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Our interviews with more than two dozen Cincinnati City Council candidates continues.

Over two weeks on Cincinnati Edition, we’ve invited all of the candidates on the show.

Guests:

• Anna Albi
• Evan Nolan
• Steve Goodin

A transcript of this conversation is below.

This episode was transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors and has been lightly edited for clarity. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Ways to listen to this show:

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Anna Albi has made reducing gun violence a cornerstone of her work on Cincinnati City Council. So we'll talk to her about this summer's spike in crime. We're also going to talk with all of the candidates on our show today about the city budget and the balance of power in City Hall. This is Cincinnati Edition on WVXU, I'm Becca Costello filling in for Lucy May. Councilmember Anna Albi welcome back to the show. Just tell us a little bit about yourself. Why did you decide to run for re-election on Cincinnati City Council?

Anna Albi: Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Anna Albi, and my focus is gun violence prevention, like you said in the intro. And I think just a little about me is I truly come from a family dedicated to service. My dad is a former officer who then started his own small business here in Cincinnati and served our community for over 40 years. My mom is a retired public defender who would commute from down here up to Batavia to serve those who needed justice. And my two brothers went to the Naval Academy, became Marines. Are now both lawyers for the federal government. They are both currently working without pay because of the government shutdown. So you know, I was proud to fall my whole family into public service by running for office and really shining light on our gun violence epidemic. And to me, there's so much we can do when it comes to gun safety and also addressing root causes. And for me, just to say it, a safe community is one where people are being paid enough to afford a roof over their head, fresh food on the table, access to health care, and where we are giving kids safe spaces to be. So that's how I think holistically about that, especially living in a state where we in Cincinnati are legally not allowed to pass a gun law because of state regulation. So I know we're going to dive in and happy to talk more about all that.

Yeah, and maybe you can share with listeners a little bit too your sort of gun violence reduction advocacy dates back to before your time on council. You were elected in 2023 but also thinking about crime in general, obviously, shootings and violent crime is a significant concern for residents and for city officials. There was kind of a spike in crime this summer that was higher than the usual spike in crime, which is something that happens every year. A lot of that was led by property crimes. So can you talk a little bit about how City Council should work to reduce crime? Do you see, you know the course that the city is on as the right course, or do you think that this next city council, whoever is on it needs to take a different approach to crime and reducing crime.

Anna Albi: Yeah, thank you for that, and just to say it so before I was on council, I was the local lead for Moms Demand Action, which is an advocacy, advocacy group that focuses on gun violence prevention locally, state level, federally, and here in Ohio, honestly, most of our work is kept busy by pushing back against really bad gun laws at the state level, and what, what that translates into if there are just too many guns on our streets? And it's not just a Cincinnati problem, it's Ohio problem. Frankly, it's a United States problem. So when we talk about, how do we address, you know, gun violence specifically, or violence more broadly, you really have to take a holistic approach. And I appreciate you highlighting, you know, over the summer, we did see spike specifically in that property crime space, and that's where I've been really focused on, how do we think about the nerdy term for it is Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, but the idea that the built spaces have an impact on safety, and one sense of safety, right? I always think, would you rather walk down a creepy, dark alley with broken glass or a well lit alley with bistro lights that's well kept right? And so you know, over the summer, as we were seeing incidents, specifically, we were seeing car break ins, guns being stolen out of cars. Downtown really focused on investing into lighting, cameras, better landscaping to prevent storefronts being broken into. You can get like a protective film that prevents the glass from being smashed. Those type of solutions. And I'm actually leading the secure firearm storage action team, and one of our focuses is reducing those guns being stolen out of cars. So we're doing a couple things. One, we are improving our requirements for licensing if you are a garage, parking garage or parking lot owner, to make sure it does have those safety measures. We're working with CPD to reintroduce a grading system. So if you're driving downtown to park, you can see if a garage has an A, B, C or D, so you know, or whatever scale we choose to use on how safe it is. But then also, we are giving out gun locks at the Bengals games now. So we, I know home opener weekend, we gave 77 gun locks out. I haven't gotten the update from this past game, but that's really meant to give you an on the spot solution to prevent those break ins, because we saw, ever since the Tiktok trend of car break ins a couple years ago, a lot of break ins where guns are being stolen by cars, especially by young kids. So. As we think about that holistic approach, you're doing all that while still investing into, you know, law enforcement, what's needed there, this council has invested into 150 new officers. This year, we gave the police a the largest pay raise in 40 years. We've done more there, and then also tacking the systemic issues right. And that's back to what I was saying about making sure people being paid enough to afford a roofer their head, fresh food on table, access to health care and giving kids safe spaces to be in.

