Brian with Todd Zinser 5/16/2025

It's seven oh five here at fifty five k CUD talk station. Love when guests are in studio, and I love talking to todds Zenser, even though the content roo've always revealed shenanigans, most notably in the city of Cincinnati. He is the citizen Watchdog and the citizen of the

One of the witnesses that I don't know if it was at the council meeting or at the planning commission said imagine if you've ever ever been to the Arc.

Exhibit yeah in Kentucky.

Yeah, she said, imagine that arc sitting on Hyde Park Square. That's what she described it as.

Oh wow, that is a really great way of describing it, because that thing is just monstrous.

Yeah. So that's what they're that's what they're looking at. And this is this is a true petition drive. This isn't just for you know, for show. They're actually out there gathering signatures on petitions.

Yeah, and from my conversation with you off air before we started this morning, they're aread you've already got thousands of signatures on this petition.

Yeah, they're making progress great.

And my understanding is you've got to have a minimum of ten thousand, but you want to get a lot more than that, because some of the signatures get thrown out, like someone else that lives outside of the city signs it, and that that won't count exactly. All right, So you've been around town doing signature gathering and I understand you've got some some events coming up in locations where the the petition can be signed.

Yes, the next one is tomorrow afternoon in pleasant Ridge from two to five pm at the Nine Giant Brewery on Montgomery Road.

Nine Giant Brewery, sixty ninety five Montgomery Road between two and five pm. Stop on end. You don't have to have a beer, but why wouldn't you and sign the petition. And now there are people walking around downtown and hanging out and dives and places like that to get these signatures.

Yeah, the Hyde Park citizens have mobilized in a big way. Good and yeah, they're all over the place.

Well, and there's an incentive for people who don't aren't impacted by the Hyde Park development. It's just because again the right to control your own neighborhood, your own your own community. They're all different. I mean, there's a lot of different communities in the city since say the Bondhill was the victim of this kind of thing, and so Bondhill residents because they got burned by Cincinni council trumping what they wanted, well, get out there and sign the petition.

Absolutely, and it's not going to stop. There's a new initiative now that the city is coming up with where they want to rezone our hillsides so that they can

They start from that foregone conclusion that this will happen. So here's give me your input exactly.

And it's very important that people pay attention. This is another sneak attack, just like connected communities, and we really need to pay attention to what's going on here. We're gonna we're gonna lose our hillsides to developers next.

Okay, well, what does it mean to develop the hillsides anyway? What are their proposals for it?

They'll put housing or they'll put you know.

These connected communities for focused like small multi unit buildings and things.

That's the thing. They haven't really shown their cars yet. They're out there asking the public about it, but they haven't really shown their card yet. But the hillsides, from what I understand, make up like twenty percent of the land in the city, So they want to go after that and open it up to development.

So are they going to bring back inclines then, because they don't want us drive in cars.

I would love to see the price ill inclient come back, but that's not going to happen.

Just for nostalgia proprix exactly like San Francisco's street car is not exactly the best mode of community a mode of transportation, but it's cute to see but it's.

The folks in Hyde Park Square are out there. You know, they're they're doing work for all of us on this petition drive.

I agree, And let's face it, every single neighborhood in the city since then. He was a victim of this when they foisted connected communities without everybody, without hearing from people.

That's right.

So it's been done to everyone, and then they go and give a waiver for these well connected developers A phrase I got for you from you in Hyde Park to waive connected communities concept in Hyde Park Square.

Yeah, it's funny. We were when we were collecting signatures last night. Somebody actually came in and said, oh, these well connected developers.

Oh that's great, that's great listening to Todd Zenzer And you know, it's the truth. I mean what I mean. It just it reveals so much about where the loyalty of the elected officials, the council members and the and the mayor are. It's not their constituents.

It doesn't seem to be Brian, that's for sure.

Well, elections can have consequences, and we are going to get an opportunity. Well, citizens of Cincinnati are going to get an opportunity to maybe vote for different people in November. Yes, how optimistic are you that that's going to happen?

