u/Boomer_With_Dementia

Hi there redditors,

This is a novel, if you don't care, or would rather this sub talked about something else, just block me and move on. I will not be offended. I would add a tldr; but honestly I don't have strong opinions on this. Read the whole thing and make your own opinion, or ignore it, it is all good.

Sooner or later the rain will stop and the humidity will drop and we can go outside again and look at the neighbors dahlias or sit on the lawn at The Ridges and watch and see what GPS tells people to do when they get up into that maze as they detour around Richland. Fact is that this detour is secretly part of the "Keep Athens Funky" movement. But I digress.

Athens City Council meets tomorrow, the interesting item on the agenda in my opinion is the Public Safety Training Facility.

I will summarize the line items as best as I can from the information I have. If I have a substantial error or have misrepresented something let me know and I can adjust. I add that disclaimer because I find parsing the city budget terminology at times to be a little challenging.

The Facility:

This is out by Elliotsville Road, behind the TS Trim facility. You know that place see footnote**.

The Costs:

According to the ordinance in the city council agenda for tomorrow I see the following.

Grants ?

I think these are grants, the capital bill funding could be a loan, but for the purposes of this discussion let's assume it is a grant.

2.5 million capital bill funding.

200K ODOT funding

Expenses:

I am going through the ordinance paragraph by paragraph.

$31,000 streets fund

$5,121,000

The lines below break out the details of the expenditures.

Sum of expenses vs grants

So we are about to spend

$2,421,000 dollars to spend on a public safety training facility

My opinion

Maybe I should start keeping my opinion to myself and just share the information. I do know the following however. Honestly at this late stage of this specific project I am on the fence. Wether or not the project needed to be pursued in the first place, or has to cost 5million? On those points I am skeptical.

Other facts that should be considered.

The Mayor has said we are broke and he may have to downsize the number of city employees in some way.

Our Street maintenance has been curtailed in some way due to us being broke.

Our debt service this year is somewhere in the range of 2million.

Our infrastructure is in need of repair, some basic, some serious. Drive around and take a look at Storm Sewers next rainfall event. End of Grosvenor has storm sewers filled with mud. Richland Avenue becomes a viral livestream opportunity of "street as river" during heavy rains. Pick a brick street and go for a walk. Take a drive down Columbia and count the holes in the street caused by water main break repairs. Note the sandbags on Grosvenor, and Columbia were the street level has sank causing a drainage problem downstream as runoff is now managed by sandbags, instead of actual repairs.

Our total budget per year is somewhere around 50million. So this is 4 percent of our budget.(warning this assumes I am reading this document correctly) https://www.ci.athens.oh.us/DocumentCenter/View/12585/2025-Estimated-Expense-Budget and there is a non-zero chance I am misreading it. I pulled the 50million from the total on last page.

A caveat, I do understand that funding for X can not be easily exchanged for funding for Y. So arguing against the Training facility will be met with an argument that we are getting basically twice the value per dollar spent. So one thing I am not saying is that this project should be nixed. I am thinking we should ponder why it was pursued in the first place over basic maintenance.

**Footnote on TS Trim, My recollection of the story is something like this. TS Trim gets tax breaks comes to Athens in or around 1988 and has a facility that employs a decent number of people. I am guessing the tax breaks expired in 1998. On or around 2002 or 2003 TS trim moves production to Canal Winchester in exchange I assume for tax breaks there. Our local facility is downgraded to a warehouse employing very few people. Sort of an lesson for municipalities competing with each other that seems to have NOT been learned.

Yours in (somewhat Controlled) Curmudgeonry

--

Boomer_with_dementia

I build a spreadsheet of daily precipitation totals for Athens Ohio from 2000 to present.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTx5bccIbV2TUSWGmwnE12QmyWRlfDbY09Q1eDvTZFnrqoh0uRMDyOhC8oVFoby16kkMCg97JuSr1eB/pubhtml

I highlighted daily totals above 1,2,3 and five inches in various shades of yellow to red.

I am not on Facebook, so please someone share to the relevant facebook discussions, according to my wife who is on facebook, there is some lively discussion going on about past flooding events in particular in front of kindred market.