Let's talk a little bit more about some of the specific things that this council has done. Obviously, the city's response to this uptick in crime has has been more than just what we're going to talk about here, but the council did recently vote to add an additional 5.4 million towards public safety. You know, you voted as part of that legislation. You know, what do you see as the positives of that? Are there things that you wish had been done differently with that money?

Anna Albi: Yeah, so I think, you know, it covered a pretty wide span of solutions. So I've mentioned that kind of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. So that bucket had, I think, over 1.2 million for lighting, roughly another million for cameras, and that's both kind of in specific neighborhoods, but also license plate readers and drones.

It looks like about 1.2 million for lighting and cameras.

Anna Albi: And then also, you know, we also included additional funding for police visibility. I think there, you know, our police chief said she didn't need as much money as council was allocating. My colleagues felt, hey, let's give them the money now and then, if it's not used by December, we'll bring it back and reallocate it. I'm comfortable with that solution, but where I would really like to see more funding is in the youth outreach space. So I fought really hard in that ordinance that you're describing to put $200,000 towards youth outreach, and that is really the approach and the tactic that we've been using at the transit stations. So if you remember a year and a half, two years ago, that was a big deal, and we had our collaborative agreement, outreach team out there, our community responders, and we reduced those, you know, youth disorder by like 50% at the transit stations. And not only is it kind of reducing those incidents, but it's also reaching out to those kids, having those conversations, building those relationships, and really understanding what they need, not just in that moment, but when they go home at night. And you know, one of the things I've been really passionate about pushing is food access. And this is just something we're hearing, is I go into rooms all the time to talk about gun violence, and the conversation comes back to our kids are hungry. Our neighborhood doesn't have a grocery store. We need we need our basic needs met, and so that's why I've been really passionate about pushing funding for food access, specifically in our neighborhoods hit hardest by gun violence.

You're listening to Cincinnati Edition. I'm speaking with Cincinnati City Councilmember Anna Albi. Later in the show, I talk with council member Evan Nolan and candidate Steve Gooden. Something else I wanted to ask about it in relation to crime and public and public safety. Again, some of these responses that city council has put forward include instituting new curfew rules citywide and a new special curfew district downtown and in parts of over the Rhine. Also, some responses have not involved city council, but city administration implementing restrictions on red bike and food trucks during certain time periods downtown. What do you think about those rules? Have they been effective? Do you think council should have had more oversight on some of those decisions? You know, what are your thoughts there?

Anna Albi: So take a step back. I think the bigger picture is, how do we do place based problem solving right in the city of Cincinnati? We know we have hot spots when it comes to issues, and you know, I think the stat is like 5% of our geographic imprint has a disproportionate amount of shootings and property crimes, etc. So when we think about these type of solutions, it's really that place based problem solving is, how do we look around that situation, solve the problem there? I'll be honest with the curfew. I took a while to get there. I asked a lot of really hard questions in the administration, I reached out to judge Carrie Bloom to have a conversation with her. I reached out to multiple leaders in the community who work with kids to really understand, you know, what is how is this going to impact our kids? Right? Because there's no part of me that wants to be criminalizing kids, right? We want to do the opposite. We want to provide them the resources they need. So I took a while to get there. Ultimately, I was comfortable with the solution because of how, you know, the administration thought through the curfew centers and how we were going to use community responders and those outreach teams to kind of have those initial contacts with kids. So I got comfortable, and I think we've seen that it's actually helped, which is great when it comes to some of the other stuff, like bread bike and the food truck. You know, I think red bike thing. Now that we have the curfew and we've seen that settle down, we can probably let that fall off and focus on kind of improving the technology that do use geo fencing to prevent the red bikes from going into the garages. If that's the problem we're trying to solve is kids using red bikes to get around garages. Breaking into cars. Okay, let's geo fence that. So let's improve that technology on the food trucks. You know, council hasn't had a chance to talk about this. I think it's going to come up in public safety next week. I In that case, you know, the administration, I do not see eye to eye on that. I actually think we swung too far the other direction in that proposed solution. I would love to see a lot more, more planned, thoughtful approach in terms of, how do we think about food trucks? Do we need to have a specific spots marked off for them so we can keep them in one spot and be able to monitor them? Use, you know, whether that's permitting health inspector do that type of work versus the right now the the broad paid have them shut down after 11. I think that's hurting small businesses, you know, and I think it also hurts the livelihood of our downtown when we think about our nightlife and wanting to be a vibrant place for people to hang out.

We're going to get to economic development and zoning in just a second, but quickly, I first want to address this was an issue that you were pretty vocal about earlier this year, which was the city's response to a major winter storm and response time that kind of thing. How would you help the city prepare for major weather events and respond more quickly and comprehensively in the future?

