RoboWinburn

Charlie Winburn's making big use of robo-calling already. And you thought the election was still more than three months away.



He's auto-dialing households where people have birthdays. "Hello, this is Charlie Winburn," the familiar voice says. "I understand that there is a birthday in your household this month. And the Winburn family would like to wish this person a very happy birthday."



A friend got one of those Wednesday, the day before her birthday.



Then today, Winburn was on the horn again. This time, he asks that you join him in thanking Mayor Mark Mallory and Stan Chesley for Chesley's $80,000 contribution to keep the city's pools open more days. Many were set to close this week before the king of torts chipped in.



In the call, he seems to target Jeff Berding, urging people to call Berding's council office to say that council should keep all the pools open until Labor Day. Berding's not sure why Winburn would choose him, given that all of council voted for the current budget, which set the Cincinnati Recreation Commission's pool spending. In fact, Berding says, the initial budget he and others proposed last year - which he says reflected what he preferred to do on this issue - recommended closing several pools the rec commission said weren't well-used. Closing those, he said, would have kept the rest open until Labor Day. That budget proposed closing fewer than the nine proposed for closure by City Manager Milton Dohoney.



On the floor of council yesterday, Berding said he thinks all nine council members understand the importance of keeping pools open and that he thinks they'll be able to make that work in next year's budget.



So he isn't sure why Winburn would pick his City Hall office to send callers to. He said Winburn called his office yesterday to tell him he was starting the automated calling. Berding said he returned Winburn's call, but never heard back from him.