Don Driehaus for City Council

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Don Dreehouse, who's running as a charter candidate for CINCINNTI
City Council. Don, welcome to the Morning Show. It's great
to have you on today, Brian.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Thanks for having me and I appreciate the opportunity.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
I like your message. I've just some of my listeners
know if they want to check out your website, Don Dreehouse,
do you r I E H A U S for
Cincinnati dot org. You're running on a well, keep it simple,
back to the basis kind of campaign. We can't. We
should fix what's both broken and build some trust and
uh and bring about some real results for residents. I

(00:31):
appreciate all that. Do you feel as though the sin City,
this city has bitten off more than it should be
chewing on in terms of what it thinks that it
can accomplish and what it's trying to do.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Don, Yes, And in fact, I think we, the city
government itself, needs to get refocused, just like you know
we're saying we think that you know, paving the streets
has become a big issue here, and in cleaning up
the litter and dealing with public safety. Those are three
key issues and they need to be focused on on first.

(01:00):
And I think the word first is where I was
in College Hill the other night and somebody said, you know,
we're talking about this and that, but they said, you know,
first is what the city needs to do. It needs
to do the basic first. Then you can kind of
expand your presence. But there's all kind of opportunities to
deal with deeper issues. But right now the city seems
to be lost and heading in multiple directions. We need

(01:23):
to get refocused on our core, you know, the core
issues with the city and what the city should be
bringing to the table.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Well, every time there's a ribbon cutting ceremony where I
have to have Purvall shows up, I just look at
it like it's a new skate park or it's a
new fill in the blank that the taxpayers paid for.
My immediate reaction, I think is along the lines of
the way you're thinking, Wait a second, these roads behind
me haven't been paved or touched for years. The city
looks terrible. There's garbage everywhere, or lots of places that

(01:52):
whole broken windows philosophy is being ignored. We let the
neighborhood deteriorate, crime increases, but look, we got a new
skate park. That we have to take and maintain on
a going forward basis. They've forgotten the maintenance and up
keep component of seemingly everything that they've already took, they've
already built, Don.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
I couldn't agree with you more. I live in Praise Hill.
I've been actively engaged with the Prey Seal Safety Committy
Action Team for sixteen years. And when we pick up trash,
we get out with kids and we work on the
weekends and we do the work. And yet we're constantly
cleaning the same sites that were good intentions. For example,
there's a top lot upon Warsaw which is a great

(02:33):
little spot and you know, twenty years ago was out
there with great fanfare and now it's just turned into
a unfortunately haven for you know, in essence, people that
are addicted to drugs and you know, low level crime,
and it's not real well maintained, and we maintain it.
So it's you know, when you got volunteers in the

(02:54):
street who end up taking care of good intentions, that's
a lot of pressure and burden on a community.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Well, I have to give you props for caring, Don,
And I suppose if there were residents within each of
the neglected communities that actually stepped up to the plate
and demonstrated their care and concern for their own communities,
maybe the city would look a lot better than it
currently does. But not an approval to your perceptions about
city council. And it's just ignoring these growing problems. I mean,

(03:22):
who among us can say the roads in the City
of Cincinnati are well maintained or taken care of even remotely.
I got to say, actually ask this out loud on
the heels of my conversation earlier in the program about
nuclear power being the answer to all of our energy
demand needs have to have Parvoll I believe was quoted
as saying something along the lines of he views everything
that lands on his desk as mayor of the City
of Cincinnati initially through the green lens. In other words,

(03:45):
as if the City of Cincinnati could take some sort
of decarbonization efforts and apply it to whatever project is
being done and have some impact globally on climate. I, personally,
you don't need to agree with me, Dondree House. I
personally find that to be almost comical, if not actually comical,
given the insignificant amount of carbon we might put out
in the city relative to entire countries whose carbon negation

(04:09):
efforts have been blown away by China's output of carbon.
We cannot we cannot do a thing about it. Why
are we even trying? Don your reaction, you know.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
I again, it seems a little inflated to be worrying
about global warming in global issues if we're not even
paving our streets. And as far as I'm concerned, you know,
it's it's a noble thought.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
But.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
I kind of listen to people talking about, you know,
growing gardens in the city and doing all these nice things.
I'm more concerned about keeping the Krogner open in Price Hell.
All right, that's what's important. We need to keep our
businesses open, and that involves public safety and cleanliness and
an essence curb appeal in all of our neighborhoods. If

(04:58):
our businesses are struggling, if we're having if we're struggling
with low level criminal activity, if we're struggling with base again,
the basic services that the city should be providing, then
guess what these global thoughts that are way out there,
they don't make any sense because they're not real. It's
it's kind of like Maslov's you know, pyramid of needs.