Anna Albi: Yeah, thank you. So I actually met with our new department public services director, Mark Riley, last week. He said he was going to do like a 90 day check in. I beat everyone to the punch and got there 70 days and but we had a really candid conversation where we talked very directly about the breakdowns we saw last winter. And I'll be I'll be honest what happened this last winter. What happened last winter, like with system level breakdowns, right? We just had issues across the board. So I'm really excited. Director Riley's really coming in and implementing a lot of solutions I think are going to help for this winter. Response one, right off the bat, he said, Okay, we're using our City Council funding you guys gave us to put GPSs into the trucks, right? So get rid of those paper binders on the routes. We're going to have our tablets, and we're going to use that. He also mentioned that we're going to train drivers for specific routes so they can learn to memorize it over time, and they're also going to do and maybe I'm using the wrong term, like an obstacle course, to kind of train drivers on how to get through tight spaces and maneuver the trucks so we can be more efficient with clearing it out, clearing out the streets. He's upgrading the type of pre treatment we're putting on the roads. He's doing all of this so quickly, including working with the Office of performance and data analytics on the 311, on the open the service requests, because we got feedback that those were getting closed before issues were addressed. We're not doing that anymore. No more of that. We're going to address the issues before closing out those service requests. So we are working on that. And I think bringing in this new leadership has been a really a big step forward. And you know, my office talked with Director Riley, we're going to put forward a motion, and going to ask him, What is your winter preparedness plan and what resources you need from Council, right? We do not want to see what happened last winter. Happen again?

Well, let's move on to zoning reform. Obviously a big issue in Cincinnati this year. There was the connected community zoning reform in 2024 and the Hyde Park Square development project, which was pretty controversial this year. So as a member of city council, you know, how have you voted on these measures, and how do you balance community input with this desire to encourage economic development and add much needed housing?

Anna Albi: Yeah, hey, I want more neighbors in Cincinnati. I love my city. I want more neighbors, and I have been for building more housing, and that's what we're hearing from our community. Every neighborhood you go into, people say, I want more housing, and they want more housing at a price point that works for them. So we have to be able to build more housing. And you know, when we talk about housing, the city really provides a continuum of care. When it comes to that one we are funding, how do you build more housing? Right? We've put 25 million into the affordable housing leverage fund. Through the Cincinnati Development Fund, we are helping people stay in their housing by providing rental assistance and a lawyer if they go to eviction court, because access to counsel makes a difference. So they get to stay in their housing. And then we are updating our zoning code to make it easier to build housing. You know, I live on a street where right across from me is a four unit apartment building down one or two houses over. We've got duplexes down the other direction. I've got an eight unit apartment building as my neighbor. I love it. Having those healthy mix of housing styles is so important, because we have to have something in between, either a single family with the white picket fence in the lot and the grass and a huge apartment building, right? We have to have that middle housing, those different types, especially for me, I'm a millennial, and for our younger generations, trying to buy our first starter home, it's hard right now. There aren't that many options, so we need to make it easier to build that housing. And when it comes to how do we think about the city? You know what every neighborhood looks like going forward, I really want to lean into our neighborhood plans and be able to build out the city's capacity to partner with our community councils to create community plans more often for more communities, so people don't have to be like a zoning expert every single time, but everyone has a feel idea of how they want their community to look and feel right and. You know, my community, I know we want a grocery store. We want income restricted, housing. Those are the type of things we want. I want to see communities articulating in those neighborhood plans. So then we can bring resources to table to make those visions come to life.

This time goes by very quick. I know I'm going to talk quickly too fine. We have just one question, a final question, if you can answer in about 30 seconds or so, which is tough, what would you plan to introduce and accomplish during the next two years on council?

Anna Albi: Okay, so I've meant mentioned the secure firearm storage team that I'm working on. You can get your free gun lock at every library in the county. Now, thanks to my office partnering, we're going to be working with health care professionals to increase conversations between health care providers and caretakers around secure storage. How do you prevent suicide? How do you prevent unintentional shootings by kids? We're also partnering with CPS on that. I'm also working with CPS around violence intervention programs in the schools, along with additional after school programs. And then one last thing is, how do we respond afterwards when there's been trauma in the community? I brought in the national mass violence center earlier this year, they do a training so we can better respond to the trauma in our neighborhoods after shootings or other violent incidents, to be able to provide that care for our survivors. Because I know in my community, we had a shooting last summer in Bramble Park, and I went out the next morning and with some of my neighbors, we cleaned up the park, we helped people with their lost items, and then I set up the Talbert House to do therapy at the library, but that, that was one time we were able to do it. How do we make it a playbook each time where we're able to roll out these resources for those who are experiencing trauma? So I'm really passionate about that and our survivor support. Okay?

Anna Albi, thank you so much for joining me. Anna Albi is running for reelection on Cincinnati City Council. Up next, I talk with incumbent, incumbent Democrat Evan Nolan. This is Cincinnati Edition.

