" HAPPY NEW YEAR" 2015

Well I hope the new year finds all of you all in good health.

 I wish for a better year for all  Painesville resident as well as our neighbors.

Also...Best of luck on those  "Resolutions".

"GO BUCKEYES" 

Someone mentioned to me that our mascot was a nut,  Well to our friend to the north  at least our coach isn't.

"ALREADY GONE" eagles

Interesting column in this Friday's Lake County Tribune. Rose Moore a columnist penned this story on "Remembering an old downtown at Christmas..."

Rose's article was about living in Painesville before urban renewal. She painted a picture of what  many others including myself remember.

Here is an excerpt from her column.

GONE FOR MANY years now, the old downtown was sacrificed-- like so many other Main Streets USA -- to the siren song of "free" government money for teardown and "renewal. The Ma and Pa stores were razed to make way for a reconstruction that never happened. In the process, visible history and long-term businesses were destroyed, and a certain spirit was mortally wounded.

In the brash "newer is better" era that was beginning to descend upon us, it was federal and local government that sounded the death knell for the old downtown. And now I wonder, is it only the people of my older generation who are left to remember it and pay homage to it in our hearts?

Among the people who were there-- store owners and citizens alike--urban renewal was a touchy subject. It proceeded nonetheless, perhaps with good intentions. As the buildings fell to the wrecking ball, who among the spectators can forget the people cheering the surprisingly sturdy resistance of the building that had apparently deemed "to old to live"? And who can forget the heckling and anger aimed towards the demolition crews? Some of us actually wept.

Rose Moore at 440-350-9818 or by email at randrmoore@gmail.com

I guess it's important to keep around what Rose calls visible history. At the same time those among us who can remember growing up in Painesville in the 50's and early 60's know and realize no matter how much you presently claim to a downtown Painesville it's just a figment of your imagination. It's like claiming to have written the Bible and leaving out the whole old testaments. Parking an ambulance at Riverside Cemetery just encase a person there needs medical attention.

Face facts it is more important to keep 239 Mentor Ave. or the NYC Railroad Station. Steele Mansion proves that fact. More important then making pretty a few streets in downtown that for the most part sit across from an empty lot or parking spaces.

I believe looking back even the old hotel could have been reused as small apartments on the top three floor, as a hotel on maybe two stories and we would have a restaurant and party center on the ground floor. Or even used for other purposes. The former administration had a blind eye to that building even letting local SWAT teams destroy the interior. As to make sure foolish ideas like this did not flourish.

We can pick and chose projects or keep shoveling money into two blocks on Main Street.

"CHRISTMAS 2014"

This is just about the time many of us wish we were Jewish. How could the birth of the least materialistic savior become the biggest consumer not only day but season in man kinds history?

Who amongst you received that new Lexus?

Look two weeks ago I was informed my reset Mass (Midnight Mass) will be at 11:00 PM?

I expect a lot of surprised Catholics showing up at 11:45.

Saturday night I watched Thursday Night Football? Saturday edition, why can't it just be Saturday Night Football?

Seriously, Back to Christmas I hope this season finds your families in good health and it's been a reasonable successful year for all of you.

I sure some of you lost  a love one this year. My first love Shirley Temple passed away this year being five or six let's you believe a person who made a movie in 1935 is still six years old.  What a shock when I witnessed her live in 1956!

I hope all of you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A good friend once told me , if you stumble make it part of the dance.

Oh, and a special thanks to the Macy's Department Store for a continuing assortment of perfume and cologne commercials that I just didn't understand.

" CAN'T HELP MYSELF" four tops

It's that time of year for the "Official Christmas Song Of Painesville"

Yea, can't help myself.....

A special thanks to Slack Jaw without whom this song would not be possible

There is even a live performance on youtube by deadbeat poets

"BORN IN THE U.S.A." bruce springsteen

Not let me get this straight,. First a film company decides to go forward with a fictional  comic movie about the assassination  of a North Korean leader. At the same time this independent company doesn't think the money spent to keep hackers out of their system is worth the cost.

Threats are made by God knows who and the company is left with some real embarrassing egg on their face and the film is pulled at a cost of 75 million dollars.

