Cincinnati City Council members want us all to applaud them for approving the soccer stadium zoning, making a displaced restaurant owner "whole" and facilitating a good-neighbor agreement with the ballet.

Sorry, they don't deserve it.

Here are my parting thoughts on the stadium issue:

Taxpayers lost.

Council continues to arbitrarily hand out tax dollars all to pander for votes and feel better about themselves.

Staring at a potential $19 million deficit in the upcoming budget, P.G. Sittenfeld, Tamaya Dennard, Greg Landsman, Wendell Young, David Mann and Jeff Pastor voted to dig into the reserves and give Just Cookin' owner Monica Williams $75,000. (Amy Murray was the lone opposing vote among Council members who were present on Thursday.) That'd be a nice salary for a cop or road worker, who could help fill all the crater-sized potholes across the city.

Can't blame Williams for asking City Hall for money. But it's on Council to say no, especially after FC Cincinnati came around and increased its offer to the West End restaurateur to $150,000. The team had already given Williams $20,000 a few months ago, and Landsman did a good job the past week facilitating negotiations between the team and restaurant owner.

It's tough for small restaurants and retail shops to sustain success, typically making them bad government investments. For that matter, stadiums are also bad municipal investments but last year's $34 million taxpayer handout to FC Cincinnati triggered a $250 million private investment.

But anyway, giving Williams public money sets a bad precedent. Now every time there's a development project that calls for displacing a small business, will Council hold up zoning votes to allow a three-way game of extortion to be played between the small business, developer and government?

Council is clueless about development.

In retrospect, the zoning vote shouldn't have been delayed for a week. Council presented it as a reasonable pause to allow FC Cincinnati to work through separate issues with Just Cookin' and the ballet.

It turned out to be a government overreach to allow those organizations time to get money out of FC Cincinnati. I have no problem with Just Cookin' and the ballet asking the soccer club for money to relocate. Those are dealings between private organizations.

The problem, however, is Council butting in on private business dealings and holding up votes. We've now seen extortion attempts on the city's last two major development projects – the stadium and Children's Hospital's expansion. These hometown organizations are investing nearly $1 billion in private money in the city's urban core – and yet some of the so-called progressives nearly sunk both projects.

Council on Thursday started to have a broader conversation about how development should be done. It's a conversation that should've started in August 2017, when then-Councilwoman Yvette Simpson demanded Children's hand out $16 million to a neighborhood. That nearly tanked a $550 million deal.

It's overdue that Mayor John Cranley and City Council figure out how the city is going to do development moving forward. These folks love to create task forces, so why hasn't one been formed to look at this issue? Why haven't these problems been addressed on a deeper level in Council committees?

It's the elephant in the room. Face it. Address it. This would be a good issue for Sittenfeld or Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman to take on, an opportunity to show they're capable of tackling a complex problem ahead of the 2021 mayor's race.

I've said this before: City Council is damn lucky FC Cincinnati's ownership group and Children's Hospital are hometown organizations that are bullish about the city's urban-core renaissance. Otherwise, the city could've lost the stadium to Northern Kentucky and the Children's expansion to Liberty Township.

How long will the luck last? Mark my word, companies will start to overlook Cincinnati if Council keeps doing business this way.

PX column: Chamber puts City Council on notice about progressive policies

PX column: Sittenfeld's big chance to prove he's capable of being next mayor

MICROSCOOPS

• NAME TO REMEMBER: I'm hearing the Democrats are looking at Mason resident Nikki Foster as a potential candidate to run against Steve Chabot in the 1st Congressional District next year. Foster is an Air Force veteran who flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Voters tend to like military veteran candidates. The Dems are hoping to capitalize on the expected resistance to Donald Trump and receive suburban women crossover votes, further making Foster a potential strong candidate. Foster, who works for GE Aviation, ran unsuccessfully for an Ohio House seat last year. Washington Democrats are recruiting candidates to run against Chabot, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is talking with state lawmaker and Hyde Park resident Brigid Kelly.

• COMING BACK? 700 WLW talk show host Rocky Boiman, a former Green Township trustee, has been calling and meeting with GOP donors and leaders in recent weeks to gauge whether he should run for office in 2020. "I know some day I will get back into it," Boiman said. "I don’t know where or when that is yet. Right now, I'm very happy with what I'm doing at WLW and ESPN." Boiman has expressed interest in running for congress after Chabot leaves office. The former NFL linebacker also could look at running for Hamilton County commissioner.

• RECOMMENDATIONS: The Hamilton County GOP has recommended three names for Gov. Mike DeWine to consider as Judge Robert Winkler's replacement on the common pleas court: Elizabeth Simmons Callan, Elisa Murphy and Steve Goodin. Winkler has moved over to the court of appeals, and his old seat is up in 2020. The GOP is placing an emphasis on recruiting women candidates to try to stave off the expected Trump resistance.

• NEW JOB: Congrats to Cincinnati native Sam Herd, named chief of staff for the Ohio House Democratic Caucus. The University of Cincinnati graduate was a staffer in former Mayor Charlie Luken's administration and has gone on to hold several roles in Ohio politics and government.

Listen to Jason's That's So Cincinnati podcast on iTunes. Twitter: @jwilliamscincy. Email: jwilliams@enquirer.com