incentives, overlays, and design goals
Regional parks, conservancies, and why wetlands matter
Closing pitch from Jim and interview wrap‑up
Community events rundown and newsletter reminder
Final value‑for‑value note and ways to connect