America, Home of the Free, land of the ????

Somehow we let some screwball dictator decide what can can watch and not watch. Actually he didn't, probably some bean counter at an insurance company, or attorney decided well if they pull something off we are on the hook.

Guess what.... the terrorists WIN. Not because we fear them but because we are more worried about litigation. You have to wonder what's next?

Forget about pay for view evil  still got their point across.

Maybe we make a sniper movie about ISIS and we are told if that movie is shown a middle school somewhere or many places in your country will be attacked 911 style?

If you presume  normalizing diplomacy with Cuba we will take out a Mall once a week.

Miley Cyrus sticks out her tounge and twirks again we're taking out a day care.

If this policy becomes the norm we will no longer remain a free society.

The federal government must cover the insurance risk of this movie as they do the Super Bowl and the movie should be shown.

And some of the flag wavers should crawl out from under their beds and go on with the normal things in life.


Leave a message to those, if there does happen to be an attack someone will pay a thousand fold. Let's face it we can be as brutal as any one else in this world. We got the papers to prove it.

Does anyone really believe if certain factions had the capacity to do these things, whey would wait for a movie?

"BOULEVARD OF OF BROKEN DREAMS" green day

 "My shadow's only one that walks with me, through these broken dreams"

I seem to be getting some pushback on the remarks I made at Painesville City Council Meeting Monday night.

I debated saying anything but standing downtown Saturday it struck me. Let's say I had an epiphany None of this will save my town, it's all B#@ls*#t!

While thinking about it could someone please fix the timer on this traffic light at State and Main?

Interesting downtown  idea with little or no forethought. What are we trying to accomplish with this?

The Main St. businesses are suffering? No doubt how long again was this project proposed to take?

Look I know a lot of grant money was used and to many grant money is free money. Also some grant money used could have been used for other issues in town and general fund money now to me that's a sin. We are putting fake brick sidewalks in a town where everyone living here or coming here knows we have the worse street's in the county.

$1,300,000 for streetscape, $22,000 a year to help fund the downtown Painesville Organization,. Over seven years that comes to over $150,000 since 2007. And what have we got to show for all this? I know!  Fairport wants to try it's hand at this.

Look as I explained at the meeting Painesville consists of more than a Park and two blocks downtown. I guess we must be trying to fool someone?

What causes growth it's simple... JOB'S. Spend some money and or get some people to promote someone coming into the CORE building, a hundred people with jobs will have a more positive result then parallel parking on Main St.

Yes and I also believe a small minority of businesses in town weld more than a little weight with administrators and council. How does spending limited resources downtown benefit Rider's Inn, Steele Mansion, Silvestro's Depot Café? along with many outlining businesses. Even T&T Bakery. Close but not that close.

Maybe we just have a big misunderstanding here? I believe growth will come from improved neighborhoods and others believe growth will come from downtown and out to the neighborhoods.

Mr. Fodor questioned councilman Flock who approached him on the desire to rehabilitate the  railroad station? Many did including myself.

"You need a VIABLE DOWNTOWN"  really wonder how Mentor get's by?

Oh and I will continue to attend council meeting's

"IF YOU DON'T KNOW ME BY NOW" harold melvin & the blue notes

NEW YORK-- Fitch Rating  assigns an 'A' rating to the following American Muncipal Power, Inc. (AMP) Prairie State Energy Campus (PSEC) project revenue bonds:

--$534.9 million Prairie State Energy Campus project revenue bonds, refunding series 2015A;

--$246 million Prairie State Energy Campus project revenue bonds, refunding series 2015B (B1,B2, B3)

The bonds are expected to price on Dec. 16, 2014. Proceeds willed be used to advance refund portions of the AMP PSEC's outstanding series 2008A and 2009A bonds. In addition,Fitch affirms AMP PSEC's outstanding $1.7 billion Prairie State Energy Campus project revenue bonds at 'A'.

The Rating Outlook is revised to Negative from Stable for all bonds.