Well, one good sign is that, from what I understand, the Democrats were supposed to come out with their slate their slate card by now, and they've pushed them back totally. So they maybe having some difficulty trying to figure out who they should run for council. I mean, the mayor of course is set, but the Blue ticket or the Democrats isn't settled.

Yet, So perhaps some infighting, maybe even over zoning issues inside the Democrat party.

I'm not sure. You know, they have one vacancy that they have to fill. There's one incumbent that's not Victoria Parks is not running again, so there's one empty slot, so there's probably disagreements about who should fill that slot. And then I think there may be some incumbent council members who aren't aren't a sure thing for the ticket.

Really, yeah, is anybody out loud running against like, for example, either connected communities or what was done to Hyde Park as a Democrat? Like here, I am a Democrat. I want to run for since a city council and I object completely to what they did to the residents of High Park.

Oh yeah, there are definitely Democrats who are concerned about what went on. And I think what you're going to see is the Charter Committee is working on coming up with a slate I would hope. So, I mean, and those that slate is not going to be one party or another. It's going to be it's going to be a combination of independence or Republicans, some Democrats.

Well isn't that kind of what the Charter Committee is all about.

Yes, that's exactly right.

It's common sense government, correct.

So we'll see what happens there. I mean, I think there's going to be some competition.

Well, I'd like to see that, and I'd like to see some you know, some reporting on it, you know, people talking about the issues, raising awareness that there is a choice that you have, that it may be represent you better as a resident of the City of Cincinnati. I mean, it's going to take all of that. A well oiled campaign.

Yeah, you're going to see You're going to see social media. There's going to be the Charter Committee is refreshing their website. I do believe they're very serious about challenging the incumbents here.

Good good, Well, you've got the fifty five CASEE Morning Show to spread the word about those alternatives, because there's got to be a change, and you have a multitude of reasons why other than just this one issue, the zoning issue of why there needs to be a change. And we're going to continue with Todd Zenzer and talk about some of that. Remember it's Citizen Watchdog is his podcast. Make sure you find that to stay up on what's going on the City of Cincinnati seven to fifteen. Right

Well, what I did, I'm I'm trying to keep track or come up with these deficits that the city has. They have a deficit on their pension liability of oh, eight hundred plus million dollars. They've got to close that gap in twenty years, which would take about forty million dollars a year. And then we have the infamous four hundred million dollars in deferred infrastructure maintenance. Right by the way, I've never seen a list that totals four hundred million.

But why would they want to admit to something that makes them look even more incompetent by inflating that figure. If they had hanging it's only two hundred and fifty million, we can manage that, we'll catch up eventually. But by saying it's four hundred or five hundred million dollars, they've acknowledged that they have ignored a problem in road maintenance for even worse than what we perceive it to be.

Yeah, well, they did that so that people would vote to sell the railway.

Oh Lord, is that the reason?

Yes, exactly. And then I was then when this snow, this winter storm Blair came up and we had twenty of our snowplows out of commission or broken down, it indicated the problem with this fleet maintenance.

So much like ignoring the pension, much like ignoring the roads, this is ignoring the fleet right over time.

That's right. So I found this report from the internal audit manager in the city. So I looked into that operation I don't know, a few months ago and had some observations. I was somewhat critical. But they issued a report and it stands out among their reports because it's almost twenty pages long and it's got twelve Fine. You look at their other reports and they're all like six seven pages long, and they got a couple of observations, but this was a fairly hard hitting report and it

So almost half of all of the vehicles they have are out. What does out of life cycle mean? Specifically?

Right. So in their fleet management, they keep track of how old the vehicle is, how many miles it has, what it's a maintenance record looks like, and they have a software that helps them manage the fleet, and they come up with this indicator of out of life cycle. And this audit report found that six hundred and eighty almost seven hundred of their vehicles are out of life cycle and they had three big categories. But the total cost to replace all those is eighty two million dollars.

Dollars billion with a B.

Yes, And you don't see any activity in council to address this.