This is Cincinnati Edition on WVXU I'm Becca Costello filling in for Lucy May. Evan Nolan was appointed to Cincinnati City Council in 2024 when Reggie Harris joined the Biden administration. Now he's running for his first full term council member. Evan, welcome to the show. So first, just introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us all why you decided to run for a full term on city council.

Evan Nolan: Yes. Thank you. So I grew up in Cheviot, over on the west side, went to St X for high school, and then went on to the University of Pennsylvania in part to play football. After I graduated from Penn, went to work for IBM as a public sector consultant, first with the Air Force in the Pentagon and then with the US Postal Service, where we were focused on making government more efficient. After doing that for a few years, I went back to school at Georgetown Law. After Georgetown, I served as a legal fellow in Senator Sherrod Brown's office, and then moved back to Cincinnati in 2011 when I moved away in 2001 the city was at a point of of crisis. And, you know, I. Mentioned before my senior prom was scheduled to be at Music Hall and was moved out to Butler County because of the curfews that were in place at the time and what was happening with the riots. So it was, it was a very different time, and in the 10 years that I was gone, leaders in this city really helped turn things around. And I was really excited to come back and move back home and get involved, and so I moved back in 2011 have practiced law for 15 years as a corporate transactional attorney representing family owned businesses, primarily doing real estate law. In the time that I've been back, I joined the Oakley Community Council, where my wife and I bought our first home and served for eight years as chair of economic development and zoning in Oakley, joined the board of our church and have found lots of different ways to get involved in politics and government. Spent a little less than a year working at the city in the law department, and have just really sought out ways to get involved and help contribute to the growth that we've seen in Cincinnati.

Well, we want to start with development. That's partly because when you were you mentioned that you served in the city law department for some time, and during that time, you kind of clerked the I don't know if that's the right term, but you worked with the equitable growth and Housing Committee on the administrative side of things, of course, now you're on the legislative side. This has been a big year for development and zoning in the city. A lot of controversy, some accusations of council not listening to the community on some of these issues, like connected communities, zoning reform, the Hyde Park Square development. Now you weren't here on council for the Connected Communities vote, but you did vote in favor of the Hyde Park Square development. So as a member of city council, you know, how did you decide how to vote on that measure? And then moving forward, how would you balance this sort of need for community input, but also the need for more housing?

Evan Nolan: Yeah, and this is obviously one of the major issues on the campaign trail this year, and I lean into my experience both as a as an attorney who has represented developers trying to build to develop real estate, and my time as chair of economic development zoning on the Oakley Community Council, and having that Community Council perspective during a time of lots of development in Oakley, as we've seen with Oakley station and other other development. And so for me, you know, I think the question of whether City Hall is listening, that you know that word is ultimately a debate over semantics, the city administration and city council members have spent a tremendous amount of time listening, sitting down and talking to the folks from Hyde Park. In fact, it's, it's gotten to the point where it's, it's almost inequitable at this point, I'm hearing from a lot of constituents. Can Can we please stop talking about the one development in Hyde Park, and start talking about how we promote development across the city.

You're saying constituents from other parts ...

Evan Nolan: Other parts of the city. But you know, when we have those conversations, and we talked to the residents, and at least in my experience, we heard a number of different issues come up, I felt like the city did a pretty good job of addressing those with respect to that specific project, breaking that apartment building into two separate apartment buildings, moving the curb cut to make pedestrian safety more of a focus. And ultimately, at the end of the day, it is important to listen to community members, period and Community Councils play a vital role in helping with that communication with the city. In addition to that, we at the city also hear from a lot of other constituents. We hear from our community partners who are helping combat homelessness. I have been a big advocate and volunteer with our access to counsel program, where we provide limited legal representation for free to tenants who are facing eviction down in courtroom B, and when I'm there talking to those folks, there is grave concern about where they go if They get kicked out of their current, current apartment, that you can't find other apartments available for what we used to see as as common rent in this city. And so I hear from those folks. And so from a from a large city perspective, we have to find ways to provoke development of more housing across the housing spectrum, not just at the affordable range, which we need, we need to do, and we need to seek out the state and federal subsidies and tax credits that are available to do that. But that's not available for every project. Those those incentives are not sufficient to build the housing. That we that we need to build.

Let's talk about and this kind of is tied into the housing question as well, which is the city budget. The city has been kind of propped up by a federal stimulus for the last few years, but is facing projected budget deficits over the next few years now that that stimulus has been depleted. So what should City Council do differently over the next few years to make sure that the city is on stable financial ground.