(05:21):
If you can't if you can't pave the streets, and
you can't do the basics first, I don't care about
the philosophy at the top. If the reality at the
bottom is bad, that's not the way it should work.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Amen, brother, Can I get a campaign pledge from your
dondry House that you'll you'll see that Sunset gets paved.
I'm not sure. Since you're a west Side you may
experience the war torn reality of that road on a
more regular basis than I do. But it's become a
poster child for me in dealing with neglect. That road's
been in that shape for years and years.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Now, we plant the planners, we go down there and
work on Sunset. I'm very familiar, and I I have
to say something. I was the other evening, I was
out in Kennedy Heights and I was lost in Kennedy Heights.
It was dark, and so I'm going down Kennedy Avenue
to their community meeting, and even Kennedy Avenue is just

(06:15):
it looks like a bobshell. I mean, you're rattling along,
You're it's all over the place. And I walked in
and I was building one there you know, running for council.
And we talked for a minute with the group and
all I had to do was say, Kennedy even is
a mess and they were nodding their head going yeah,
sure is. And it's like okay, so all the things
we can talk about, but we can't get Kennedy Avenue

(06:38):
paid in Kennedy Heights, just like Sunset on the west
side those and that's that can be across the city.
I mean, you see that example across the city and
that's the first one of the first items that need
to be addressed. Well.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Being a long time resident of the Price Hill area,
I guess you've noticed the neighborhood has changed quite a
bit over the past maybe ten in fifteen years. What
are the residents in Price Will say about the nature
of the changes there and are they happy with the
leadership that we've had, which has been under Democrat control
I believe for the last forty years.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Well, you know the old line, there's not a political
way to pick up the gardage. I think the problem
in Price Hill, and I've been active on the Tunity
councilor and the Safety group for years, we just feel neglected.
I mean, it's you know, the West Side just kind
of feels like we've taken on the brunt of a
lot of social issues and a lot of issues over

(07:33):
the last twenty years, and I've been actively engaged with it.
So there's a real feeling of ambivalence that City Hall
has not been paying attention, and when they do pay attention,
they don't really give us any real answers. I mean,
you know, I look at it as if hey, guys,
you know, like you said, recent example, right here, we

(07:55):
have all these issues going on up here in the
streets and their idea of pandering at this point in
time is to dumple out of money into Dunham. Now
Dunham's great, don't get me wrong. It's a wonderful complex.
We meet down there, but it's down at the bottom
of Sunset. It's it's not a walking distance of anywhere
in the neighborhood. But if you start walking west a

(08:15):
street going away, you start walking Harrison Avenue, all of
a sudden you're going, wait a minute, why do we
need all that We went a pop shot down at
Dunham when we should be dealing with the in essence
to yourpoint for broken windows, they're all over the neighborhood
which you see every day.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
That's a good point about the walking nature of Dunham.
I'm very familiar with that, and yeah, there isn't an
easy way to get there in terms of walking.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, I run, and they've talked about putting a pathway
through the cemetery to get the Dunham. I'm looking at
that going is that really a priority? I mean, it's
it's interesting, but it's you know, and I run. I'll
run down there, and I'm like, but I don't know
how many other people are going to run from the
top of the hill to the bottom of hill. I mean,
only crazy old people like me do that. And I'm like,

(09:04):
you know, I just don't know if that's really something
that's important or at this point.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Well, see, you're you're talking logical and reasonable along the
lines that I've always said. Everybody has a list of
things they want from government, everybody, and it's always different.
But some responsible person has to be the adult in
the room to prioritize the most important things. And I'm
with you all day long. Roads infrastructure should be a

(09:31):
top priority. The skateboard park can wait. When we get
the roads fixed, then we'll start talking about that. But
we've got to do what the work. You've got to
do the work that needs to be done to make
people satisfied so they can live, drive, thrive, and and
and and better their communities in other ways. I'm going
to stop and bring it back. It's Dondree House for
Cincinnati dot orgs his website. I'm going to go but
a little bit of his background because some really great

(09:53):
background in terms of skill sets that I think are.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Talk stations.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Seven fifty five Cares City talk station. Happy Tuesday, Election,
Tuesday's next Tuesday. You have a choice. I don't have
to run on the same path. The definition of stupidity
is doing the same thing over and over again expecting
a different result. And if you're not happy with the
way the city is currently run, and Dondree House seems
to be a man who is not happy where the
city has run, maybe go a different path. Dondry House

(10:20):
for Cincinnati dot orgers where you'll find his campaign website.
Don you have a background I think is really beneficial
to the City of Cincinnati if you're elected. A financial background.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yes, I worked thirty years in the financial industry. I
started out with Gradison, which was when the original brokerage
burns in Cincinnati. Oh yeah, yeah, I started there in
nineteen ninety. I literally, I have to say, prior to that,
I kind of ran a bloomin saloon, So you know