One caveat about this data is that I believe it comes from the Scalia Lab weather station. The station ID is the first column so someone could double check that. I love the Scalia Lab folks, they do great work, but I do think that their data collection suffers occasional hiccups. I recall a 2004(?) event where the rain gage themselves were probably overloaded. Cross check with other station would be useful. Data came from here, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/faq#dataSection If someone needs help on those products I am slightly familiar with it.

Also on FB there is some lively internet discussion about causes. People saying that the Madison construction, blah blah blah, and then non experts being experts and whatever. You know the usual charm and joy of the internet discussion. If I was looking for causes, I would start with sending a camera down the storm sewers, I suspect massive clogs. The other place I would look would be a check to see what happens to the runnoff in the ravine next to Madison Ave. That drains a large area and in the past 5 years the folks who have driveways across that have had at least 2 major washouts. Potentially drainage above that once went into a storm sewer now goes into the ravine. Or at the end of the ravine, the old athens greenhouse development, the drainage enters our storm sewer system. That could of course suffer from a lack of maintenance.

Anyhow here is some data, I think data nerds should be able to download the csv from the page, if not I can find a way to share.

--rant below--

I am trying really hard to keep this a Data-Only post, but I can't help myself.

So here is my rant, to Little Stevie Patterson, and Andy (let it rot) Stone, people are paying attention, and are arming themselves with data. So if you use your usual response that this is a "once in a lifetime" event, you should make sure it is actually a "once in a lifetime" event. Running out of salt, not being able to plow, letting our infrastructure rot, not maintaining our sewers, all of that makes "once in a lifetime" events worse. So "once in a lifetime" events are not an excuse. Once in a lifetime events are actually why you do basic maintenance instead of building Fire Palaces, Art Parks, and exercise Parks while scheming of making the hocking some sort of recreational destination.

Do your jobs first.. then you can play around with your pet projects.

--end rant--

My house has gutters, every few months I clear them. When it rains a lot they still overflow. That doesn't mean I should never maintain my gutters.

Our town is built on a hillside of reactive clay. Reactive means high shrink/swell capacity depending on moisture. This is the sort of place where storm sewers should be aggressively maintained.

I took a walk today in the rain and saw the following.

Fairview Ave

has a low area that collects water causing it to pool and drain into the front yard of a resident.

Fairview Ave,

Brick street has sunken below the level of the storm sewer causing the rain water to divert around the sewer and drain into the ravine between Fairview and Congress. This ravine has been more aggressively eroding the backs of houses on Congress. Deferring maintainence to the brick street on Forest is adding to the problem of topography. The brick street policy under Andy Stone has been to let them decay to the point that the residents finally agree to have them paved over.

Congress,

From perhaps Fort to Carpenter there is no storm sewer. This was the area where the street used to bubble, indicating a clogged storm sewer. The street was not bubbling but I do know that construction at the church has had to pump out the construction zone more than once. For more on this area see Carpenter

Carpenter,

From Congress to Johhny Appleseed Park we have the construction project to bury utilities. The trench dug here is an example on how NOT to handle runoff. Does the city do any inspection of the work done by contractors? It doesn't look like it. I saw multiple storm sewers completely blocked off, I saw gravel running into the sewers that remained open. I assume this contributes to the construction challenges at the church.

Carpenter to Grosvener,

I saw multiple roadside sewers where the sewer was more than a few inches higher than the area it was supposed to be draining. Sometimes this led to pooling, other times it led to runoff being diverted from the sewer and continuing on the street rather than being captured.

Grosvener,

I saw drains that were not taking water and one that was instead gushing water. This is indicative of a clogged or undersized system.

I saw a massive outflow emanating from the driveway at 79 Grosvenor. This is caused by the drainage problem under the Fort Street Steps being "solved" by a haphazard "repair" that diverts the broken drain into the hill with a straight 6 or 4 inch pipe. This gusher that I assume drains some or all of Forest and Fairview runs into 79 Grosvenor's back yard.

