Here’s more good work coming out of the UD Rivers Institute.  The River Summit that I reported on this spring brought together many different constituents interested in riverfront development and other ways to capitalize on our riparian assets…now the River Summit has a website that has information for YOU to see.  Check it out HERE…it’s a work in progress.  Make sure to look around the economic development section that mentions a “RiverDistrict” too!

From the DDN Editorial board:

A plan for a regional bikeway has veered into a rough patch, largely because proponents have only one foot on the pedals of reality and area county engineers have only one eye on the road ahead.

Bold and mostly worthy, the Comprehensive Local-Regional Bikeways Plan calls for gradually connecting the Dayton area’s existing bikeways with others into a network for getting around by foot or on two wheels in Montgomery, Greene, Miami and parts of northern Warren County.

The proposal slipped off course at a May meeting of a Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission committee. County engineers complained they were being hit with an unfunded mandate; the

MVRPC hadn’t anticipated this concern — natural though it is.

Robert Geyer, Greene County engineer, said he and the other engineers were blindsided.

“They said if you wanted federal dollars from MVRPC to do a project, and your project was on this plan, you had to incorporate a bikeway or some kind of bike facility as part of your plan unless you could prove it would cost you more than 20 percent of the original estimate,” Mr. Geyer said.

Estimates to add 96 to 325 miles to the bikeway paths are high — anywhere from $36 million to $112 million, according the MVRPC’s consultant, Alta Planning & Design. But that’s partly because the original proposal called for altering roadways to conform to a design called “complete streets.” Because not everyone is going to stop driving or could, even if they wanted to, and to get the engineers back on board, that approach is being scaled back.

Common in Europe and catching on in some U.S. cities, complete streets are built for cars, buses, bikers and walkers. They include dedicated lanes for different modes of transportation.

Locally, among the problems of adopting this approach are that the shoulders of selected narrow rural roads would have to be paved. That’s expensive.

But, of course, one of the big threats to bicyclists is the danger they face on roadways where drivers don’t expect to see them or where there’s not enough room for them.

With gas prices forcing people to consider alternatives to driving their cars, planners have to be thinking ahead and about safety.

Some officials think MVRPC hasn’t done enough homework to justify being so adamant about building bikeways. They think the demand needs to be documented before too much money is spent. (The MVRPC hasn’t done a survey; its research mainly is in the form of questionnaires given to bicycle enthusiasts. MVRPC executive director Donald R. Spang has to produce harder evidence.)

Jeff McGrath, Beavercreek planning director, summed up the situation well. “We’re behind it (connecting the bikeways) 100 percent,” he said. “But there should be some documented support in the communities, which is lacking right now.”

Mr. McGrath is not just making excuses. He agrees, for instance, that a bikeway network fully linking Beavercreek’s neighborhoods with work and leisure sites would be a great economic development, quality of life and recruitment tool. He says it would be an amenity to sell to people considering coming to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as part of moves resulting from the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

The bike plan should be moved forward by both the engineers and MVRPC. There’s just more work to do on precisely how important transportation gaps can be closed and how quickly.

On 8/8/07 I posted Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up” as one of my top 5 picks for Dayton’s comeback theme song. Then, I asked you what songs you liked. Jeff was the only responder with Bruce Springsteen’s “Rise Up, My City of Ruins!”

Well, brothers and sisters, it’s time for round two of my top 5 picks for Dayton’s comeback theme song.

Friends of Distinction’s “Grazin in the Grass”

What are yours?

I’ve recently added FOUR new blogs to my blogroll.

The first is One Sun, One Tree by F. Berkemeier, a UD student interning in Germany this summer who is also involved with its Rivers Institute and shares an affinity for Dayton.

The next two are written by Carolyn and concern the simpler life of self-sufficiency and garden co-ops. The Barber Bunch chronicles Carolyn’s life as she makes homemade foods (ketchup, hamburger buns, butter, strawberry jam, etc.) and visits farmers markets and learns how to be an old-fashioned homemaker (vinegar substituted for fabric softener for example). It’s a really interesting blog and I am so thankful I came across it.
Equally, interesting is McGatha Garden Co-op which is a garden co-op run by Carolyn and a few of her family/friends. The images are wonderful as are the tips to be a successful gardener. Please check it out if you’re interested in farming in Ohio’s climate. Carolyn, you go girl! The following image is of her garden at planting time:

Finally, I’ve recently started reading This Reluctant Soil about Amanda’s life in her South Park home as she gardens and reinvigorates her house. Great look into urban life and revitalizing old homes. Amanda describers her self as: Wife, kitchen designer, gardener, old house rehabber, urban advocate, novice cook, book vacuum. Check it out! The following image is from This Reluctant Soil: !