(10:52):
that was back in the day, and you're old enough
to remember the two at Hyde Park and over on
the West Side. Yeah, I started. So I have a
long and very career starting at the age of twelve,
and I had you know, worked on the river everything else.
But yes, when I was steady, I went to work
with Gradison and pretty much spent the next twenty nine

(11:13):
thirty years working in finance. And it was a, you know,
a very profitable career and also you learn a lot.
You're constantly learning. You constantly have to stay up on
the trends of what's going on, you know, in the
world economy, in the market. And by the time I
was finished, I was doing institutional investing for Cincinnati Financial
and I managed to I don't know, I mean it's

(11:34):
a number of about a four or five billion dollars
on portfolio. We had sixteen billion dollar portfolio at the time.
I was handling a lot of corporate space and if
you're looking at interest rates, today you're looking at corporate
spreads or what's going on in the economy, a good
way to gauge, you know, a much bigger number of
what's happening, you know, in the economy. But it's been

(11:55):
a couple of years since I used to track brads
and I used to work in the you were talking
about energy, was in the energy sector, so we used
to follow call and gas and nuclear and you saw
the rags and the like where it would impact the
credit rating or the credit and you also had to
be very careful about, you know, how you were investing,

(12:15):
because there would be situations where, for example, there was
there was a utility out of Illinois that in essence,
came in and broke up their holding company and left
the bondholders with the debt and they split off equity
to the investors, and we were stuck with a bad investment.
At that point. They were shuttering coal plants and you know,

(12:38):
and they used they used a parliamentary trick or a
legal trick to stick it to the bondholders. So you know,
you're familiar with some of these, You know, I am
kind of familiar with how things work behind the scenes
when it comes to the rags and you just have
to keep an eye on it. That's all there is.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Andreas, we bought a comedy. I needed a word or
two on the situation crime, ignoring the issues regarding the
police chief and where that takes us. What is your
perception of crime in the city of Sinceinnay and what
would Councilman Dundry House to do about it? If anything?

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well, first off, let's talk about the chief. I think
she's a scapegoat at this point. I think, you know,
running the chief up the flagpole is a bad look
and it's bad. You know, the policies that were laid
out there about three or four years ago was more
of a hands off approach to what's going on at
the street level, and I don't think that works. We
need to do the basics, you know. Again, they need

(13:33):
to write traffic tickets, we need to deal with litter,
we need we need to deal with, you know, the
day to day issues. Now, the problem we have with Booth,
the Cincinnati Police Force and the Fire Department are the
calls for service are out of control, okay, and right now,
as we know, the police compliment is down about twenty
percent and it's going to take three to four years

(13:54):
to rebuild the ranks if they do it, because you
have retirements that are going to supersede or exceed, you know,
the ability to train new officers. But I'm going to
go back to the fireside of this. I went up
to Station twenty four here in Price Hill and spoke
with the gang affair, and over fifty day period they

(14:16):
had one hundred and seventy eight calls for service for
manned down slash overdoses. Okay, that's one firehouse fifty days.
Every one of those calls for service costs approximately eighteen
hundred dollars a pop. So I'm going do the math there.
Take it across the city and you have a huge
amount of money we're spending on calls for service. With

(14:38):
fire and police compliments going out every time, you're draining
the ability for the responders to do their job, and
it's breaking morale. And what you need to do is say, hey,
I do believe in place based type focus. We have AI,
we have technology, we have heat maps, so you can

(14:58):
go in and say, okay, we've got four sits right here,
one around me, right around the corner on Greenwell, active
drug dealing for problems for months, if not years. We
know who it is, we know the property is a problem.
We've had a landlord on the grill that nobody seems
to be able to get the results we want. And

(15:19):
I'm saying, who's the landlord there? You are paying into
this Property's who's dealing with it, and let's charge them.
Forget the criminal side of this. Yeah, we should be
charging owners and providers that are free riding on city services.
That's my take on it. It's like once you start
putting a search charge on calls for service for people
that are abusing the system, they'll start cleaning up the

(15:42):
problems on their own.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Don Dreehouse for Cincinnati dot orgs where you find Don's
campaign web page. Got one week to make your decisions.
I strongly encourage my listeners to take a look what
Don is saying on his website, but also what he
had to say here on the fifty five KRC Morning Show.
Don sounds good to me, my friend. I wish you
all the best, and if you are elected, I pray
that you help can help steer the Cincinnati, a city
of Cincinnati that we all love, in a better direction.

(16:06):
Best luck as we fit quickly move forward to next Tuesday,
my friend, good to have you on the show today,
Don