Cincinnati Population drops 10 percent to 296,000. Is this a bad thing?

[wolden]

The general fund excludes sewer, water, parking, convention center. It includes the expense to run government and all general services (poilce, fire etc).

The budget for the general fund is 332 Million. The revenue from this comes from 4 sources: 1) Income tax is 65% 2) Property tax is 9% 3) State shared tax is 12% 4) Misc is 15%.

State shared tax is at huge risk (Kasich will cut most of it) and we have already discussed how property taxes have fallen.

One aspect of the demographics that is unclear is how the exodus has affected income tax revenue.

However, general fund revenue has declined 7% in the last 3 years alone!!

The interesting thing is that they say the decline is mostly in income tax (16 million) and state shared funds (7 million).

This could suggest that the impact of loss of real estate tax has not yet been felt or has already passed 3 years ago. It is somewhat strange.

83% of the general fund costs are for personnel costs., and 90% of these costs are covered by labor contracts.

The restricted fund portion of the budget is much larger than the general fund and some general fund expenses were transferred into it.

The restricted fund is poorly described and one imagines all sorts of maneuvers involving it.

Finally, the general fund ALONE faces a 58 Million dollar gap between revenue and expenses.

All of this is from the City Manager presentation December 2010. We all know that nothing has been done about the declining revenue.

My prediction is that the loss of the state generated shared tax will hit Cincinnati like a ton of bricks.

[Arctic_6]

I will admit that I skipped a lot of this thread, so feel free to ignore my post but this feels like a necessary comment.

The Census, as a population demographic estimator, contains some huge flaws. Generally speaking, a stratified random sample of the US (say picking 30,000 people from a large number of different areas around the US) would give you a much more accurate estimate of the population of the entire country. I believe for the 2000 Census they expected the national number to be off by around 4,000,000 due to double-counting and missed cases.

Consider that independent research groups as close as three years ago did a statistical analysis of Cinci's population that didn't involve a census (which, contrary to popular belief is not as strong a measure of a population as sampling) and you find that in 2007 Cinci's estimated population was around 378,000.

All you see reported in the Census is the raw numbers, not the confidence interval for those numbers. For larger cities, the Census produces a fairly large confidence interval because of the difficulty involved in measuring all the people. I'd say the actual population of Cincinnati falls below 378,000 but above 296,000. The news and public ignorance about statistics in general leads people to take point estimates and exact numbers as absolute fact when they really don't mean what most people think.

I wish more people knew statistics, specifically the ones reported in polls and Census data. The amount of misreporting in the media especially bothers me, the census has an interval of error just the same as any other sample. I'd like to see UC or some other research institute provide Cincinnati with population estimates on top of the Census because it always takes more than a single statistical estimate to give a valid description of a population parameter.

[insightofitall]

Originally Posted by wtby4000

The Census form is not an IRS return. You can't just go to the library, pick one up, fill it out and send it to the Census Bureau. That's probably why they had no record of your form.

Except that that's exactly what I was told to do when I inquired as to why I had not received my form in the mail. So apparently I COULD "just go to the library, pick one up, fill it out..."

[montana1001]

A smaller population is a smaller tax base. But the area to police and protect from fires is unchanged. Most government costs, starting with the buildings, fail to scale down with population until it's too late (think Detroit). Some government costs even swell, like pensions with automatic CoL hikes built in. Those loads get higher per capita as population gets lower, which tends to continue driving population away. At some point, declining population means vacant houses. It looks like Cincy, the city (not the MSA), has 17,954 of them, of 165,945 housing units, in the 2010 census. Some are being recycled, of course, but that's a huge problem. And you wonder why housing is being converted or torn down? Still, that cycle of decay and rebirth is fundamental -- especially if there really is a reason for the city's existence, such a being a transportation hub. The ghost towns, mostly out west, whisper what happens when there is no real reason. As for vacant homes and buildings, the textbook scenario is the rundown warehouse districts of port cities that get rehabed by starving artist types, who then attract trendy eateries and galleries, etc., which then attract wealthier folks, who then pimp out the rehabed lofts into million-dollar river-view condos, and so on. You don't want to be there at its grimmest but you'd love to be there at the curl of the wave, when the trendy rich start buying up your fixed-up warehouse loft. One real question is "where are you in the cycle"

[OlliesThoughts]

Does anyone know when an where we can get the details of the 2010 Census? I would like to see demographics per neighborhood.