Summary,

Yes it rained a lot. Our systems can be reasonably expected to suffer some stress. But this is not a once in a lifetime emergency event. This is summer rains in an El Nino year. Some attention needs to be paid to regular maintenance.

A number of drainage related disasters have happened lately. Some of those can certainly be attributed to poor runoff management by the city. Some of the poorest townships do a better job at maintaining roadside drainage than the city does.

Street Below Sewer, water drains into Ravine behind Congress

Sewer clogged

Sewer Clogged

Construction Silt tube minsmanagement

Construction blocked sewer

I have more photos, but uploading photos is slow and I have other things to do, I will share them with city council if they are interested. Or it 79 Grosvenor needs evidence that the city is flooding them due to sloppy work I can share the photos with them

Forest Street draining into Grosvenor back yard

Fort Street Steps draining \"repair\"

Not sure if they are still in town, but if you got a chance to see the King Midgets out and about it was a wonderful sight to see..

I think the chain of them I saw on Stimson were headed for the roundabout near the Fire Palace..

What a wonderful blend of the old and the new. I make fun of roundabouts, but they are in some cases beautifully landscaped, and the circle is an undeniably attractive form.

So yeah Go Athens !!!

Someone ,maybe me if I find the time, should initiate a public records request on tax abatements that various government agencies have granted over the years and calculate the tax burden that has therefore shifted to us.

In my memory, which may not be perfect, I remember the following.

Rocky Boots getting a Tax Abatement for promising production to remain local, and instead we got warehousing and an outdoor store and production went overseas.

TS Trim car trim manufacturer out by the UPS store. I forget the details but the organization changed it's structure or something.

The Lostro building. LoL

Menards 10 year 50% according to another reddit thread.

Athens Mold and Machine (search result, article paywalled, not sure if it was granted)

**note**

Once I started poking around and learning about the various tax abatements, tax loopholes, enterprise zones, opportunity zones, grape production tax credits, grape production land purchase tax credit, etc etc etc.. I realized that our whole government from top to bottom has been captured by lobbies and industry and I started shopping for land in another country.

--edit--

After I rage-posted this, I thought for a moment. In theory some of these tax breaks seem to represent the will of the people, but in practice they do not. I mean grape production preserves farmland, so that sounds good and I am sure some European democracies have similar incentives. It is just that our incentives are so undemocratic. There needs to be citizen review at each step of the way, and sadly we are hardly allowed input, and never allowed review.

If you were at the meeting tonight August 4, 2026, where the public expressed significant opposition to the nurdle factory and are wondering to yourself..

"What is this port authority semi autonomous government adjacent organization that has so much control and so little accountability? "

Well a port authority can do many things, as we are finding out the hard way. They do not necessarily respond to the democratic will of the majority of the citizens.

Our Port Authority was created by the County Commissioners in 1995, the County Commissioners can dissolve it. The county commissioners are elected, we can elect new ones if these current ones can stay out of jail long enough to respond to the will of the county.

All we have to do is ask the County Commissioners to disband the port authority if they go through with the plastic plant.

79.17 DISSOLUTION OF A PORT AUTHORITY

Either a “new” or an “old” port authority may be dissolved by the political subdivision or subdivisions that created the port authority, subject to making due provision for the payment of any obligations incurred by the port. In the event the port is dissolved, properties of the port authority are transferred to the subdivision or subdivisions that created the port. If the port authority was created by more than one political subdivision, the manner of transfer must be determined before the resolutions and ordinances dissolving the port authority are passed (ORC 4582.023 & 4582.25(B)).

We should make this a comedy night contest somewhere in town. What venue hosts comedy nights?

I will go first, I am not a professional comedian but I do like comedy and we all should try to add humor to our lives. Please reply with funnier caricatures of our local datacenter champions..

If these seem mean spirited, then cleanse your conscience by choosing instead to make fun of me. Lord knows I say some crazy shit.

Poster: TrumpsLivesMatter_101

I hate government as much as the next guy, I mean f*ck guvment, we all agree on that left and right and middle, I am neither of those, I didn't say I was, I am independent and shit.