Well, do you think the council members are even aware of this?

Well, I think they are generally aware of it.

Yeah, generally, But I'm talking about Todd Zenzer level awareness, where you have the actual dollars. You look at the reports that exist, this report that you're referring to that allowed you to crunch the numbers that identified all these different problems. It came out over a year ago, right.

Yeah, came out in January of twenty four. And if the council and the city manager and the mayor read the report, I don't see how they couldn't have come up with some kind of action to to to fix it. Because here's here's what's funny, because.

They're too busy chiefs in their green new deal tail exactly.

But here's the thing. If they truly believed what they were saying about climate change and the fact that all these that that all these storms and and weather issues and and and and all of that is caused by greenhouse gases, you'd think they would have looked at this report and said, oh my god, we're going to have all this bad weather coming. We better, we better make sure we're prepared.

They don't.

They can't possibly believe all this. They don't Green Cincinnati Plan and all the disasters that are going to happen because they're not they're not uh uh managing for it.

Well, we'll talk more about this since a green plan coming up. But the whole notion that the City of cincinnat within these geographic limitations that it has can have some sort of, you know, plausible impact on the global climate. Is just a joke that anyone thinks that that is. It's just it's nonsense, and it's obviously there's something else behind the curtain of these green energy projects, and gee,

When he was interviewed about their twenty twenty three green Cincinnati plan. The mayor said that any everything that comes across his desk he views through two lenses, equity and climate. And I don't even know what that means, to be honest, I don't either, but he's very committed and.

Ought to be committed.

The Green Cincinnati Plan is very very extreme. I mean it is. They put so much effort and planning into that thing. I've asked for any records that will show what the cost of the Green City Plan is in terms of what a cost to put it together, and I asked for the same information on connected communities. I haven't gotten anything back yet. Of course you have it, but it is the Green Cincinnati Plan is just very very extreme.

You know, for example, Phell, let's talk about the example.

Five different types of equity are outlined in the plan.

How does equity save the planet.

Brian, I don't know about all that stuff.

Money goes out the door to fund what non government organizations are putting together studies and doing focus groups and that kind of thing.

Yeah, I've I've been looking at the nonprofits and external organizations that the city gives money to, and my count is up to two hundred and fourteen, So.

Two hundred and fourteen hands in the cookie jar.

Yes.

Meanwhile, we got over a billion dollars in outstanding debt and maintenance and upgrade needs.

Yeah. And what seventy one organizations are given money under the Green Cincinnati Plan.

And do we have any idea what they're doing?

Well, and we know what they got the money for generally, but were there's no report back on what they actually do with the money.

Well, see, that's there's something like that. USAID revealed when DOGE took a look at that, they found that money went out the door, but they never followed up like for example, you know, studying I don't know, transgender mice

Yeah. So they have a number of grant programs that they operate. There's there's fourteen competitive grant programs that the city operates with either federal money, state money, Cincinnati money. But on the there's a category called leverage support in addition to the Green Cincinnati Plan, in addition to the Act for Sense program. In addition to that's the other one,

Boiled down to its most basic points, what do the audit reveal about that one organization? It was recipient of the taxpayer dollars.

So this is it was kind of surprising because this is the region Economic Development Initiative, and so this is an initiative with other local governments and the let me see if I can find the results here real.

Quickly, Well, why are you doing that? We can talk, We can have further about this because we can't put this subject matter to rest and because we're coming up on a break here. But I must observe that you know, some entity out there is getting a quarter of a million dollars. We don't know exactly what they're doing or what they're accomplishing, but those entities employ people. A salary must be paid because this isn't all volunteer work going

Yeah, well, there are some of these groups that they have they have millions of dollars in assets that are getting these big nonprofits and they're getting two hundred, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from the city. One of them, the CEO, is making over four hundred thousand.

Dollars bactly what I'm talking about right there.

And it's like, why do you need r two hundred thousand dollars if they're able to pay your CEO over four hundred thousand dollars.