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by Sarah Perry

Your post talks a lot about reduction of numbers of low-income housing units, but doesn't address existing vacancy rates. In other words, are the units which have been lost anywhere equal in numbers to units which would have or are currently sitting vacant? Is there a shortage or a glut of available units? Is this information even available anywhere?

Yes, just walk through Over-the-Rhine.

The units are either uninhabitable (ie boarded up) or vacant. The condos are not selling.

However, on a more positive note, the manager at Kroger's told me that in spite of several thousand being evicted, his volume and sales are up.

I told him that was probably because when I walk the 4 blocks to Kroger's I only get hit up twice for drugs and 3-4 times for money, cigarettes or Food Stamp fraud.

[quote=Sarah Perry;18215019]

Originally Posted by t45209

...I'll grant you that we are seeing an exodus of traditionally lower income people from the inner city moving...particularly to the north and west...some of this driven by the loss of housing.../quote]

I'll ask again, where are the statistics? I'm not saying this assumption is incorrect, but where are the hard numbers it's based on?

Again, just walk up and down Race, Elm and Vine between 12th and Liberty and you can see it.

Originally Posted by wtby4000

The Census is an actual headcount, so there ought to be nothing suspect about it. The people who are most averse to filling out the form and sending it to the feds are those whose views are consistent with right-wing ideology, and I doubt that there are many of those living within Cincinnati's corporate limits. So I would view with suspicion any claim that Cincinnati was undercounted.

As a former enumerator with the US Census Bureau 95% of those who do not respond are the Welfare Class, those receiving benefits. They're usually frightened that they'll lose their benefits, because, well, HUD housing is for one household, not two households.

Originally Posted by wolden

If this is true, it means the trend is that the ones who keep the city afloat (ie the all critical tax base) are leaving and leaving behind the poorer people...who can't sustain the city.

That is exactly what happened to Detroit.

Originally Posted by wolden

State shared tax is at huge risk (Kasich will cut most of it) and we have already discussed how property taxes have fallen.

That's because it isn't yours and never was. People all over the US have to learn they can't keep spending money that doesn't exist.

Originally Posted by wolden

Finally, the general fund ALONE faces a 58 Million dollar gap between revenue and expenses.

All of this is from the City Manager presentation December 2010. We all know that nothing has been done about the declining revenue.

My prediction is that the loss of the state generated shared tax will hit Cincinnati like a ton of bricks.

Yes, and it will only get worse in the coming years.

[abr7rmj]

Originally Posted by Mircea

Yes, just walk through Over-the-Rhine.

The units are either uninhabitable (ie boarded up) or vacant. The condos are not selling.

Condos aren't selling anywhere right now, and Over-the-Rhine is no exception. Perhaps you may have noticed this little housing crisis the country is in right now?

Apartments are a different story in this economic climate, and those units are selling very well in Over-the-Rhine. As for the vacant buildings, you're talking about a neighborhood that was nearly flat-lined as recently as a decade ago. It's going to take some time; it's not going to look like the Gaslamp District in San Diego overnight. A lot of those vacant, boarded-up buildings that you see have actually been bought by 3CDC and other developers already and are just awaiting their turn at revitalization.

Over-the-Rhine condos to be converted to apartments | Business Courier

[progmac]

Mircea - if you didn't expect to get hit up for money when living in OTR, you chose the wrong neighborhood. Maybe it will be Mt Adams someday, but today it is not and will have to settle for being merely one of the largest urban historic districts and fastest gentrifying neighborhoods in the country. The negativity is hilarious when you have seen OTR today and think back to where it was even five years ago.