My investment guy (Did I mention I have an investment guy), he had me put my disposable income in the Firebird DataCenter project in Romania. You know Romania, borders Iran and Turkey, ex soviet satellite, a little corrupt. Anyhow Trump said we can export chips there and Lutnick agreed, and I am sure there was no corruption at all. Anyhow I have investments there, thanks to my guy, (Did I mention I have an investment guy? ) Well I do, and he told me a LOT about datacenters, I know ALL ABOUT datacenters. So yeah, the electric grid and shit, I know a lot about that too, it is a big grid and nothing we do matters.

So wake up you dummies..

--

TrumpLivesMatter_101

Poster: Jane-Ire-oughta-think-harder

Hi everyone , Jane here. What about compassion for our neighbors, I use plastic, I talk to chatgpt a LOT. Heck AI was responsible for some catphishing scams I recently fell victim to. And a LOT of my friends fall victim to AI catphishing scams, and we now use AI to detect them. So AI taketh and AI giveth. So it all evens out, one data center is burning through GPU's to steal my money and another datacenter is burning through GPU's to help prevent me from losing money. So I think Athens uses a lot of data and plastics, shouldn't that stuff me made locally?

So yeah, think local, be local, act local, keep Athens Funky (as in smelling like burning plastics, and melting GPU's)

Love your neighbor, take a datacenter bullet for them

--

Jane-Ire

There was some discussion regarding politics in another thread. There was some discussion that we are just a cash starved city due to OU and appalachia in general. (If I am mischaracterizing anyone's opinion please correct me)

With that in mind I got to thinking about the Fire Palace and Steve Patterson's claim that we are facing a budget crisis and we are not going to fix streets, and city employees might be let go.

Posting a few screenshots of two audits, one from 2024 and one from 2021.

https://ohioauditor.gov/Auditsearch/Reports/2023/Athens_County_2021_Athens_FINAL.pdf

https://ohioauditor.gov/auditsearch/Reports/2025/City_of_Athens_2024_Athens_FINAL.pdf

Two data points do not define a trend, and more research is needed (Athens Independent.. are you listening?? ) but here are the screenshots..

https://preview.redd.it/f3cevholq8ah1.png?width=1364&format=png&auto=webp&s=543b93f77983c8a03e6456edfb0ca64b688df38b

https://preview.redd.it/pa5xeholq8ah1.png?width=1468&format=png&auto=webp&s=cda93ba6e8cbbeb3025cd66a21ce1cc82b514ac3

I am not an accountant, and the audit documents are long and may not be consistent in terms of categories, but from my quick assessment I see the following.

The city of Athens has 2.5 times the debt in 2024 (25 million) than it had in 2021 (10 million)

How can that be a good thing? I mean it looks good to stand in front of the Fire Palace for a photo shoot for a power point presentation at the global mayor's conference. But that debt has to be serviced over time.

So as a city we may be broke, but we may have gotten here through poor management.

Any candidate or organization looking to make changes should research our debt over time in more detail.

If I have made errors in my summation, and an accountant wants to correct me please reply, if I am egregiously wrong I will edit the post to reflect that rather than leaving the correction in the replies.

--EDIT--

A reply noted that perhaps choosing 2021 led to bias as it was an exceptional year due to covid economic stimulus. With that in mind I grabbed the audits from 2010->2024

Instead of pulling data from the numbers, spreadsheet style section which did not seem consistent I pulled the numbers from the summary entry in the text for long term debt. It is worded like this..

"As of Year, the City of Athens had $x in long-term bonds, notes, and loans outstanding with $y due within one year."

Charting those numbers leads to these plots.

I broke out the "payment due in one year" because the scale of the change is lost compared to the total debt value. Pre Patterson we spent a million or less servicing our debt each year, in the
"Late Patterson" era we spend over 2 million servicing our debt. The scale of that change is the important value in my opinion.

Others may have a different analysis, I welcome the discussion. If my choice of data points leads to skew in some way, I will correct it. Living within your means is the basic rule of managing finances, is our spending in line with that rule. If this doubling of debt spending led to some massive benefit in terms of grant dollars, show me the numbers and I will add them to the charts.

total over time

payment due in one year

1. Shitpost to r/athensohio

Actually this subreddit isn't always shitpost supportive, so be careful.

