Why you should vote NO on Issue 9
I understand that Issue 9 (better known as the Street Car Issue) is an extremely controversial and important issue in this city. I think though that both sides have mischaracterized what this is really about. This issue in the end isn’t about whether a streetcar should or should not be built. The issue is about how are we going to govern this city.
The reason I am voting for NO on Issue 9 is because making decisions by ballot initiative rather than having those that we elect make those decisions is a very bad way of running a government. What is the point of having elected officials if we are going to vote on single issues like this? We do not need to become another California where the people vote on what seems to be every law. This is extremely costly and becomes extremely inefficient, and in the end you have people voting for or against laws that have consequences that the voters had no ideas about. For instance I would be willing to bet that the majority of voters in Cincinnati think that voting yes on Issue 9 means that Cincinnati will not have a streetcar system and voting No means we will have a street car, both assumptions are false and couldn’t be farther from the truth. In the end we elect officials to make decisions and if we disagree with those decisions we need to remove those that we disagree with from office. Which seems to be the problem we have in Cincinnati. We keep on complaining about our elected officials not doing the job but then we reelect them to office.
Let me be clear about this also. Voting No on Issue 9 does not mean the streetcars will be coming to Cincinnati. All it will mean is that we will leave it up to the people we elect to do their job, which is to govern. If you as a voter do not want streetcars in Cincinnati you have the perfect opportunity to prevent that from happening this fall. All you have to do is vote out Mayor Mallory and those that are running for council that want the streetcars and vote in the people that are opposed to them. It is simply that easy.
On Election Day lets not let those that say you should vote YES for this Issue 9 confuse the issue. This issue while they may tell you it’s about the streetcars, they are wrong. What this issue is about is allowing special interest groups to continue to use the system to force votes on issue that our elected officials should be dealing with at our expense. While I agree that we should have a say if Cincinnati should have streetcars we should use that voice to vote in the elected officials that share our beliefs and work to do what is best for our city rather than spending money that the city and county do not have on these single issue items.
