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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > May > 14
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Down on the Dragons? Check out UD baseball
It’s been a rough year so far for the Dayton Dragons, who have been losing at an unprecedented rate this season. It’s still great fun to go to a Dragons game, even when the quality of play isn’t that good.
But if you’d like to have a good time at Fifth Third Field and see some quality baseball by the home team, too, you might consider checking out next week’s Atlantic 10 Tournament, starting Wednesday. Coach Tony Vittorio’s UD Flyers are in first place in the league and have set a school record for home runs this year. The tournament winner gets an automatic bid to the NCAA national championship tournament.
Around here, folks usually pay attention to UD during basketball season and the Dragons during baseball season. This might be one year to think differently about baseball. It’s a nice coincidence that the Flyers are having one of their best seasons in a year in which the A-10 tournament is being held here. It’s actually the third time in five years for Dayton to play host. It’s a good example of how the Dragons have made their first-class venue a community asset much the way the university has done with UD Arena, which is among the national leaders in hosting NCAA events.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Sports and Recreation
Editorial: Joint effort could turn down cost of lights
A light over your head is a public necessity; a light over your car is not.
That’s the ruling so far from two courts in an interesting tussle between the city of Englewood and a DPL, Inc., subsidiary that could affect how area communities light their streets. Lots of other municipalities are watching.
While it looks like the subsidiary, Miami Valley Lighting, will win the court battle, all may not be lost for cities that want to lower street lighting costs — which they seem to be overpaying for. In fact, bargaining as a group may prove to be an even better strategy than suing.
This all began with the city of Englewood asking the question: would it be cheaper for the city to light the streets rather than to pay Miami Valley Lighting?
Over many years, that company has all but cornered the market on providing street lights in the region. It put the lights up (most many years ago), maintains them and charges most local communities for the service.
But a few years ago, Englewood, which has more than 1,000 streetlights managed by Miami Valley Lighting, decided to buy 300 decorative lights for a downtown project. City officials found they could buy the lights cheaper, fix them more quickly and operate them at lower cost than what Miami Valley Lighting would have charged.
Intrigued by the discovery, City Manager Eric Smith commissioned a study and received an estimate that Englewood could cut its street lighting bill by $100,000 annually — saving almost 50 percent of the cost — if it operated the system itself.
He then had Englewood’s lights appraised and offered Miami Valley Lighting $210,000 to buy them.
The company was in no mood to play “let’s make a deal.” So Smith asked his lawyers if he could go to court and argue that the lights are a “public utility,” the same as the grid that serves homes with electricity. If so, Englewood could take control of the system by paying a fair market price for the equipment.
Unless the Ohio Supreme Court takes up the case (a long shot), that legal strategy has failed. Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Frances McGee’s ruling that street lights benefit society, but are not a service that “society has deemed ‘necessary,’” was upheld on appeal.
This would seem to leave the parties at a stalemate. Englewood could demand Miami Valley Lighting uproot 1,000 streetlights at the end of its contract in two years and then set about installing new lights; but that would be costly, slow and leave the city mostly dark for a period.
Instead, Englewood could consider another avenue. It should try to persuade other communities to help create leverage through negotiation to bring down their street lighting costs.
The rates for this service are negotiated oddly. Because the Miami Valley Cable Council already acts as an agent for Englewood and seven other cities to negotiate cable rates, those communities also use the council to negotiate the rates for street lighting. Then a host of other cities usually follow with copycat contracts, and generally accept the same rates that were agreed to in the council’s talks with Miami Valley Lighting.
The result hasn’t been altogether happy for the municipalities. A council survey found street lighting rates here are higher than in other parts of the state.
The rates possibly could be driven down if communities formed a wider coalition for the purpose of negotiating the street light costs. If enough communities pooled their resources, that should carry some weight at the bargaining table. After all, a large coalition could potentially buy, install and maintain new lights cooperatively on its own.
Local communities have to be concerned about what they’re paying for their lighting systems. The evidence is that they’re paying too much. They have to get creative — and united — in an effort to reduce that spending.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
Scott Elliott: Education without politics? Not this time
The idea that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s visit to Ohio last week wasn’t about politics — as both Duncan and Gov. Ted Strickland repeatedly insisted — is absurd.
Duncan is on a multi-state “listening tour” that he says will help him get a sense of concerns about No Child Left Behind before congressional Democrats and the Obama administration offer a revision later this year of that law. (One revision that is already settled on: NCLB will get a new name, Duncan said.)
Upon visiting Columbus, Duncan found himself at a “rally for education” outside the Ohio Education Association’s annual meeting at Ohio State University’s Schottenstein Center. There was Duncan, standing before a lawn full of union-activist teachers (and a few pro-charter school protesters) next to a Democratic governor who was pleading for the Republican Ohio Senate to pass a budget that would preserve his education reform plan.
Duncan expressed support for Strickland’s general approach — urging investment in education now and echoing the sentiment that after four state Supreme Court rulings, Ohio needs a constitutional funding program — but he declined to specifically endorse the governor’s plan when pressed by reporters. That’s when he fell back on his “this isn’t about politics” mantra.
Isn’t it? Can it possibly be argued that the implicit support of the Obama administration in the person of his education secretary at a rally to save Strickland’s budget at this crucial moment is not inherently political?
Beyond the stagecraft, there also were hints that Ohio could have an inside track for future financial aid for education, thanks to the Strickland-Duncan get-together. Now that $100 billion in education stimulus aid is being disbursed to all 50 states, Duncan is talking up a second pot of money — about $5 billion more — for what he calls “challenge grants.” A small group of states, Duncan said, will get hundreds of millions for following the reform directives Obama and Duncan support.
Here’s the math behind Ohio’s case for challenge grants: Strickland wants big reforms, but will need big money to balance his budget and keep his reform plan moving over the next few years. Duncan has big money and wants big reforms, some of which line up directly with Strickland’s plan.
Sound like a match?
Strickland told reporters he spoke to Duncan about the challenge grants and that he thought Duncan’s visit might help Ohio’s case. Duncan even gave advice. He said Ohio should consider applying jointly for the money in a “bipartisan coalition” of states with governors from both parties.
Just for kicks, let’s imagine an Ohio-led, bipartisan coalition of needy Midwestern states that might apply for a big education challenge grant together — say Ohio, Michigan and Indiana (where Republican Mitch Daniels is governor). Those three states also happened to be battleground states that went for Obama in 2008 and that the president is likely to need again in 2012. Giving a pile of money to that group might just be politically smart.
That’s just one scenario, but it demonstrates how separating out the political undertones in debates about education is pretty tricky. Ohio having gone blue in this time of total Democratic control in Washington is helping Strickland get his phone calls answered when he needs help. That’s just good politics.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Education, Scott Elliott
