First time I saw it, I thought it was odd. Now, I’m just laughing as the Dayton Daily News continues to show how out of touch it is.

We no longer have suburbs of Dayton- they are now Montgomery County cities:

WEST CARROLLTON — A vapor leak is getting the early blame for an explosion that rocked the Veolia Environmental Services plant in this Montgomery County city early Monday, May 4,

via Chemical plant explosion: What went wrong?.

Of course, people have joked about the DDN printing plant in Warren County ever since it opened, but in terms of informing the public, this new style change is confusing.

Ask anyone outside Ohio where Montgomery County, Ohio, is- and they’ll have no clue. In fact, there are only a few counties nationwide that people may know: Dade in Florida, Orange in California- am I missing any others?

It’s bad enough that we have to suffer the term “Miami Valley” which most people think has something to do with Florida (one of the reasons RTA ditched it from their moniker), and that we insist on using the term “greater Dayton” to refer to the Greater Metropolitan Area- when Dayton is fine and does the job- as if there is also a “lesser Dayton.”

If we want pride back in out city, and to re-establish our community as a powerful cog in the global economy, let’s get the first thing straight: we’re all from Dayton, and if we were smart, we’d ditch all our ‘burbs with their mom-n-pop councils and have one, strong, regional government (UniGov) that gets the big picture.

Bill Pote at Dayton Most Metro just tweeted this:

If Montgomery County consolidated into one city, it would be the second largest city in Ohio and 32nd largest in the country

That’s the kind of thinking we need. We shouldn’t expect much from the Mont/Warren County Daily News.