Headlines about the twists in Cincinnati's stadium saga have screamed almost daily from newspapers for the past 10 days.
As the elected officials argue, there are signs the public grows more and more tired of the whole thing.
Some are trying to tune it out. Others think the stadiums are a misplaced priority and a waste of tax money.
Still others are confident it will work out but are frustrated that the sales tax to build new stadiums for the Bengals and Reds was passed in March 1996, but construction has not begun on either one.
''It sounds like a bunch of children fighting in a sandbox,'' said Charlie Seipelt of Milford, a Bengals season ticket holder for the past 29 years. ''That's what it is. A playground squabble.''
He ought to know. Mr. Seipelt is a retired elementary school principal. He also is one of thousands of Bengals fans who have made initial payments for their ''charter ownership agreements,'' the seat licenses they must buy to get season tickets for the new stadium.
All the arguing and delays make him wonder whether he should make his next payment. After all, if the city and county can't reach a riverfront development deal by Jan. 31, Bengals President Mike Brown has said he'll kill the stadium deal.
''I bought my seat licenses to protect what we have here,'' Mr. Seipelt said. ''But the handwriting's on the wall, and I don't blame Mike Brown. We're very prime for picking right now. We don't have the market.''
Mr. Seipelt worries that if the Bengals leave town, Cincinnati could never get another NFL team.
Rose Nelson's attitude is, ''so what?''
She is president of the Bond Hill Community Council, and she thinks leaders should be spending less time on stadiums and more time and money on schools and young people.
''The Bengals - let them go,'' she said. ''If I'm a football fan, I can cheer the Cleveland Bengals just as easily as I can cheer the Cincinnati Bengals.''
The Rev. Carolyn Ford-Griffith, pastor of Hope Temple in Evanston, agrees that there are more important community needs than stadiums. Low-income inner-city residents won't be able to afford to go to new stadiums anyway, she said.
''They are making the wrong thing the priority,'' she said. ''It should be the people - especially our young people.''
A number of area religious leaders are disappointed that the stadium deal has yet to produce the money for schools that its backers promised during the 1996 campaign to raise the sales tax by a half-cent to fund stadium construction.
The Rev. Duane Holm, director of the Metropolitan Area Religious Coalition and a Presbyterian minister, said the ''lack of opposition'' that religious leaders gave the tax ''has not been rewarded.''
He joked that Christians and stadiums make for ''an uneasy mix'' anyway.
''You figure that Christians started out with kind of an antipathy for coliseums because they had a bad experience with them in the first century,'' he said.
While many people are disappointed that city council hasn't yet figured out how to give money to the public schools as part of the stadium deal, others think the city should ''hang tough'' in its negotiations with the county, said Thomas Choquette, director of the office of social action and world peace for the Cincinnati Archdiocese.
''There's some feeling that the stadium deal wasn't in the best interests of the people,'' he said, ''that maybe the city is balancing things out a little bit.''
Jay Buchert, a local developer and Regional Planning Commission member, said his sense is that much of the public still is supportive of the ''Keep Cincinnati a Major League City'' premise that helped pass the sales tax increase.
''They're just not happy with how this thing has progressed since the vote,'' he said.
Like most everyone else, Mr. Buchert talked to family and friends around dinner tables and living rooms over the holidays. People are frustrated, he and others said, as is evidenced by the steady stream of stadium bashing on talk radio.
''The general feeling in the business community is, 'Let's get on with it,' '' said John Williams, president of the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce.
Eugene P. Ruehlmann, the former Cincinnati mayor who went through all this three decades ago while planning the stadium now known as Cinergy Field, thinks the city and county ought to set up a separate body to study snags in the stadium project and make recommendations to the elected officials.
Mr. Buchert thinks so, too. He said such a body could represent a broader cross-section of the community and handle the stadium controversies more openly with public hearings.
''It is inevitable when there is a project of this magnitude that there are going to be matters that arise that the parties did not anticipate or contemplate,'' Mr. Ruehlmann said.
Mr. Ruehlmann said he thinks much of the community's frustration will fade once construction starts.
''While Riverfront was being built, it was known as 'Ruehlmann's white elephant,' '' Mr. Ruehlmann recalled. ''After it opened, it became our stadium.''
John Kirby, for one, figures that day will come. Though he did not support the tax increase to fund stadium construction, Mr. Kirby said he hasn't spent time getting angry over it.
''I think I've kind of tuned it out,'' said Mr. Kirby, business administrator for Kenwood Baptist Church. ''I'm just going to wait and see what happens, and I'll read some day that it's all worked out.''
Recent stadium developments
