Assets matter and we are blessed in Kent to have some really wonderful natural assets like the Cuyahoga River, mature woodlands, bogs, and more wetlands than any other county in Ohio. Just in my 3 years in Kent I’ve seen terrific progress made on linking these assets through a regional network of bike trails, which means we not only have great natural resources we can actually get to them and enjoy them. Whether you’re a convert to outdoor recreation or not, here’s a few outdoor events you won’t want to miss.

1. Kent Ravenna Bike Trail Connection
The high school sports rivalry between Kent and Ravenna remains strong but I’m pleased to announce that when it comes to bike trails we set rivalries aside. The Portage Park District and Kent Parks and Recreation will be celebrating the grand opening of the final phase of the bike trail linking Kent and Ravenna this weekend. The dedication takes place at 10 a.m. on November 1^st at the Lake Rockwell trailhead, just south of Beckwith’s Orchards, 1617 Lake Rockwell Road in Franklin Twp.

2. Sports Tourism in Kent: Regional High School Lacrosse Tournament
The City Manager’s Office continues to work with Kent State Athletics, Kent State School of Sports & Leisure and Kent Parks and Recreation to attract more sporting events to venues in Kent. Last year our interns landed the Ohio high school rugby state tournament and this year they’ve organized a new Fall high school lacrosse tournament that is scheduled for November 1, 2008. The tournament is bringing 14 of the top regional teams to Kent to compete in a round-robin double elimination tournament. The championship game will be held in Dix stadium. This is planned to be an annual event that we believe can attract 50+ teams in future years.

3. DICE & Standing Rock Cider Festival in Downtown Kent
Standing Rock Cultural Arts and Downtown Businesses present 5th Annual Cider Festival (billed as a deciderly different event) Saturday, November 1, 2008 12 pm-3 pm at the Home Savings Plaza (corner of Water and Main Streets in Downtown Kent). The event includes the premiere performance by The Kent Shindig All Stars (at 2 pm), the Star of the West Pie Tasting Contest (begins at noon, $100 first prize, $50 second and $25 third, no entry fee) to benefit the Davey Elementary PTO, hot cider and carmel apples from Beckwith’s Orchards, an old fashioned cider press demonstration with Mark and Barb Strickler, baked goods by Stahl’s Bakery, children’s art table with Nonnie Swann and much more.

4. Downtown Kent Ghost Walk
The Main Street Kent Ghost Walk will focus on tales of haunted Kent in the downtown area and the residential historic district in and around West Main Street. Attendees will tour the neighborhoods on foot as storytellers share tales of haunted Kent at stops along the way.   Walks leave every 20 minutes from The Kent Stage

WHEN:
Friday, Oct 30, 2008 — 5:30pm to 10pm
Saturay, Nov 1, 2008 — 5:30pm to 10pm
5:30 Ghost Walk — Handicapped Accessable Van

TICKETS:
Purchase Tickets Online
Tickets also available at Woodsy’s Music and Spin-More Records
$10 per person, $8 students/seniors

For More Information Contact: Kent Historical Society at (330) 678-2712 or Main Street Kent at (330) 677-8000.

A friend of mine who works in the world of city government likes to say that citizens are a tough bunch to please.  He points out that people want things to be made better in their community, they just don’t want you to have to change anything to do it.  I know this point of view is certainly an oversimplification done in the spirit of keeping a sense of humor in an otherwise crazy world but it does hit on the dichotomy between preservation and progress.  Change takes getting used to and most of us have a hard enough time keeping up with the changes imposed in our lives without the city government adding more.  But that’s what we’re looking at doing with trash collection in the City and here’s why.

Looking at Managed Trash Services in Kent

Over the last 5 years the City has initiated a wide range of productivity improvements to help curtail the financial crunch that we’ve been facing.  Those efforts have worked to the tune of about $1 million in workforce reductions and nearly $5 million in materials, supplies and contracts.  $6 million is a lot of money but it’s not enough – which is why we’re still out there looking for more and that’s how we first got interested in looking at trash collection in Kent.

It turns out that nationally 2 out of 3 cities manage trash services in their community either through municipal collection or through some form of city contract with private haulers. As we look at Kent’s trash haul free-for-all it is part of a declining minority that leave it up to homeowners to fend for themselves and arrange their own trash collection and disposal services. As a basic utility like electric, water, sewer, and even recycling, trash collection is the only one that has the distinction of not being managed in Kent.