If you read For the Love of Dayton, the frontpage of today’s (June 30) Dayton Daily News is old news. The DDN reports that “Google’s Street View puts Dayton on the map” and “‘Eat Local’ helps Farmers Markets.”

I posted “Welcome to the Planet: Dayton on Google Streetview” on June 10 and “Buying Locally Grown Foods and Dayton’s Farmers Markets” on June 24.

Where is the DDN getting its stories?

The Self-Inflicted Economic Death of Ohio
By CHESTER E. FINN JR.
June 28, 2008; Page A9
Wall Street Journal

Once known as the Mother of Presidents, Ohio is now getting poorer, older and dumber – and making all the wrong moves to reverse the situation.

And that may actually be a plus for Barack Obama. His party is finding that lofty, vague promises of change combined with high-spending, high-tax, welfare state-ish policies are a political winner in the state. How else to explain why Gov. Ted Strickland’s approval ratings are in the mid-50s or why Democrats may even win control of the state House for the first time in 14 years?

But as a formula for economic revival, it is madness. Ohio already has the fifth-heaviest state and local tax burden in the country (up from 30th in 1990) and finds itself stagnating. Its unemployment rate, 6.3%, is above the national rate of 5.5%, even as the state’s work force shrinks as people emigrate. Ohio’s median household income is also falling – in 2006 it was $44,500, down 0.5% from the previous year – while the national figure ($48,500) was up 1.6%. During the closing decades of the 20th century, incomes rose twice as fast across the country as in Ohio.

The state has been deindustrializing for ages – the sprawling General Motors and NCR plants of my Dayton childhood are long gone. Every metropolitan area has seen manufacturing employment plunge. The state lost more than 200,000 nonfarm jobs over the past seven years alone. Of Ohio’s 10 largest corporations (including Procter & Gamble and other well known companies), just two have posted positive returns so far this year. A surefire way to have one’s portfolio underperform the market these days is to invest in Ohio.

Any sane strategy for turning this around would start by strengthening the state’s human capital for a globalized, knowledge-based economy while making Ohio more hospitable to high-tech and brain-powered firms. To his credit, higher education chancellor Eric Fingerhut is moving to make the state’s colleges more accountable for their performance, and more transparent to students and taxpayers. Primary-secondary schooling has seen a few decent efforts, too, such as a new initiative to beef up science and technology education. The state’s first “KIPP” academy will soon open in Columbus.

But the distance to be covered is vast. Ohio ranks 41st in the percentage of adults with bachelor’s degrees. Though it has many fine colleges, their young graduates don’t stick around. They head for the coasts or for “happening places” in between, none of which (with the partial exception of Columbus) happens to be in the Buckeye State.

Bright Ohio kids aren’t even enrolling in nearby colleges. The Cincinnati Enquirer recently reported that almost half the top seniors in local high schools were headed for out-of-state campuses. As jobs and young people exit, the remaining population ages. The Census Bureau projects that Ohioans over 65 will rise to 20% by 2030, up from 13% in 2000.

Even some well-established cultural institutions are faltering. The 57-year-old Columbus Symphony is broke and canceled its summer season. There is not a single downtown in Ohio that could be described as “lively” in the evening.

The government sector is still growing, of course, abetted by rising taxes on what’s left of the private economy. Some big nonprofits are doing well, too, especially major medical institutions such as the acclaimed Cleveland Clinic. But urban public school systems – beset by shrinking enrollments, obdurate teacher unions and an aging workforce – are stumbling, ever more dependent for revenue on local bond issues that strapped voters are ever likelier to reject.

In both the public and private sectors, what one witnesses in Ohio are the most senior employees clinging to what’s left of the economy, fending off change, demanding ever more burdensome contracts and costlier benefits. The ship is slowly sinking, but as the more agile passengers and crew take to the lifeboats and sail off, those who remain on board climb to the upper decks, determined to grab whatever plunder they can, confident that the rising waters won’t reach them.