SECURITY

The bonds are secured and payable from gross receipts including payments made by the PSEC participants under the power sales contract and other funds established pursuant to the indentured. AMP  has covenanted under the indentured to set participant rates at a level sufficient to generate 1.1xdebt service coverage on the PSEC project bonds.

KEY RATING DRIVERS

WEAKENED PARTICIPANT FINANCIAL METRICS:  The negative outlook refects weakened fiscal 2013 metrics for several of the 21 largest projects participants which together represents 80.8% of project capacity. A key credit concern is the meaningful deterioration exhibited by four of the top six participants - Hamilton, Cleveland, Piqua, and Celina. In particular, a delay in implementing needed rate increases to recover higher purchased power costs may have contributed to the decline in debt service coverage and depletion of cash resources at these cities.

PLANT PERFORMANCE BELOW EXPECTATIONS:  Operating performance at PSEC, a dual unit, pulverized coal-fired generation station located in southwest Illinois, has been relatively weak since entering commercial operation and was hampered by several unscheduled outages and re-rates during 2013 and 2014. While the take-or-pay nature of the PSEC contracts obligates the participants to pay regardless of plant performance, the resultant reduction in plant availability along with higher transmission congestion costs increased all-in power costs to well above original estimates which in turn has pressured  participant financial metrics.

STRATEGIC OVERVIEW IMPLEMENTED: The owners of PSEC, including AMP, have implemented a strategic overview designed to stabilize and improve operations in 2015 and beyond. The overview, which includes a change in project leadership, appears reasonable and has contributed to stronger plant availability toward the latter part of 2014.

ENTIRE OUTPUT CONTRACTED: AMP'S entire share of PSEC output is purchased pursuant to take-or-pay power sales contracted with 68 municipally-owned electric systems. Participants' obligations consist of their respective shares of the project costs. Debt service is paid entirely by the municipal systems as an operating expense.

RATING SENSITIVITIES

CHANGE IN PARTICIPANTS METRICS: The operating  and financial metrics of the project participants, many of whom exhibited meaningful erosion in financial metrics during 2013, will be a key factor in future rating actions.

STANDARD CONTRACT STEP-UP PROVISION:  The power sales contract includes standard step-up provisions that require each participant to step up its purchase by 25% of its original allocation of the project output in the event that another participant defaults.

Well what do you think? How will all this affect Painesville?

" LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS" beatles

No not the birth of our savior at Christmas it's the season of commercials that for some reason or another make little or no sense to me.


KMART believes I need to be entertained with men in pajama pants using there bellies as drums? Newest version, pregnant women doing the same. Makes me want to run out to KMART.


Food commercial of the season? Arby's we got the meat. Look those two  roast beefs you use in the commercial looks like nothing like what they cut up at the locations I've been in. It's like Ford doing a Lincoln commercial with an MKX and selling you a 1973 Pinto when you go to make a  purchase.


Christmas time, The time of perfume commercials that make absolutely no sense to me again. A woman climbing a rope curtain to walk on the roof of a building. Two naked women under a raincoat in a storm happy to be what?  You ever watch a commercial and when it's over you think to yourself "what exactly are they trying to sell me/"


Even the mundane dating sites like Harmony.com, match. Christian mingle.com I get it , along with the  appearance  to me to be a serial killers dream come though.


Now the latest  one called Anastasia something or other I believe this beautiful blonde shopping for bread is in Russia somewhere ( some of the letters are backward and they even use numbers.) A guy does a voice over claiming we share the same priorities and values? She makes a salad gets in a fabulous dress and serves it to who? All the time  some guy in Detroit thinks some girl in Kiev is thinking about him ? Who's helping her eat the salad?


I am sure many of you have some that bewilder you also please share them with us.

"PUT ME IN COACH" john fogery

 I wanted to use "Meet the new Boss same as the old Boss." or "Promises Promises" Both already used though.

Well I see our Congress passed a spending bill for 2015. off to recess , besides elementary student's and congressmen who among us gets a recess?  Don't want to say I told you so.... but I told you so!

In two years all will be forgotten and the all minions will again fall in line right or left. Remember you can't bank a promise. But you can bank on the middle-class shrinking.