2. Drive to your nearest waterfall and enjoy the flow.

Cedar Falls is my favorite, but Ash Cave works as well

3. Grab the beach chairs and head to Lake Chauncey

4. Go to the hydrological prediction site for the Hocking River and place wagers on future gage height. https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/atho1

5. Hydroplane at a roundabout.

This is hard to do, most roundabouts are of recent design and drain water rather well, so act fast and get out while the downpour is active.

--edit-- adding the ones below

6. Amphibian quests..

Toads may be calling from puddles, tree frogs from trees, rare eastern spadefoot in the one or two places where they exist (Take only audio recordings, leave muddy footprints), salamanders will be on the move

The drama presented here in this Independent article, https://athensindependent.com/orca-state-funding-cut/

is over the top.

Appalachia has been defined as a region, a people, a geography. Most studies of it mention the roles of extractive industries, outside control and corruption.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Please note that I am not pointing at anyone in particular as corrupt. I don't really know how anonymous I am anymore here on reddit is one reason. I have relations with one or more entities or people involved is another reason. But I do know the smell of shenanigans when I smell it. Besides when the whole system just might be so fishy that it is hard to tell anymore wether to blame the players or the game.

My quick assessment of the issue back when the mayor split with ORCA was that we had a case of "empire building individuals in conflict" and it may just be that. Anyhow it seems like the Bailey's trail empire lacked allies in high places.

I just wish our system worked in some way that wasn't so murky.

That said, the latest episode makes me feel that the whole situation down here is ripe for literally a novel of investigative journalism, from the history of our sheriff's going to prison, our commisioners involved in sketchy arrangements, our mayors' (plural). You could probably start with the re-routing of the river and the "relationships" between OU president and US government officials, and then go from there. Heck I wouldn't be surprised if Jimmy Hoffa is buried on one of our landfills. Did I mention Nelsonville? Or Hocking college with literally a foundational purpose of shenanigans?

Anyone with insight that they can share, or with more relationships with the players who would care to offer an opinion as to what is going on behind the scenes please share your thoughts.

Anyhow who can predict who our shadowy overlords are going to be after this struggle is over let me know so I can find a way to get by without offending anyone who holds the purse strings.

Here is the relevant text of the ordinance.

"No Person Shall Park..

Within 30 feet of, and upon the approach to, any flashing beacon, stop sign, or traffic control device;"

Here is the street layout

Here is the question. Does the wording, "within 30 feet of, and upon the approach to"

Mean:

A. I can not park within 30 feet (the blue arrow ONLY).

B. I can not park within 30 feet (the blue arrow, AND the orange arrow)

I guess the meaning of "upon the approach to" does that apply to traffic approaching the stop sign from either road. Another way of wording it is "even if the stop sign does not apply to me, does the parking prohibition apply to me? "

Non lawyers responding with random opinions will be censured by the bar.. wait why would non lawyers care about the bar.. Trying again.. Non lawyers responding should have taken an advanced logic course.

Thanks in advance.

https://preview.redd.it/k5touvnkyq7h1.png?width=820&format=png&auto=webp&s=625a9078cee4ee346bb9cc00cf4dd5c2f047d0aa

The copperheads fireworks were brought to you by the Credit Union. So if you liked that, get an account. If you didn't like that, let them know.

Hi Athens,

I posted a long list of plants and deer a few years back, a search should find it. I did not (I don't think) focus on ferns.

Anyhow, here is a report and a question.

My Question.

Polystichum Setiferum

This one has lots of common names, curious if anyone has tried it and if the deer ate it or not.

Ferns that deer do not eat.

Japanese Painted Ferns, Athyrium Nipponicum.

Nice fern, spreads slowly by spores.

Dryopteris Filix-mas, Male Fern

It is strange, they will sometimes eat a fresh one from the nursery, but once it gets settled in it seems fine. So maybe it is a variety thing. So not 100 percent, but close enough. Other Dryopteris have been eaten, it is a huge family though.

