Signature count released at 3 PM, front steps, City Hall

The question of the week has been:

How is the coalition doing; what's the number?

Well, the reality is that only Christopher Smitherman and Michelle Edwards know the exact count.  They have been holding the totals close to their vest since the 10,000 count was released several days ago.


So, COAST does not know, and others do not know either.

But we do know that over the past 29 days, and ramping up significantly over the past 10 days, there has been an unprecedented flurry of activity.  Community leaders have come forward from every corner of Cincinnati to circulate petitions and signers have lined up at Kroger's and Biggs, at Opening Day parade, at the Reds games, at Findlay Market, on Ludlow Avenue, and at Post Offices and libraries, and in the neighborhood squares around Cincinnati.

We all find out at 3 PM today the fruits of that effort.  We find out how much dissention and ill-will the Mayor and six Council members created in their own City with the Parking Plot Ordinance.

Genesis 50:20 says:

"you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good."  

The nefarious designs of members of Council in adopting the Parking Plot, wherein they plotted to sell an asset that belongs to our children -- the revenue from parking meters for 30 years -- to fund their out-of-control overspending for just 24 months, was a plan against the interests of the people of Cincinnati, and this Council knew that.  It is evidenced that they knew that because they plotted extensively to avoid a referendum vote on it.

If the broad coalition succeeds in placing the issue before the voters, we will have turned one of the worst decisions ever of the Council into an instrument of truth and empowerment for the people of Cincinnati, and we will have forced an honest debate about the City budget, instead of "kicking the can down the road," as Laurie Quinlivan admitted they have done for the past six years.

And if we blow past the number required, it will be a thunderous warning to Council and mayoral candidate Roxanne Qualls how completely out of step they are with the people in every neighborhood of Cincinnati.

Today the people of Cincinnati will turn evil to good, and sound a clarion call to Council and the Mayor that they may ignore at their own peril.     

It is a glorious day of empowerment of the people of Cincinnati -- the good in all of this -- against the evil intended by their leaders.

We can't wait to hear.