Sorry Leslie Ghiz, but you are mistaken...

From the Channel 5 website tonight: "Money for a proposed streetcar initiative would appear to remain immune to cuts, because those funds come from the city's capital budget, rather than its operating budgets.

Officials who support the measure have promoted the streetcars as a job generator that will help drive economic growth, but opponents have urged them to reconsider.

"In light of a $40 million dollar deficit, the streetcar has got to go on the back burner," City Councilwoman Leslie Ghiz. "This is not, it's not a priority."

Why do you think our city's operating budget is suffering so much? Well, I suspect it has something to do with the fact that we can't retain college graduates, we can't attract new businesses, we can't create new jobs, and most importantly we can't get tax paying residents to live in the city.
All of these problems would be greatly improved if we invested in rail transit. Our city would become a desirable place to live again and the city would be able to generate enough tax revenue to operate. Crime would decrease. We would be able to afford to fund our jails and police operations. The benefits go on and on!

Leslie Ghiz, the Streetcars ARE A PRIORITY!

What makes you think that putting this progressive project on the back burning and going about business the same as usual is going to help us succeed in the future? Obviously our current way of doing things isn't working or we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with! We need to do something new, something that's proven to work.
As mentioned in the article above, the funding for the streetcar is not affected by the current operating budget deficit. Its in a different budget all together. Not building the streetcar would do nothing to help our current operating deficit and would do everything at destroying our chances of fixing the operating deficit in the future.

We need to invest in rail transit in Cincinnati and we need to do it immediately!