It started with this article, http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080507/NEWS16/805070..., in the Toledo Blade. And today we have another reporting the city government gives the management of Southwyck 72 hours to ensure the public is protected from the areas contaminated with asbestos and mold. Is this just another ploy to gain control of the dying mall? On the spectrum of risk how bad is Southwyck for your health? I don't know. I assume that the men and women who are performing maintenance at Southwyck believe the paycheck they receive for the work they do outways any risk that they run working in the contaminated area, or else they intend to work now for a paycheck and sue later.
I wonder if Woodville Mall is similarly contaminated. That is where my friend and I go to walk when places outdoors are too muddy, or it is too rainy, to walk. We often see leaks showing up in the public areas (less than half the mall seems to be open now, and so we don't know what is happening behind closed doors). Is this a risk that is even worthy of consideration for most of us? Are we over-reacting (like we may be doing with smoking indoors), and could this become a cudgel that will bounce back to damage our economy at a bad time?
In times of bad economy should we just consider the future of our children, and forget about any dangers to our own health to keep things moving? Is a sound economy (and immediate benefits) more important to our society than health (most of us will outlive our reproductive years)? Is our main value to produce another "consuming" generation, and then get out of the way? Is all this caution (which statistically only adds a few years on average to our later years) worth the cost? Or would we (as a majority of citizens alive at this time) be better off without any environmental/health regulations, and let the smoke stacks belch?
Just about every building more than 25 years old has asbestos in some form. I believe this is a stunt to get Southwyck for next to nothing. The empty Fiberglas Tower Downtown is an asbestos monster. Why doesn't the city do something about that building.
Here is a group of tables (not the latest data, I am sure) that shows "Causes of Death" and "Accidental Causes of Death", http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/death_stats.html. In neither case is asbestos and/or mold given as leading indicators. That doesn't mean, I suppose, that you should ignore risk, but if I had a choice between walking in Southwyck, and the "healthy" outside air of an inner city (such as Toledo) I know which I would pick. Just as I would probably rather spend every evening for a year in a "smoke filled" bar in downtown Toledo than patrolling every evening in Baghdad. There should be a book, "Assessing Risk for Dummies", put out. Though I doubt many Toledoans would buy it.
And Mesothelioma is a "Malignant Neoplasm", otherwise known as cancer. It's on the list, just not broken down into types of cancer.
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"Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually dirty kitchen, and
five times out of nine I'll show you an exceptional man." -Charles
Bukowski
Statistically, which do you think is more likely to do you in: driving to Southwyck every evening to walk, chance (and violent) encounters with denizens of the evening while you're there, or the mold you pick up from breathing the air while walking the mall for exercise?
If there is asbestos and mold in the building it only becomes a health hazard if it becomes airborne and enters the lungs. It is not against the law to have asbestos as long as it is contained.
...maintenance department at Southwyck got out the Spic n Span, or whatever, and really cleaned the areas up before the "independent' inspection? Oh well, it's a job.
Perhaps some of our media folks will be asking for copies of the inspection reports from the city, which should make for an interesting process.
First there will be the request.
Followed by another request, followed by no response, followed by comments, that the matter is under investigation, followed by another request, followed by no response, and then the dust and mold has cleared the reports will come out.
And we can still ask, why is the Mayor's leading the charge up the hill, once more, when there is a cliff on the other side.
Let the departmental heads take care of these matters, they are the professionals with the knowledge and where picked for the office they hold for a reason.
I've had dealings with these city inspectors. If they want to find a violation, they will find a violation. If they want to close you down, they will close you down. It's pretty much political for the most part as you might expect in Toledo. This case is no different. They are trying to get control of the facility.
I was the chairman of a Board of Health and had to conduct inspections and had a checklist of state mandated items to look for.
Looked for them and nothing more.
If inspectors are finding violations, then the violations must be there, if they are making the items up, then the business owner can protest and make the accusation be proven.
Reading the inspection reports published in The Blade for businesses, some business people seem to be unaware of what is required.
The case here with Southwyck seems to be more, of the Executive Offices again coming down, much like the Secret Shopper report for the downtown hotel, which in the end tended to show us that the professionals were addressing problems found, but the Executive Offices needed to be in the limelight again.
On August 14, a reporter asked the mayor at a news conference (I was there) if Southwyck was considered blighted and the mayor very slowly and deliberately said no, it's an older mall and has some problems associated with its age. The reporter then asked if the negotiations with the mall's owner were to become bogged down if the city was going to use eminent domain. After the mayor bobbed and weaved, Carty said yes.
It wasn't blighted before and now all of a sudden it has become blighted -- simply because the city cannot negotiate with the owner so the next step is to use the coercive force of gov't to get it which is why this whole thing stinks and is immoral.
It has been designated as such?
Absestos and mold do not make a building blighted, do they?
"(July 26, 2006) In a multifaceted opinion, the Supreme Court of Ohio today clarified Ohio law on eminent domain, ruling 7-0 to reverse a Hamilton County appeals court and halt the taking of private homes by the City of Norwood to make way for a development complex. Among other findings, today's ruling: overturned as unconstitutional a portion of Ohio's eminent domain statute, established that an economic benefit to the community alone does not justify government taking of private property, and set a heightened level of scrutiny for Ohio courts to apply when considering eminent domain cases.
Justice Maureen O'Connor wrote the unanimous majority opinion that balances “two competing interests of great import in American democracy: the individual's rights in the possession and security of property, and the sovereign's power to take private property for the benefit of the community.”
The highly publicized case involved a challenge by several “holdout” homeowners to the City of Norwood's eminent domain action taking possession of their property in order to make way for two new city-owned parking garages and a large, privately owned commercial development intended to create jobs and increase local tax revenues. "
http://www.supremecourtofohio.gov/Communications_Office/summaries/2006/0...
Question: If the United States is a Democratic Government, do subdivisions of the government, such as state, county and city, have the right to practice a different form of government, such as National Socialism or an Aristocracy?
First, we're not a Democracy. We're a Republic. We use democratic methods within our structure, but we don't go purely by "majority rule" in all things. (Democracy sucks, anyway. If you think that tyranny of a minority is bad, just look at what happens from a tyranny of a majority.)
Second, the US Constitution is the law of the land. Local governments cannot remain within the USA and deny the laws laid out in that document. The US Constitution clearly lays out a Republic form of government, and that doesn't allow National Socialism or an Aristocracy.
...representative one rather than relying on "direct rule" of those who have the right to vote. Sometimes the populace can decide issues by majority vote if a referendum is approved to be voted on. An aristocracy is a "class" of people who receive power from a king or other potentate in exchange for their loyalty. In return, they are given gifts from the king in land or rights (the right to all the fish in a particular area, for example).
National Socialism, as I understand it, is a system of government that believes in the right of the government (once duly elected, as Hitler's was) to "socialize" the production of the state for the good of the whole. Fascism is a broader term for this. It believes in the rights of a certain population over that of all others. It would be like the majority of Americans believing that they have the right (or rather obligation) to fashion the world to their collective view. But with the addition that all the means of production would be geared to the needs of the "state".
I don't think local governments could get away with adopting such means of governance. Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't remember any "Night of the Long Knives" were most of the opposition has been killed or imprisoned. But perhaps I just don't remember it.