Evan Nolan: Yeah, I think we did a pretty good job this past year of getting a budget passed that did trim some expenses across the board without having to lay off any city employees. With that budget, we were able to invest significant resources in new police recruiting classes, a new police lateral class. We were able to put additional funding to fleet, which we come to find out is and has been in desperate need of investment. So I feel like we did a pretty good job. I think the focus needs to be on the root causes of the issues that we see. If we can invest in the future, invest in our in our young people, so that everybody has the opportunity to pursue a productive career, then there will be less expenses on social services on the backside, this

This is Cincinnati Edition. I'm speaking with council member Evan Nolan, who's running for election now, really briefly before we move on to crime, which, of course, is a large topic we want to have enough time with. But right now, you've only served on council with other Democrats. Historically, the council has been made up of mostly Democrats, but also some Republicans and independents. Now, how would you work on an issue that is potentially divisive and may reach an impasse with either fellow Democrats, because this council does not always agree, but also potentially with those of a different political party?

Evan Nolan: Yeah, I think it requires putting in the work you have to do, you have to do the research, you have to understand the policies, and you have to spend the time talking to folks. You know, because of Sunshine laws, we're not making any decisions. But you really outside of council chambers, but you really have to educate yourself before you walk into that room. It's helpful to do the work and draft a motion and get it circulated so that others can have it, have an opportunity to review it and understand it and ask questions. I don't, I don't see the work that we do inside City Hall is particularly partisan. You know, we have our disagreements over things. We all have a different approach, but at the end of the day, it's about bringing good faith actors to the table. I think too often we see folks who are there for the wrong reasons, either to promote themselves or to try and make someone else look bad. I believe in the nine folks we have on Council today are all there for the right reasons. I think they have we all have different approaches to different issues. We come with unique experiences and perspectives based on our own life experience, and we bring that to the table in a way that I think is generally productive.

Let's move on and talk about crime. Obviously, it's a huge, complex issue. There was a lot of discussion about it this year, with an uptick in crime and a couple of high profile incidents that I think everyone can agree were kind of politicized and kind of the rhetoric was heightened compared to previous years. How do you think the city's response to that has been effective, and city council, in particular, you know, looking back, do you think council should have done anything differently? And what lessons can you take towards the future, towards reducing crime, but also addressing public perceptions of public safety?

Evan Nolan: Yeah, we did face some, some challenging issues. And I think, you know, with with any issues the city faces, you need to be responsive and nimble and flexible and open to new ideas. You know, with what happened on Fourth Street, unfortunately, is something that I don't think you can police your way out of.

Fourth Street, referring to the viral fight that went viral on social media.

Evan Nolan: Thank you. I do think we have seen other public safety issues. We have seen large groups of teenagers hanging out downtown, generally doing things that we expect teenagers to do. On occasion, there are, there are some folks in that crowd that engage in criminal activity and have caused real issues and perception issues. We have spent, as a city, a significant amount of money to develop the banks downtown and OTR, and that is great. We have invested in those areas with the hope that people would come to those areas and spend their time and spend their money and enjoy each other's company. So it is no surprise that that is where teenagers go to hang out. We have seen a little bit of a hollowing out of our neighborhood, business districts and places that teenagers often, often go. And so as a city, it's important to a. Address some of those, those root cause issues, and invest in economic development and community development out in the neighborhoods, so that there are places to go, there are businesses that need to hire people, young people, to work. And so we need to expand that growth beyond the urban core.

So talking about some of the specifics of what the city has done. Council implemented new curfew rules citywide, including a new curfew district downtown. Some things not involving Council, but city administration implemented some restrictions on red bike as well as food trucks. You know, do you see Council in the administration as kind of on the same page in terms of responding to this kind of spike in crime? Or do you have any concerns about some of these policies implemented recently?

Evan Nolan: Yeah, I think the administration and chief DG and the police department need to do what they can to address any spike in crime with the tools that they have available. And I appreciate the thought and policy making that goes into that. I think we on council have to think bigger picture and longer term. You know, I don't think long term. It makes sense to have the curfew that we have in place, if that's what we need to do in the short term to get things under control. I understand that, but there's other work that needs to be done in the long term.

Moving on to kind of another issue here, the city did face some criticism for this year's Winter Storm and some response time. You know, obviously, a lot has changed since January, but as we're getting into the colder weather, you know, how would you help the city prepare for some of these major weather events that it seems the city has not been super prepared for in the past?

Evan Nolan: Yeah, I think the recent the large storm that we had this past winter revealed, revealed some breakdowns in the city's response. And I think, you know, going back to what I was saying earlier about public safety, the city really needs to be constantly reevaluating where they are, what technology we have, what services we're providing, how we're providing those it needs to be a constant and continuous evaluation. And so when something like that happens, we need to react. And I think we have, we've, we've put a lot more funding into updating the fleet and the technology and the equipment that are used to address issues like like a winter storm. So my hope is we will be better prepared. I know that with our new director of public services, Mark Riley, I've met with him multiple times. I have very high level of confidence in him. He has brought some great ideas to the table with respect to how we train our city employees, how we put that technology to use. So I'm not wishing a winter storm upon us, but if it comes, I do believe we'll be better prepared to handle it.