As we’ve researched the issue it’s become apparent that by not having some form of management of trash in Kent, our residents are paying a premium for the exact same service that residents in our neighboring cities are paying less for. On top of the extra money being taken out of our pockets, we also have to deal with trash being set out for collection by trash trucks that increase congestion, disrupt our neighborhoods, and wear down our streets 5 days of the week rather than once a week as in those other cities.

Armed with this information we thought we owed it to Kent residents to take a closer look at what we could do as a city to save money and improve our neighborhoods by initiating some form of management oversight for trash collection. The staff and City Council do not take changing trash service lightly but after 2 years of study and looking at prospective savings of over $250,000 a year for Kent residents, we thought the time was right to take another step forward.

In October 2008 City Council authorized the staff to put a citywide (residential only) trash bid out on the street to see what sort of numbers we get back. It’s great to estimate savings but we need to see it in writing before we’d consider making any recommendations to City Council to change anything. The bid should be advertised before the end of 2008 and then the staff would bring the bid responses back to City Council for discussion in early 2009.

The terms of the bid are specifically broad in order to allow residents the opportunity to maintain the same type of service they currently receive hopefully just at a more beneficial rate. In the trash collection business density of customers is the key to profitability and a citywide bid dramatically improves customer density. So much so in fact, in every example we found the private hauler passed a significant savings back to the customers as part of the bid. As an example on a smaller scale, a Kent homeowner association reported saving 25% by pooling together to bid their neighborhood trash service last year.

Certainly there’s no guarantees of saving money until the bids are submitted but Aurora and Hiram recently converted from the trash haul free-for-all to a managed system and they saved their residents between 25% and 35% on their monthly bills.  At a time when every penny counts we felt an obligation to see what we could save on our resident’s behalf as well.

To make sure we were heading in the right direction we looked at cities that have a reputation for being great places to live in northeast Ohio to see how they managed trash. Of those, here’s a sampling of the cities that manage trash services in their communities: Aurora, Mentor, Hudson, Twinsburg, Shaker Heights, Euclid, and Medina. Plus, since we’re a large university city (which adds extra stress on trash issues) we looked at how the other university cities in Ohio managed trash. It turns out that all of the other state university cities, except Kent, took a direct role in managing the trash flow in their cities.

By moving forward with a franchise type of bid for each of the 4 quadrants of the City, we fully expect to see meaningful savings for trash customers in Kent.  Fewer trucks on our streets mean less wear and tear on streets and curbs, better safety, less noise and truck traffic in neighborhoods which also means less potential for property damage or accidents, and even less emissions that we breathe in at our homes which means a healthier and smaller carbon footprint for Kent.

On the negative side, some folks have expressed concerns over losing their right to choose their own trash hauler.  Under the citywide scenario people would indeed lose that choice. Obviously that’s a decision we’d have to make but it’s not unlike the decision we made to have one recycling provider or one water provider. Freedom of choice is a great thing but sometimes there are costs to be paid for choice and as a community we decided long ago that for some areas, like Police and Fire, we were willing to concede our right to choose to ensure a safer, better community.  Do we all want to hire our own police security, or handle the fire at our own house, probably not.

It appears that in general, most people agree with the concept of “public” services, where we pool our funds to have the best equipment and people we can afford for these services rather than have each person hire there own fireman and policeman. What we’re trying to figure out now is whether it makes sense to add trashman to that list as well.

At this point all City Council has authorized is the next phase of analysis for determining the feasibility of implementing a managed trash service in Kent. There are many logistical issues that Council would have to consider before taking a vote to actually make any change. However, because it is something new City Council thought it was important to have this information get out to the public.

We’ve added a link (see Managed Trash Service in the navigation column in the upper right) to keep as much information as we can on the topic available to the community:
http://www.kent360.com/?type=cc&id=3672&53L3c73d=3672

We’ll keep you posted of the progress of this new initiative.

No matter how good our fire response crews are (and they’re very good) they’re never better than fire prevention.  It’s simple really but our lives are full of complications so it’s easy to get distracted or get complacent and let some of the little stuff go.  I’ll fix that cord or replace that smoke alarm battery tomorrow.  Don’t let tomorrow be one day too late.  Here’s a reminder from the Kent Fire Chief why it’s so important to take a few extra minutes to check and make sure that your smoke alarm is working properly.  If it’s not, it’s likely the dead battery that you were going to replace weeks ago.

Dave,

Just wanted to let you know about a house fire we had this morning. While it wasn’t all that spectacular, nor did it create a whole lot of damage to the structure. In fact, if you drive by you may not even notice the boarded up windows on the third floor.