Few are paying attention to tomorrow and even those who do often come up with harebrained schemes. Gov. Strickland, for one, has yet to unveil an education-reform strategy a full two years into his term, but has been inviting education interest groups to briefings and workshops filled with vague, psychobabbling talk of creativity and innovation. While demanding greater control over the K-12 system than his predecessors enjoyed, he has also signaled his intention to back away from academic standards, testing and accountability, and to abandon Ohio’s pioneering school-voucher and charter-school programs.

Mr. Strickland’s approval ratings remain strong, perhaps because he’s giving the teacher unions and other adult interests what they want.

Yet Ohio needs wrenching change on almost every front, not feel-good policies designed to placate and cosset survivors of the current economic meltdown.

Mr. Finn, a native of Dayton, Ohio, is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Thanks to It’s Great ‘n Dayton for the heads up and informative post.

Proposed bikeways plan hits speed bump

The Dayton region’s proposed bikeways plan has run into a major roadblock in the form of county engineers, along with some from the cities and townships, who fear it amounts to an unfunded mandate that will jeopardize their ability to maintain roads and bridges.

The Technical Advisory Committee of the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission has thrown up a detour to the forward-looking plan, which maps out a strategy to connect local neighborhoods to the recreational trails system and promote safe, human-powered transportation.

The engineers’ reaction to the plan at meetings in May and June was fairly hostile, said Matt Lindsay, MVRPC’s manager of environmental planning. The committee tabled the plan at its May 15 meeting and came to no resolution at a work session last week, Lindsay said.

The committee then created a smaller group of the most vocal opponents and proponents who will meet to discuss changes to the plan at

9:30 a.m. Wednesday, July 2, in the MVRPC’s Center for Regional Cooperation at 1100 W. Third St. in Dayton.

Hans Landefeld, manager of the river corridor for the Miami Conservancy District who attended last week’s work session, fears the plan will be weakened in a way that could render it ineffective.

“For the plan to work it is going to have to incorporate both on-road and off-road trails,” said Landefeld, who manages most of the existing regional recreation trails. “So if they take the on-road trails out of the plan, then you’re left with half a plan.”

Lindsay said much of the engineers’ opposition seemed to come from the plan’s recommendation that the MVRPC adopt a “complete streets” policy, which typically calls for including bike and pedestrian facilities in road projects to make them safe for everyone.

Many of the objections, he said, were based on the assumption that the engineers would be forced to build bikeways as part of these projects. But Lindsay pointed out that a complete streets policy can be written to fit the region and usually includes specific exceptions to the guidelines.

Montgomery County Engineer Joe Litvin said Thursday he is not opposed to the plan, but does not want “highway transportation funding put into the bikeways.”

“We are woefully short in funds just to maintain our existing roads and bridges,” Litvin said.

Countered Lindsay: “With all respect to Joe Litvin, we don’t feel there’s such a thing as highway funding. The dollars that are regionally controlled through MVRPC are federal dollars for transportation, and in all cases, bicycle facilities are eligible uses.”

Five Rivers MetroParks Deputy Director Carrie Scarff, also on the Technical Advisory Committee, said the group can find a “middle ground.”

“I think we have to come to terms with the very real concerns from the counties and rural townships, and also the fact that our modes of transportation are going to change,” Scarff said. “With gas prices the way they are, people are looking for alternative ways to travel.

“The other thing is we have this incredible recreation trails system. People are going to use our streets to get there, and we need to make it safe.”

It’s very easy to buy locally grown foods in and around Dayton.

And I’m not just talking about the fabulous 2nd Street Public Market in Downtown Dayton.

Resources:

2007 Local Food Directory

(print the 16 page directory above and that is all you’ll need to buy local in the Miami Valley)

Miami Valley Grown - A Local Foods Initiative

Local Foods Map

Farmers Markets and Local Foods Directory by County

Support the historic Dayton Arcade with Tea on the Terrace at the Kuhns Building, 15 W. Fourth St.  Sittings are at 12:30, 2, and 3:30pm.  Call () 299-5282 for tickets.

Check out Friends of Dayton’s Arcade for more details.

Here are two links explaining the impressive renewal of Hills and Dales Metropark:

http://www.metroparks.org/Parks/HillDales/RestorationProject.aspx

http://www.metroparks.org/GetOutside/RebirthHillsDalesPark.aspx

Check it out!