Okay, wrapping up in about 30 seconds or so. If you are elected to a term, what would you plan to introduce and accomplish over the next two years?

Evan Nolan: Yeah, so I think my focus has really been on housing. Our housing crisis we whether you rent or own home, prices, property taxes, rents have gone up significantly. It's happening across the country, but it's happening more so here than in other places. That's because we had a declining population for 60 years. In the last full decade, we grew for the first time since 1950 during that same decade, we've lost net 2300 housing units. We have to find a way to get housing going. So for me, it's creating that Office of Strategic Growth so that developers feel welcome to develop in our city. We need to update plan Cincinnati so we have an overarching planning document that resonates with the priorities of today, and then we need to create a process. I've created this Subcommittee on Community Investment along with Council, where we will invite the community and all the stakeholders in to have a conversation proactively about what development looks like in a neighborhood, so we can get that going in a way that everyone appreciates.

Okay, Evan Nolan, thank you so much. That's Evan Nolan. He's running for Cincinnati City Council. Up next, I talked to Charterite Steve Goodin.

You're tuned in to Cincinnati Edition on WVXU I'm Becca Costello. Steve Goodin was appointed to council in 2020 to replace Jeff Pastor. He served for about a year, but did not win enough votes to keep his seat during the 2021 election. Now he's back running with the Charter party to return to council. Steve, welcome back to the show. First, just introduce yourself to our audience, for folks who aren't familiar, and let us know why you decided to decided to return to city council. Or attempt to.

Steve Goodin: Well, I'm hoping to return to city council, and my name is Steve Goodin. I was proud to serve on in 2020 and 21 we came close in the election, but didn't, didn't make it. You know, I'm running because I really do feel the city is on the wrong track. I mean, when I was on council, it wasn't perfect, but we had debate. We had Charter rights, we had Republicans, we had Democrats, and we hash things out in all perspectives we're listened to. Right now we have effectively one party rule, and I think the city is more divided than it's been in a long time, whether it be due to the economic development and zoning issues that we've seen and with connected communities in Hyde Park Square and also there. The city, in my view, is clearly on the wrong track in terms of public safety. I know there's a lot of debate back and forth about the statistics and what they mean, but I think there can be no debate that most people feel less safe than they were before. So that perception is very real, and we're seeing it and in business downtown, and we're seeing it in our neighborhoods, particularly in the West End and in the northern part of over the Rhine. And as a former prosecutor, that is a a passion of mine. I was also a public defender, so I've seen both sides of the public safety and and courthouse equation. So I really want to bring that kind of expertise. But the main reason I'm running. Frankly, I'm 55 years old. I have no further political ambitions beyond city hall. I want to bring kind of grumpy, middle aged man energy there and ask questions, not in a divisive way, but in a way that actually brings some debate back. Because I really, you know, I don't really, I am fairly impervious to criticism, so I just speak my mind, and I think there is a desperate need for someone who will just without any kind of sense of political correctness, just call out what they think is wrong.

Well, you mentioned zoning. That is an issue we want to bring up later in the conversation, but let's start with public safety. It's been on everyone's minds this year, as you mentioned, a lot of the focus and a lot of the increase in the crime statistics have been downtown and over the Rhine, but we've also, more recently seen some concern from your neighborhood of Clifton, especially with a Hookah Bar on Ludlow. It's drawn some some criticism and concern. It's prompted some new city regulations. So looking at this holistically, you know what? What do you think the city should do differently moving forward?

Steve Goodin: Well, I think there's two parts of it. I mean, number one, I mean, we do know that we have a police staffing crisis that's been a slow, rolling problem that's been building for 10 years. I mean, this was something I tried to talk about when I was on council. We have a tremendous number of officers who are moving toward retirement age, who don't and cannot, under the contract, work mandatory overtime. We know that we have roughly about 100 or about 180 below the current complement that was set that that compliment was set back in 2005 and that was well before we had the Brady center and TQL stadium and over the Rhine developed and so forth, and we had 8000 fewer residents back then. So even that compliment is probably artificially low. The FOP tells me that most nights or most days, we only have 450 officers available to answer calls split across three shifts in four districts. It's just not enough to have a meaningful police presence. So when they respond, they're responding to emergencies, and you have the situation where a lot of neighborhoods are simultaneously under policed in terms of patrols, but then over policed when they respond. But Selena. We have, we really need to take a page from the book of other cities like Cleveland, where they have seen real reductions in homicide, and that's because they've invested in youth programs, particularly in the warmer months. I mean, their rec centers are open to midnight hours closed at seven or 9pm we did not do, in my view, a meaningful jobs program this year. And we also need to lean on some of our city partners, like three CDC and the port and others to actually bring in more trade union trade apprenticeship jobs geared toward youth, and particularly those just graduating from high school, to try to get them into the job market and provide opportunity. We are not doing a good enough job of providing opportunity for our youth. So it isn't just a policing problem. There is a there is just a lack of opportunity and engagement problem that's going on there as well.