The important thing about this fire was that everything worked the way it was supposed to. There were four Kent State student living in the house. At about 5:50 this morning a occupant heard the smoke detector on the third floor going off ( no one was occupying that floor). She got up, located the fire and tried to put it out with an extinguisher. She had a problem with the extinguisher so she went and woke up the rest of her roommates. One of the other roommates was able to get the fire extinguisher to work and knocked down the fire while the fire department was being called.

Upon our arrival, all of the occupants were out of the house but the smoke had banked down to about a foot off of the floor on the third floor. The majority of the smoke was caused by a foam cushion from a couch which caused heavy black and toxic smoke. (foam rubber gives off cyanide gas when it burns).

The point of this is that if the smoke detectors where not in the house, or if the batteries had been removed like we find in a lot of houses, the outcome for this fire could have been a lot different. It is likely that the fire would have caused major damage to the structure and the loss of life could have been a real possibility.

This incident is a perfect example of the importance of smoke detectors and making sure that they are functioning all of the time. Instead of nobody really knowing about this incident because it was small, the end result is that we could have been on the front page of most newspapers if a student would have died as a result of the fire and no working smoke detectors.

I thought maybe you could share this story in your blog.

Chief Williams

It turns out that cheap, convenient transportation is much appreciated by students with tight budgets and crazy class schedules which is why Kent State University has been working so hard to expand the bike paths in and around campus.  Apparently all the trail building is working because I heard some of the University architects talking last week about how many requests they’ve had this semester to install new bike racks all around campus.  Needing more bike racks is a good problem to have.  Admittedly northeast Ohio weather would seem to limit year round biking for anyone other than the true adventurist but when I read an article in the NY Times about schools in New England and Wisconsin that we’re giving bikes to students for free I thought that maybe I over-estimated the weather impacts.  Heck, there’s not a lot of places that our weather is better than but I’ve got to believe we actually can say it with a straight face when compared to New England and Wisconsin.

NY Times, October 20, 2008
With Free Bikes, Challenging Car Culture on Campus
By Katie Zezima

I thought I’d offer a short update to a previous post announcing the planned closure of the Middlebury Road bridge (over the Cuyahoga River) beginning October 20th.  It turns out the County’s contractor has made some suggestions for the work that will require additional approvals which has required additional time which means Middlebury Road is actually still open and probably won’t be closed for construction until after Thanksgiving.  So if you’re a Chapel Hill Mall shopper (shop Kent first!) it looks like you’ll still be able to get there via Middlebury Road on the busiest shopping day of the year on the day after Thanksgiving. 

Here’s a copy of an email that I received from the Kent Engineering Division:

I spoke with Portage County this morning on the status of the construction of the proposed bridge over the Cuyahoga River. The county informed me that the contractor was submitted a modification to the original US Army Corp of Engineers permit to construct the bridge over the Cuyahoga River. The reason for the modification is that the contractor has proposed to work on a platform in the river to construct the foundations for the bridge piers. The original permit did not include constructing a temporary platform in the river.

At this time, the modification has been preliminarily reviewed by the USACOE. The USACOE requested additional details on the permit modification that the contractor is working on now.

Once the contractor receives the permit from the USACOE, the contractor will require an additional 2 weeks before demolition and the road closure can commence. During this 2 week period the contractor will be obtaining the required air quality permit to remove asbestos from the bridge during demolition.

I will keep you posted if I hear any additional information.

Halloween isn’t just a holiday in downtown Kent, it’s an event.  And like much of the best parts of Kent, the Halloween event isn’t a pre-packaged choreographed scripted city thing, it’s a grass roots bubbling up from the primordial soup kind of thing.  The City doesn’t plan it, promote it or run it — it just happens on its own.  The City does help clean up the mess afterwards and if things get a little too crowded on the sidewalks we will close down the streets in order to let the revelry spill over into the streets.  We hate to do that because the sidewalk parade of customes and characters actually brings lots of people downtown to check out the show from the safety of the interior of their mini-vans.  It’s a bit reminiscent of the Jurassic Park concept of riding your in your car to check out all the wild animals.  This year two Kent groups are trying to extend the Halloween festivity hours by offering more family fare early in the day and evening as a prelude to the main event.

Kent Parks and Recreation has a great tradition of hayrides and a mini-haunted house tour at Fred Fuller Park but this year they decided to go bigger and plan a wider range of interactive Halloween fun with families in mind.  Here’s their advertisment:

Then, once the Parks and Rec events wrap up, Main Street Kent is picking up where they left off with even more family fun right in downtown Kent.