After 40 odd years of voting you to may soon get to understand how they make the sausage. Trillion Dollars! WOW 1,774 pages nobody read. Hey, I've heard that before. Got to get it done Santa's on the way!

Promises?  "I have a plan to end the Vietnam War" "Trickle down economics will raise all boats" "Read my lips no new taxes" "I didn't have sex with that woman" "The Iraq's will see us as liberators" The list goes on.

See they went all out and started to cut President Obama's immigration executive order. NO

See they started defund Obamacare.NO...... the party of NO strikes again.

See there going to cut the banks loose on regulation, let's return to the 2007 mess.

The big news on the vote Thursday. Speaker Boehner can't pass anything without help from the Democrats, and that will come at a cost.

Michelle Bachman probably made the most honest assessmentof her career. " They would have never passed this a week before the election." She is 100% correct. They waited on purpose. After you pulled the lever.

You know it was worth it to watch Sean Hannity blow a fuse! "Replace Boehner!" With who no one want's that job. It's like herding cats.

Look what amazes me the most about how the American people vote, Republican and Democrats is how the big money influences keep getting average people to go along with this and vote against their own self-interests..

Do you think the National Chamber of Commerce doesn't want cheap labor and 11 million legal or illegal  customers?

Do you think insurance companies didn't benefit from 10 million new customers dropping into their laps?

Let'a face it there's never enough money for Wall St. and the Banks are to big to fail. The 1% wins again, not even a reach around for the little guy. wow!

Look most of you in the Tea Party are good honest people I may not agree on some of your policy's but you should be heard. A third Party? I don't know Ross Perot tried that in 1992 and both teams jumped all over him. Along do you have any "Juice"?  (Money) Big Money!

"LONG TRAIN RUNNING" doobie bros.

 FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT

The Polar Express

The Family Resource Center invites Painesville City Elementary School families to watch

"The Polar Express"

Children must be accompanied and supervised by parents at all times.

Bring your blankets, pillows, and sleeping bags to snuggle up with your family for a night filled with fun and Holiday magic. Come in your PJs for a special surprise!


Friday, December 12th, 2014

6:00-8:00 PM

Elm Street Elementary School Gymnasium

Admission is FREE but we do ask, if you are able, to bring a canned food item to participate in our food drive OR make a monetary donation to End 68 Hours of Hunger. Snacks will be provided courtesy of the United Way.

Just a plug here if next year you can make reservations to the full sized Polar Express operating on the Cuyahoga Scenic Railroad operating out of Independence, Ohio. The little ones loves the ride as well as the show.

"TIME IN A BOTTLE" jim croce

Maybe it's just me but the word that comes to mind when I view the Main Street Streetscape project well "unimpressed" Sorry this is what $1,400,000 gets us?

Look we constantly do this dance every so often.  About every seven years on how to attract people to our downtown?

It's not that hard of a question you have to have a reason for people who want to shop there, and line up merchants who believe they can make a profit there. It's Business Management 101.

In my heart of hearts I believe that 1.4 million dollars could have benefited the residents of Painesville in a more positive way. What you seem to believe is dumping money down a sink hole for a half dozen businesses will be the end all. I believe businesses like Jougins Hardware, Bella Donna and Model Bakery could survive if the street was dirt. Along with the other businesses in downtown. They have loyal customers and a good reputations.

It seem the leaders of our community believe a strong downtown makes the whole city strong? Please take a look around.

Nothing I have seen in Painesville's  downtown makes me believe a grocery chain is even looking in our direction. I hope I'm wrong. In the end isn't that the whole reason for doing this attracting new business?

Now let's look at our holiday shopping. How many of us, me included made purchases on line?
Is the future of our society becoming less and less brick and mortar and more and more cyber shopping? No crowds, no sales tax?  many with free shipping. You have to wonder how long no sales tax  will last?

Maybe Painesville on this issue is ahead of the curve? I even had a small money generating operation until E bay became popular.

I believe soon the businesses in the service sector, resturants, bakeries, auto care will be whats left. With other purchases made online. Maybe even groceries.

Over the years our city leaders have dumped thousands upon thosands in to our Main St. community with little to show for it. When will the madness end?