Well, let's dive into some of the specifics of how the current city council and city administration have responded to public safety this year. One thing was, city council voted pretty recently, to add an additional $5.4 million to public safety. Most of that goes to the Cincinnati Police Department for things like visibility, overtime. A small portion of that, about $200,000 toward youth outreach workers. Kind of a in reference to what you were just talking about. You know, how do you look at this breakdown of funding? Do you think that it's going to the right places? Is it being effective? Or how would you do that differently?

Steve Goodin: I think it was a totally ineffective I think it's almost a replay of the Achieving Change together the ACT money th at they are, A ct for Cincy. That's right, ACT is the college test. I'm sorry, Act for Cincy. Look, I think you know that one, when you looked at that, you know, a lot of it was like $850,000 of that money originally went to stuff like to this food insecurity project where, literally, they were passing out sandwiches at the bus stops and hoping that that would somehow reduce violence. It was, we know it was ineffective. There's no real metrics.

I'm going to interject there. I think you might be mixing up a couple things. So the $850,000 Impact Award towards food security, that's that program is just launching. I think separately, there were, there was this effort to engage with youth at the transit centers, and there was some metrics that showed a reduction in violent crime and government square specifically.

Steve Goodin: Well, well, I'll tell you this. I spoke with Iris early directly, and I think she thought the sandwiches she was passing out came from the Act for Cincy money. And look, I don't know how you could ever gage with reliable metrics whether or not passing sandwiches out at the bus stop are going to make people stop shooting each other. It's sort of the, my view, totally absurd. There is no way to get there's a lot of that kind of stuff still in this new so called public safety bill. And I also know $850,000 of it went to these downtown ambassadors for 3CDC, which are unarmed civilians wearing, like yellow polo shirts. And we know that that's not really, in our view. It's not, it's not a serious interdiction in any way in terms of public safety, it's just more visibility. We don't have enough officers to work the overtime. I mean, that is the bottom line. I mean, and even Council admitted that a lot of the money is going to be, if it isn't used by the end of the year, will be kind of pulled back into the general fund. So we have a staffing crisis that it's taken us years to get into it. It's going to take us years to get out of it, but we need to really prioritize the recruitment and retention of these officers, whether it be through, through bonuses, through and I'm glad to hear the FOP and others are started to ease up on the idea of lateral classes. I do think that is, in the short term, part of the answer, but we also need to be open to working with other departments. I mean, back when I was a prosecutor, 20 years ago, I mean, it was routine that you would have sheriff's patrols working on drug interdiction issues, you know, with with CPD, and it was also routine that we would use state patrol to sometimes free up CPD officers off highway duty so they could do other things. And we just don't have that level of interagency cooperation anymore. And I think that's unfortunate, and I think all these agencies are willing to sign on to the collaborative and to police according to our rules. I mean, Cincinnati actually has, our collaborative is very robust, and I think is really worth maintaining, but we're really having trouble to police to that standard because of the lack of folks, lack of officers.

So just for listeners, you mentioned lateral class, that, of course, is rather than a police recruit class of entirely new folks who have never been a police officer. A lateral class would be for officers from elsewhere in Ohio or the country who are moving to Cincinnati for that purpose. The city is on track to have a lateral class at the beginning of next year. So I want to talk about this. I think all of the candidates in this race this year would agree that the Cincinnati Police Department is short staffed and needs more officers. The question is, how would you recruit officers differently? You know, what could you do differently than the current council that could address that situation?

Steve Goodin: Well, first and foremost, and I'll tell you, and again, I'm close to it. I have a second cousin was the chief of police here. I have a lot of friends who were engaged in law enforcement. I can tell you that morale is low. Some of that just has to do with the rhetoric, particularly the rhetoric that was circled around the campaign back in 2021 I think some of that needs to be walked back and directly walked back from the mayor's office. That's number one. Number two, I do think we need to, I'm saying this is an old army officer. We need to be creative about retention. We need to be looking at. Retention bonuses. We need to be looking at things like my friend Aaron Weiner suggestion of working with the the realtors Alliance, who've already endorsed this idea of actually trying to provide some down payment assistance to get police officers to live in the city and giving them up to $7,500 once they complete the academy to actually purchase a home within the city limits. I think those are the sorts of creative things we need to do. We need to be looking at retention bonuses. You know, on the five to 10 year range too. We have another problem, which is that we have an excellent police academy, and sometimes our officers go to other departments, other police departments. That's correct, because it's hard to hang on to them. They get trained here, and they're in demand. And frankly, if I were a Cincinnati police officer working district one, and I had a chance to go drive around green township in the evenings for the same pay. It's tempting. So those are the sorts of things we need to work on. We need to we need to change the tone, and we need to put real money into recruit into retention and other creative things like down payment assistance to get these folks to move back into the city, which they're not legally required to do anymore, and that's a shame.