And then of course right around 9 pm the early show begins and the ghouls begin to emerge from the shadows around the downtown entertainment establishments.  Generally speaking the show is fairly tame up until around 11 pm and that’s when things start to become much more adult oriented.

So this year you’ve got no excuses not to have a full day of Halloween fun in Kent no matter what age you are.  Happy haunting!

The Day of the Dead sounds like the subtitle to the next Saw movie but this international holiday has a long (albeit a bit macabre) history that is being celebrated for the sixth straight year in downtown Kent compliments of another great art exhibition at Standing Rock Gallery starting October 25th at 8 pm and running thru November 29th.  Paris does high fashion, New York never sleeps, and Kent knows how to throw a Halloween party and what better way to get things kicked off than Day of the Dead artwork.  Tim Burton eat your heart out (well, not literally). 

Standing Rock Gallery in downtown Kent has always got something interesting brewing and at the risk of sounding morbid, nobody north of Mexican border does Day of the Dead like they do.

Here’s the information from the show director:       

Come celebrate our sixth annual Day of the Dead show. This festive Mexican Holiday honors all those who have passed before us. But let us not be somber. There will be music, food, drinks, paintings and sculpture. Like the celebration of a birthday, this holiday reconfirms annually the love, goodwill, and generosity that the beloved can count on, no matter that they are dead.

From Wikipedia…

DÍa de los Muertos is a holiday celebrated in many parts of the world, typically on November 1 (All Saints’ Day) and November 2 (All Souls’ Day).  The Day of the Dead is also celebrated to a lesser extent in other Latin American countries; for example, it is a public holiday in Brazil, where many Brazilians celebrate it by visiting cemeteries and churches. The holiday is also observed in the Philippines. Observance of the holiday has spread to Mexican-American communities in the United States, where in some locations, the traditions are being extended. Similarly-themed celebrations also appear in some Asian and African culture.

Though the subject matter may be considered morbid from the perspective of some other cultures, celebrants typically approach the Day of the Dead joyfully, and though it occurs at the same time as Halloween, All Saints’ Day and All Souls Day, the traditional mood is much brighter with emphasis on celebrating and honoring the lives of the deceased, and celebrating the continuation of life; the belief is not that death is the end, but rather the beginning of a new stage in life.

About the Artists in the Show 

Ursula Rauh
About me:
I am ridiculous in so many ways. But I love people and human potential, I revere life and all its details, and I think ridiculous is fun.

Artist Statement:
Drawing faces, everywhere I went, this was becoming an obsession. I had a sketchbook and pencil at all times, capturing the likeness of whomever I was struck by. I have drawn thousands of faces spanning many years and countries, in love with each subject’s individual beauty. It was this that got me to paint. I needed to add color and texture to match the personalities of my passions. I would come up with a concept, a way to tell something about the human experience, and I would find the right faces to fit the idea. The ideas started to take over, transcending faces or style. Biological equations and organic perfection, metaphysical discoveries, exploration into the meaning of life, the manifestation of love and beauty, these became my obsession.

Which, of course, brought me right back to that which to me embodies all of those things: the human soul, shining out from the faces that house it. I paint because I can’t not. I am driven by the urgency to transmit an important idea, to praise something so beautiful it takes my breath away, to feel the smooth, colorful flow of creativity moving through me.

I see the potential for peace and therefore wish to depict a pathway to its awakening within each of us, hoping to remind us that we are connected, free, beautiful, one. I see the world in frames of aesthetic perfection, when the tree branches infiltrate the sunset sky in such a way, I have no choice but to let my brush imitate the delicate lines upon the horizon. I have been known to paint a lot of naked women. To me, every woman I paint is Gaia, the goddess of creation. Perhaps the most important thing we as humans can do for peace is to embrace and exalt the feminine energy within all of us, bringing us back into balance. When I do “performance painting” and paint with live music, I tap in to the creative stream and intend to send it out visually and energetically, raising the vibration of the room and exemplifying intuitive freedom through my own experience.

Trey Berry
Trey, an immigrant from Boulder, Colorado, currently lives in Akron, Ohio. He recognized at an early age that his passion for life was the creation of beautiful objects. He studied fine art and design at Memphis State University and most recently studied with Martina Hoffman and Robert Venosa where he was introduced to the Mische technique of the old masters. He has been exhibited nationally and his work is in private collections throughout the United States and Canada.   