Eastern Bracken Fern

Aggressive, if it wasn't native it would be classified as invasive, that said, deer do not eat it.

Ferns that deer do eat.

Ostrich Fern Matteuccia struthiopteris

The deer do not always eat this to the ground, but they do sometimes.

Cinnamon Fern Osmundastrum cinnamomeum

I might sometimes confuse Ostrich with cinnamon, but the deer will eat both.

Glade Fern, Homalosorus pycnocarpos

This one has recently been reclassified, but I think I have it right, The glade fern that is native to Athens county.

Interrupted Fern

Deer eat this

They just mowed both sides of the hocking, so the grass is low. On the south side between White's Mill and Richland Ave the Canada Geese have carved up their turf and are taking the babies out for some grass grazing.

It is ridiculously cute. Go see em before the coyotes do !!

The north side had a flock of motherless geese. I don't know Geese politics, so I won't predict why the families are on the south and the childless are on the north. Probably safety, no bike path on that side???

About 12 rounds of fireworks at about 12:30 in town. Usual suspect is Acacia, this was not quite as loud as the weekly barrage.

Mostly I post these because they usually repeat about 1 hour later, although the 4:20 AM round a few weeks ago was really cute. I don't know what kind of weed the kids smoke nowadays to turn them into obnoxious assholes, but that strain is new to me, and I hope it gives them cancer.

EDIT:

Added the following.

The responses to this are sort of interesting. One way to think about it is that r/athensohio is a community, and Athens Oh is a community.

So lets compare the subreddit to the physical community of Athens City and the annoyances that might arise in each.

Subreddit vs Annoying Fireworks Poster

In this subreddit nobody is forcing you to read my posts, you can just ignore them or block me. I mostly post these fireworks posts as a record of events so that I can present to the administration that this is a problem. If this post is something that annoys you, nobody is making you read it, or respond to it, that was your choice. Block or scroll past.

Real Life Athens vs Real Life Fireworks

In real life in Athens though, when the regular barrage of fireworks comes, I can not just ignore my pets freaking out, or me being awoken. I have to either document it so that I can appeal for action, or move out of the town I have lived in for 20 years, and have been attached to for 43 years.

So I ask the folks who replied, some of them I know in real life, some of them who I know have been involved in their HOA for their little community, so they should have some concept of community. Please think for a moment about communities online and in real life, and the annoyances that happen within those communities, and options available to deal with them.

If you are annoyed by something that you can simply swipe past, or block, but instead you seek to oust me from the community. Then put yourself in my shoes, or my cat's shoes. Or just think for a moment.

Just friggin ignore me, how hard is that? Ignoring me is certainly easier than ignoring commercial grade fireworks at 4 AM.

It is funny, about 10 days the flower report seemed very important because it was all just beginning. Now that I go to post a flower report, I can't help but notice that EVERYTHING is in flower.

That said, what is spectacular out here in Athens?

There are some red roses on Congress close to uptown that are incredible. Clematis are in many cases still going strong. It is worth driving around to see the big old "ironclad" rhododendrons in yards in the country and in Town. The plains have some 12 footers on side streets, and some houses on Route 50 towards Albany have some big ones. There are cemeteries in Northern Ohio that have killer Rhododendrons, Ashland, and then one near Elyria a google search would find it.

The cold snap had the benefit of keeping the early Peony flowers in good shape for a long time. I understand that florists can keep peonies in the fridge for a long time, and since we became a fridge that seemed to work here. The tall ornamental alliums are maybe past peak, but still good. My viburnum was really lame this year, but I bet some were/are great. The sweetshrub (calycanthus? Sweet Bubby?) at the History center is looking sharp. North side so it probably holds on for a while.

I bet the rose garden in columbus is looking good, unless Rosette Disease got it.

Happy flower watching..

Large barrage of fireworks at 4:20 AM.. which is just adorable.

We have a LOT of cops. I have interacted with them quite a bit this year. I rarely encounter a repeat, so what do they do during their shifts?

Barney effin Fyfe could solve this case in a day.