Fountain Scare

I took the Peace Bike to Cincinnati today for the Reds' Opening Day parade! I shouldn't have asked the Peace Bike to endure what was practically a rain-out, but we decided to tough it out together.

While we were there, we found this aggravating Allowed Cloud:

(http://i30.tinypic.com/jg1a82.jpg)

Fountain Square is a supposedly public gathering spot in downtown Cincinnati. These rules apply not only to certain events, but to Fountain Square at all times. (I checked the website for more details.)

This lengthy list of Allowed Clouds is new just since 2006. That's when the city gave control of this public square to the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation, a private commission representing the totalitarian luminaries of the Big Business community. The CCCDC (some call it 3CDC, which makes it sound like a 'Star Wars' robot or a famous rock band) set up Fountain Square Management Group to manage the square.

Before 2006, bikes, skateboards, and companion animals clearly weren't forbidden on Fountain Square: Folks brang these items to the square constantly, and I never saw a sign banning these items. And people also threw pennies in the fountain prior to 2006. Now that the city has turned the square over to the right-wing CCCDC fucks, Fountain Square might as well be the old RC commercial set in the Soviet Union in which the authorities unfurled giant Coke and Pepsi banners.

The Last Word of 3/16/07 describes the CCCDC's fascism further. When an organization wanted to conduct an antiwar rally on Fountain Square, the CCCDC decreed that the event would not be permitted unless the group purchased a liability insurance policy that was so expensive they couldn't afford it. Legal experts agreed that the CCCDC had no right to charge such a high fee for gatherings on a public space, and that it was unconstitutional.

In short, the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation is a bunch of thin-skinned little fascists.

From 2005 to 2006, Fountain Square was closed for over a year and "renovated" - meaning ruined. (It seems like the square is "renovated" every few years and closed for months at a time.) The CCCDC advocated this "renovation" before it took control of the square - and it was the CCCDC's oversight that made both the project itself and its results a disaster. Fountain Square's reopening was pushed back at least 3 times thanks to the CCCDC's idiocy.

The "renovated" Fountain Square isn't even compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act: The overhaul greatly reduced wheelchair access to the square. Fountain Square also now has a slightly raised section that has no wheelchair access at all - in violation of federal law.

The reconstruction of Fountain Square offers no noticeable improvements from the way it was before 2005. This "renovation" cost city taxpayers $42,000,000.

The city needs to take away the CCCDC's control of Fountain Square and reverse the square's Allowed Cloud mentality. It's also not going to be cheap to restore the disabled access that the CCCDC took away, but it has to be done. City Council should have thought of that before letting Big Business take control of an important public facility.