Well maybe because that's some of that money's going to come back to fund campaigns to get city council members and the mayor re elected. Seven thirty five fifty five kr CD talk station seven forty one if you five KRCD talk station talking with Todd Zenzer says in Watchdog,

Well, one of the groups that are getting a lot of money from the city is called the Regional Economic Development Initiative and that's a group of local governments and the internal audit manager just tissued a report in April end of April this year, so a few weeks ago, and their audit and again I've been critical of them in the past, but again this audit identified had four findings. Number one and the way they the way they were these findings, it's way too gentle, you know, they try

Improvement, need improvement.

Yes, and they identified, for example, fourteen thousand dollars spent by that group with no supporting documents, so it's.

You can't audit it.

Well, that's that's another finding. Oh. Another finding is a third party is unable to verify the terms of the contract. So what that's saying is that somebody coming in from the outside to try that tries to figure out whether you're complying with the contract. They're not able to do that because of the way that the organization is maintaining their records. Another one is payroll journals contain insufficient information

And this is just one. This is just one.

This is one that's been around a long time. There's been getting money from the city for a long time. This isn't one of these small, you know, little nonprofits. This is a well established organization. It's very, very shocking to me.

It is I'd like to say unbelievable. No, but it's totally believable under the current administration and how it's been operating now for the past several decades. This eight hundred and fifty million dollar hole, this billion plus dollar hole we just went through and you talked about earlier, didn't happen overnight, that's right. How many years the Democrats been in control of the City of Cincinnati A long time? Uh huh, long time. This happened on their watch.

And this council and this mayor are engaging in the same kind of conduct that led to these deficits. They're they're not paying attention to how much money they're spending on other things other than these deficits.

And maybe we can bring back up the railroad sale, because you mentioned how they use these numbers to parlay us into believing the sale of the railroad is going to help see if it actually did help the situation

Right, there's all kinds. There's various lists of these organizations in different categories. The main one that I got interested in was the leverage support category. And back in twenty fifteen in the budget in twenty fifteen, I could only find a half a dozen out external organizations are not profits that shared about five million dollars. So fast forward to twenty twenty five, we've got over two hundred sharing twenty five million dollars. And it's just grown and grown.

Yeah, well they're out there putting banners up and getting petitions signed and campaigning on behalf of the officials.

Well yes, but in addition to that, you've got to look at the oversight of these organizations. And that's not going on either.

Who decides what organizations get money? How is any individual or because I'm going to put my name on that list? Yeah, well, for to sign.

Up for Leverage support, there's an annual application process. Surprise, not surprisingly, the same organizations seem to get funded every year. Yeah, I'm sure, but there's an application process that the city manager's office reviews and recommends the organizations that receive money

Really, Yes, I hadn't noticed to. And so if Purvol, this Parvol can add one of these an additional group, that means that that person, that group that empty has not gone through the city manager review process. You spoke of, Well, not whether we can take any comfort in that process by itself, but if you go the list then goes to Purvol and he can add to it. He could add someone who hasn't even gone through the review process.

That's right. So the the interesting thing is, and I did a podcast on this, we called it the Missing Audit. The previous mayor, John Grantley and the city council, after the scandal, commissioned an audit of the economic development projects and they hired an audit firm out of Chicago named Crow and Crow issued a draft report in December twenty twenty two, and it included a recommendation about that very process. It says that's not a good process. It's ripe for corruption.

Yes it is.

So did the city do anything about that? No, they basically buried that report. I finally got just the other day, I had a records request for Let's see, I see the draft report. Where's the final report? So I didn't know whether they just canceled the thing or buried it or what. So I did a record request for it. I finally got the documents and there was a one year gap between the draft report and there is a

You, Todd Zenzer, always revealing things that you've never seen anything like it, in spite of the fact that you've been doing this kind of work now for decades, former Inspector General Todd and you did it on a federal level too. I mean, this is ah todds Enzer Citizen Watchdog. Find a podcast, check it out and thank you again on behalf of all the residents of the city of Cincinnati for the work you're doing. And you know it