Painting to Trey Berry is creating out of his inner world. In his work a connection with a higher consciousness is expressed. Nothing exists that does not touch the other. The more we become aware of our inner world, the more our relationship changes with our outer world or reality. The understanding of the subconscious and discovering the meaning of super conscious symbols that speak to all of humanity is the objective of his work. His paintings imagine mystic and symbolic worlds that express wonder not fear of the unknown.

Vince Packard 
When I was born my dad Raymond was teaching art deep in the Appalachian eastern Kentucky county of Pike, my mom, Ellen, being a beautiful ballet dancer refugee from Berlin Germany. Riddle: The year I was born is exactly the same upside down. The whole year. As in 1001, 1691, it doesn’t happen again until the year 6009. I grew up pretty much in Akron Ohio playing in my dad’s west exchange street art gallery. That could be really fun with shows by Peter Max and Mark Mothersbough, and the big blow-up soft sculpture car that all the kid’s came around to jump on. But often the art could be really boring and I came to trust my child’s eye that I never wanted to go the boring, elitist, academic route.

A couple years in Venice beach California with my brothers Raynard and Damon and dad, and then hitching around the country wound me up at a Native American demonstration in Washington called the Longest Walk. With the Native culture I refined a perspective on the environment and the tribal challenge to our destructive culture.

Teenage angst and rebellion led me into the punk music/art scene just in time for the Reagan era. The idea that Americans elected that idiot for a president pushed me into punk and alternative ideas as far as I could go.

I did a stint in Michigan growing veggies and milking goats at the farm outside of Lansing. I liked that direction and before long me and Liz found ourselves in the backwoods of Lincoln County, West Virginia, building a solar powered cabin and riding horses every day. The outhouse hippy redneck scene was fulfilling and my art geared more towards environmental activism and wildlife and my son Corey was born in 1986. Tthe end of the decade me and Liz split and I headed over the Ohio River to Athens Ohio.

Dave Nicholi Araca helped me explore the tattooing scene which I had dabbled in since I was 14. This got me traveling to tattoo conventions near and far selling my design sheets in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New Orleans and everywhere in between. Sadly, Dave died unexpectedly, leaving me to fake my way into tattoo shops. The 90′s saw me work in shops in Kalamazoo Michigan, Lexington and Richmond Kentucky, Athens Georgia and Pigeon Forge Tennessee. I spent 3 fun years tattooing in San Marcos Texas at Touch of a Feather and 3 more in the hoppin’ neighborhood of Little 5 points in Atlanta at Urban Tribe Tattoos.

Tattooing was great but I wanted to take some time off to explore other mediums. It’s been a tricky transition, when I was close to destitution I had some horrible experiences in some crappy tattoo shops that burned me bad. This new millennium has me back up to Kent Ohio doing wonderful fun projects with Jexo at Standing Rock Cultural Arts. My work with the kid’s plays, my art shows, mask workshops and puppets at the North Water Street Gallery and the friends, family and community have kept life good.  

It’s always big news in the sports world when your favorite team re-signs its star player and frankly that’s sort of how I felt earlier this month when the City Council extended our agreement with Main Street Kent for another 2 years.  Certainly there are pro’s and con’s to loaning an employee off of City staff to serve as the Executive Director of Main Street, and I’ll be the first to say that it’s been a sacrifice to loan Mary Gilbert to Main Street, but if you step back and look at the before and after in our downtown it’s hard to argue that the sacrifice hasn’t been worth it.  Councilman Wayne Wilson probably summed it up the best when he said he was not originally a fan of the loan arrangement but seeing the results today he said he’d sign up 100 more Main Streets if he could. And so would I. 

At a time when we’ve really got to pick our investments carefully, Main Street stood out in the crowd with what will end up being a whopping $27 return for every dollar spent at the conculsion of the Phoenix Project downtown next summer.  But let’s not be greedy, we’re already getting close to $4 for every dollar spent and anytime I have a chance to legally quadruple my money I’m going be a big fan. 

Here’s a look at some of the highlights from the powerpoint presentation that Main Street gave Council last week. 

You can also download the full presentation here:   Main Street Powerpoint Presentation

Main Street has proven to be a great catalyst for downtown Kent and I’ve continued to argue that investing in Main Street has been one of the best economic decisions we’ve made.  Is everything about Main Street perfect? Has everything worked out as planned?  Of course not, but I’ve never seen a group of people come together and work so hard for the common purpose of our downtown, and at the end of the day, they’ve delivered results not just promises. 

Here’s hoping for another 2 great years!