And the city, I understand, is not able to legally require officers to live in the city. I will just mention you mentioned Aaron Weiner, just for our listeners, that is a fellow charter candidate for Cincinnati City Council this year, moving on to some of the other big issues that are on voters minds, so that the charter committee has a platform of repealing connected communities the zoning reform of 2024 what would you replace that with? And this, of course, is hopefully to balance community input, but I think you would agree the city needs more housing. So what would that replacement do to balance those two needs?

Steve Goodin: Absolutely, we need more housing and absolutely. And one of the things that's been most frustrating has been this argument that if you're against connected communities, you're somehow a NIMBY and or against affordable housing, and that's just nonsense. That's just a political talking point. The truth of the matter is, connected communities was anti democratic in the charter view. It absolutely cut out community input and intentionally sidelined Community Councils. It gives them really no say in any development that occurs within four blocks of a bar. One of the projected BRT bus rapid transit lines, and we think that was just unfair and terrible, and sent the wrong message, in my view. And I'm part I'm on the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission. I'm actually still the city's representative there. Don't tell Mayor Aftab, they'll remove me. I was appointed under by the last mayor. I'm still serving out my term, but we get that mix right all the time, which is, you we should be moving, in my view, to a form based code so that we have a general agreement about what can be built in each neighborhood, and the community councils or other designated representatives should have some input to make sure that the proposed building fits within the character of the neighborhood, like in my neighborhood, Clifton gaslight is an absolute model. We are 63% renters. We're dense. That's why we have a movie theater and coffee shops and restaurants. But the rental units fit in so well with the character of the neighborhood that there's no complaint from the single family homeowners. And that's not always the case with these new developments and connected communities. Is no guarantee as to these esthetics, which do matter to the single family homeowners, particularly,

I'm talking with Charter candidate and former council member Steve Goodin. Let's talk a little bit about you kind of mentioned this at the beginning, but this balance of power at City Hall, and the fact that there's completely democratic control at city hall right now, when you served on City Council, as you mentioned, you worked with fellow Republicans as well. It did. Republicans as well as Democrats and Charterites. So how do you think this dynamic of all Democrats has played out over the last couple of years, and if you're elected, you would inevitably work with at least some Democrats. So how would you approach that and working across different political ideas?

Steve Goodin: Well, frankly, I have a lot of on a lot of state national issues. I have a lot of agreement with the Democratic Party. Most of the folks in the charter movement are registered Democrats, but the charter party has always been since, since it was founded in 1924 has been nonpartisan and is solely focused on local issues. And the old saying was, there's no democratic or republican way to fill a pothole. And I think that's the kind of energy that we need to be bringing back here. We need to talk very practically about public safety and very practically about basic services and how to fix our roads and how to fix, frankly, our zoning code, which needs to be rewritten all the way along, or all the way. That's not a very sexy topic, but that's where I think, I think suddenly the people are interested there. So I would approach everybody in good faith, and hopefully the campaign rhetoric can be put away. You know, right now you just left the board of elections, where there's a giant sign there for the early voters saying, you know, that we're basically the charter party, the home of Ted Berry and Marion Spencer, you know, our first African American mayor, Ted, Theodore Barry, that we're now the Maga we're now Maga people, and of course, that's all silliness, but we all are going to have to be adults and put all that stuff away next year, and all try to work together for the city in a practical way. And that is the charter tradition, and that's something we're looking forward to doing. It's not personal. We are bringing a sort. Business type approach to this, and trying to you actually use some objectivity and metrics about what is working and what is not.

Well, we just got a little bit of time left, so I wonder if you can kind of in about 45 seconds, let us know if you were elected, what specifically would you plan to introduce and get passed over the next two years?

Steve Goodin: Well, there's there's a lot, and I can't do it all in 45 seconds, but I'll tell you, the biggest thing I want to do is to bring in a quality of life subcommittee, where we will be meeting either on weekly or bi weekly basis, to address quality of life concerns in our neighborhoods. That is something I think this council has absolutely failed to do. The administration does not do a good job, whether it be on graffiti, trash, road repair, what have you I mean, we're hearing it over and over and over at the Community Council level. I serve on the Clifton town meeting Community Council so and we know how frustrating it can be to get those messages up and out, so we, I think, need an actual subcommittee of council to address those complaints and to m ake sure that they're being addressed.

Steve Goodin, thank you so much for joining me.