‘Letter to the Editor’ of the Day: Numbers for Zimpher’s raise (AND bonus – Ed.) just don’t add up

Wayne Witt of Loveland pithily puts it out there at the Cincinnati Enquirer (link to original Enquirer story in Witt’s letter added by me):

Let me get this straight. The people charged with running the institute of higher learning in this city (University of Cincinnati) have decided that an 8 percent raise with a $30,000 bonus for the president is a good idea? (”8% raise advised for Zimpher,” Aug. 30).

Even though the budget had a shortfall of $27 million and the interest each year to pay off the various building projects is 8 percent of the total budget each year. Have I missed anything? Oh, yeah! Tuition never fails to rise! Funny thing is that I am a 45-year-old part-time student at UC working on a business degree, and I can figure out the numbers just don’t add up. Someone with fiscal restraint on UC’s board please stand up and take charge?

Witt is just scratching the surface. From all appearances, Nancy Zimpher is virtually untouchable by the trustees supposedly responsible for watching her. Zimpher also appears to have managed to get what used to be an at least occasionally skeptical Cincinnati Enquirer press corps firmly into her back pocket, turning it into a press release copy machine (more on that later).

Previously, yours truly noted in March how a Clint Peale puff piece on UC’s building projects (link no longer available) failed to even mention the eminent domain setback the University had suffered in the proposed McMillan Park project area between McMillan and Calhoun Streets. Peale called the local development consortium in which the school is the principal player “a development powerhouse.”

Uh, not exactly.

The McMillan Park project, aka “The Grassy Knoll,” as reported by the Cincinnati Business Courier in July, may not be just merely dead, it may be most sincerely dead. And there are probably more McMillan Park-like fiascoes to come (bold is mine):

Rising costs and skeptical lenders might deal a death blow to McMillan Park, a $100 million condominium development planned for the Calhoun Avenue corridor, south of the University of Cincinnati.

The nonprofit development group that has been planning the project for more than five years claims its lending partners — which include the University of Cincinnati and the Uptown Consortium — are changing elements of the project’s financing plan, a move that could force them to scuttle the project altogether.

“We’ve basically destroyed a business district only to have the rug pulled out from under us,” said Dan Deering, a trustee for the Clifton Heights Community Urban Redevelopment Corp (CHCURC).

….. Since it starting using endowment funds to finance off-campus development projects about six years ago, UC has loaned out more than $127 million to various nonprofit development corporations. Roughly $27 million has been paid back. CHCURC owes UC more than any other off-campus development group — roughly $32 million as of May 31.

On campus, it may be even worse, as a July 20 Cincinnati Business Courier article detailed (bold is mine):

University of Cincinnati trustees resolved this week to keep closer tabs on the school’s construction programs after they were surprised to learn of an $89 million increase in the cost of a long-planned renovation project.

….. UC revamped its cost estimates for the project in January but didn’t brief board members on the changes until July 17 – when trustees were asked to approve a new two-year capital budget at a special meeting.

….. Trustee Thomas Humes said the board had been expecting an increase but not the 77 percent jump detailed in the July 17 report to the trustees’ administration and finance committee. The report accompanied a resolution to increase UC’s borrowing authority for the project by 140 percent to $410 million.

The $240 million increase is the largest commitment of new debt authority in the school’s history. And it comes at a time when UC already is struggling under the weight of a $1.2 billion debt load.

Humes, a local land developer, said he voted for the increase hesitantly because he was concerned about the cost increase. (Ya think? — Ed.)

….. Humes said trustees believe UC’s administration is “doing the best job that it can in dealing with the situation,” but trustees were disappointed to learn the scope of new overruns in the medical sciences building renovation.

“That’s always bothersome when that happens…..”

You can’t make up quotes like that final gem from Humes.

The Business Courier deserves credit for at least running substantive stories on UC. But amazingly, the Courier’s reports, as well as the Enquirer puff piece noted above, all have one notable omission — Nancy Zimpher’s name is nowhere to be found. How does that happen? Is she not in charge? How can she possibly have no accountability for the mushrooming overruns and the 6-month delay in reporting problems to the trustees?

Oh, Nancy DID get mentioned in the Courier, in connection with yet another proposed construction project (bold is mine):

University of Cincinnati President Nancy Zimpher recently endorsed Cincinnati’s new streetcar initiative, in a speech to the Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce.

“We want the trolley all the way up the hill,” Zimpher recently told a crowd of several hundred civic and business leaders at the Chamber’s annual meeting. Zimpher wants UC’s 35,000 students and 14,000 employees to be able to take a short trip down Vine Street to visit Findlay Market, Fountain Square and Over-the-Rhine’s Brewery District.

Zimpher’s endorsement of Cincinnati’s latest rail initiative “gives it a great deal of additional credibility,” said Cincinnati Councilman Chris Bortz, who said a rail link to Uptown should be a top priority for rail planners. He estimates it would cost about $80 million to extend the streetcar line up Vine Street.

Don’t get me wrong. The trolley could make sense, but Nancy’s endorsement is the last place I’d be looking to if I wanted to bolster its “credibility.”

Why should we not think that the free pass bonus- and pay raise-laden pass that Nancy Zimpher is getting from the Cincinnati Enquirer, aka the Invisibler, is totally related to the fact that Enquirer Publisher Maggie Buchanan is on UC’s Board of Trustees? For cryin’ out loud, the Enquirer couldn’t even squeeze the word “bonus” into its headline (or Witt’s letter), even though the story was about Zimpher’s raise AND bonus.

In Cleveland there’s at least some debate over the propriety of the Plain Dealer’s publisher sitting on the Cleveland Clinic’s board (the link to the original PD news item is, ahem, bare). In Cincinnati, it’s “Conflict? What conflict?”