State your stands on the banks

It’s been two weeks since the Editorial board opened up our “Today at the Forum” blog to the candidates for Cincinnati City Council.

As we hoped, candidates have candidly answered many of the questions put to them by the Editorial Board and by readers who post queries on our message board at Cincinnati.com Search: conversation.

Almost all of the 25 candidates have weighed in on one issue or another – some have spoken up on just about everything. I am curious about the few who have chosen to be absent from these discussions. Do they have nothing to say? Do they think these questions aren’t the right ones? If the latter, I invite them to please bring something else to the table. One purpose of this blog is to allow the candidates to bring up the things they believe are most important to the future of the city.

In the meantime, there is a topic that is one of the biggest issues council will be dealing with in the next term – the Banks.

Within the next few weeks, possibly the next few days, the Banks working group is expected to bring forth the deal it has negotiated with the developer of the central riverfront project for review and a vote by City Council and the Hamilton County Commissioners. The commissioners’ approval is a foregone conclusion, and a majority of the council incumbents seem to favor it. But there have been concerns expressed by some close to the process that if the deal is not made before Election Day, support on council may wane.

So here are a couple questions I think voters are entitled to have clear answers on from each of the 25 council candidates: Do you consider the Banks deal to be the city’s number one development priority and do you expect to support the deal the Banks Working Group has been negotiating? Does it matter to you if the deal is finished before or after Election Day?