Budget - Jobs and Economic Development

By Kevin Flynn

• Balance our Budget - Instilling Confidence in People for Investment
• Develop Both Residential and Business.
• Partner with the Private Sector.
• Provide Safeguards and Protection for City Investment.

Business

A city without significant businesses in it will struggle to survive, especially a city like Cincinnati that depends on its earnings and net profits tax for a large part of its general fund revenue. The city is starting to do a better job of redevelopment by partnering with the private sector and allowing the market to determine the structure of development rather than `shoehorning' a project into a space that the market doesn't think is suitable. The Go Cincinnati Plan is an example of sound planning for development, and used the strengths of many Cincinnati volunteers in reaching its conclusions. The city has not done its own due diligence, or followed through, in regard to the viability of a development or redevelopment plan, allowing political considerations to direct the decisions on spending millions of dollars in public monies without taking the proper precautions to make sure that the project has the ability to succeed and improve the overall wellbeing of the city. One of the first projects I worked on as a law clerk in 1985 was the development of what was then called Fountain Square West. It is now the location of Macy's. At the time, it was supposed to be the crown jewel for the Queen City. A 53 story office building atop multi tenant new retail (at the time Shillito's, a predecessor to Macy's was still located on 7th Street), with restaurants and unique shopping opportunities. The problem was, there was no private market for this product and the city moved so slowly, that it was over a decade before a much scaled down, and much more heavily publicly supported development became a reality The city must develop a Can Do attitude toward encouraging private development, not an Our Way or the Highway mentality. Partnering with the private sector, not dictating to the private sector. The city should focus on attracting jobs and businesses in a focused manner. We need to concentrate on what we are good at, and what the market is demanding. Cincinnati already excels in health care, and health care related research. We have many good schools in Cincinnati for training health professionals. We need to encourage growth in this area and bring this teaching into our high schools. Encouraging our youngest citizens to consider careers in one of the few areas of job growth in our country can only be beneficial. We have many outstanding schools doing tremendous cutting edge research in the area of health care. We need to keep these research projects in Cincinnati and encourage the companies that develop products and services based on this research to locate and grow in Cincinnati.