Really did Painesville need a $3.00 cupcake after all?

"IT'S THE SAME OLD SONG" four tops

just a different place!

In todays (Saturday News-Herald) a front page story about our cousins to the north in the Village of Fairport Harbor are looking to put a strategy in place.

So where do they look for  to get results? Painesville. A different city official once told me do everything opposite of Painesville you will be successful.

But according to a panel of state preservationist, there are proven strategies in fueling a vibrant downtown no matter it's size, proximity to larger cities, economic woes or irregular tourism traffic. Gee where have I heard that song and dance before?

Density is what we love. People are moving to places in walkable communities. ie;  build more sidewalks, narrow the streets have less parking.

There must be money in these groups selling this B.S.?

What you people here in the good village of Fairport Harbor need is ...  well Mr. Volpe and City Architecture to help draw up plans for your own Disneyland . I mean High & Third St.

The cherry on top of the sundae?

A recommendation by village resident Pam Morse and former village councilwoman is a strong Main St. organization. She serves on the board of trustees for Main Street Painesville which was formed in 2007 and is a downtown Painesville business owner.

"We had such a positive influence on everything from ordinances, design, selling storefronts and tourism."  She believes can have the same affect on the village's direction. What is she talking about?

To my friends in Fairport the best ideas on what to do with Fairport will come from the people who live there. Not someone from some Holmes County or Norwalk, Ohio Remember there's  a buck to be made from all this as well as a cost.

Get your resident's together and decide. You already have given your number one asset to Lake Metro park. (the beach)  You know what's best .

"O TANNENBAUM" ernst anschutz

Well the Christmas Season is here again many Painesville seasonal traditions as well as family are upon us again.

One of my favorite local ones is Friends of Morley Library Table Top Tree Silent  Auction

This year there are over 40 trees and 10 wreaths you can bid on. Everything from an Ohio State Buckeye  tree, Cleveland Browns, Tim Burton , along with a Train tree are all included.

It's worth the trip just to see the different trees on display.

The tress can be viewed daily and bid on  at Rider's Tavern with bidding closing at 4:00 pm on December 21,2014  (corrected) Beginning December 20 the current highest bid for each item will be posted at: http:/tinyurt.com/lgvhaop

All proceeds go to the Library.

So if you have that person on your list that has everything or an older loved one who doesn't put a tree up these two foot trees make for a perfect gift.

"CAN'T GET NO SATISFACTION" rolling stones

Another Monday under the "Golden Dome"

Well everything was left on first or second reading except for the JEDD approval of an assisted living facility in Concord. It would have been interesting if council would have all voted NO?  Only that it would have not changed anything. I wonder why this even came in front of council?
A question that needed to be asked and wasn't will this new facility have an effect on the nursing homes presently located in Painesville?

Sewer rates are going up. How much, and is the amount compounded? Will after five years will it be an overall 20% increase? Who knew what and when?  left on first reading.

We did the Prairie State dance again this week, seems more and more information comes out. Still no answer of what the city plan is for the power plant in the next five to ten years? They probably don't have a clue. Another thing I noted it seems many people in the electric department seem to believe they work for AMP-OHIO and not the residents of Painesville? How and why is that? Oh, I forgot it's not their money. Ask someone how much AMP has lost financially on this deal?  AMP -OHIO the best idea since sliced bread for the electric power industry.

Another city resident attended last weeks work session and came to council asking  unbiased questions. I will try to post his letter on this site.

Mr. Fodor explained that he wanted people to understand that every member on council was looking out for the city on the PSEC issue not just councilman Flock. The difference that I see is that Flock is trying to divert a train wreck and the other six sit by and hope it doesn't happen.?

Another question about fire truck Tower 2319 seems it's in for repairs again, cylinders issues. I'm starting to think the Boardman Twp. Fire Department somehow got a hold of AMP-OHIO's mailing list?

My best "guessestmation" ( see I can make -up words too)  is that the truck has been in the shop over 45% of the time since we have taken possession of it? Maybe we should just park it down at the power plant? I guess in the long run we really don't need either of them?