Another Regionalization Story In The PD

[Bill Call]

From the article:

http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/ ... te_un.html


"Home rule is taken to mean, 'It’s your problem, you fix it,' " Bier says in his presentation.


Many of the problems caused by suburban sprawl are caused by the very regional institutions that the PD thinks should be running the show.

1. Tri-C is locating a new campus on the borders of Lorain County and another in Brunswick in Medina County. Why live in Cuyahoga County and pay taxes to support Tri-C when Tri-C is building in communities that don’t pay the taxes that support it. A few years ago Akron University was looking to offer classes in Lakewood. At that time both Tri-c and CSU did all they could to stop that proposal. They told Suzanne Metelko and the City Council that there was no need for Akron University to build in Lakewood because they both had plans to build in Lakewood. Of course they never did. What if they kept that promise and built that Lorain campus on Detroit Avenue? The campus would have been in the center of a heavily populated City with easy access to public transportation, plenty of affordable housing and more. Instead Tri-C chose to build in the middle of an industrial park on the borders of Lorain County. Did that action discourage the move to the Exurbs?

2. People who live in a City like Lakewood are for the most part very happy with the housing and the services and the location. What drives many to leave is the fear that the middle class will be replaced with the welfare class with all that means for schools, property values and crime rates. People are leaving in large part because of the fear of “changing neighborhoods”. So what is the policy of our regional institutions? Well, Mental Health services has what I call a homeless resettlement program. They are relocating the homeless and mentally ill who were housed in their facilities in Tremont to neighborhoods in Lakewood. What does that do to a neighborhood? Other County agencies are busy converting apartments in Lakewood into halfway houses. Does that type of program instill confidence in a City?

3. Then there is Catholic Charities and the State Department which both have programs to move refugees into Lakewood. The Sun Post did a short on the article the affect those policies have on a school district. They mentioned that many of the refugees have limited knowledge of English and very little knowledge of indoor plumbing. Lakewood is on its own when trying to provide an adequate education to those children. How much stress can a school systems take?

4. A while back there was some talk of regionalizing fire departments. I wasn’t surprised to find that the study found that regionalizing fire departments wouldn’t save much. I could have told them that before they spent one dime. A regional fire department that operates under the same rules and wages and benefit structure will just be a larger bloated bureaucracy. If our local leaders would challenge the current union culture they could save tons of money with or without regionalization. Regionalizing under the current rules saves nothing. Are any of our regional leaders willing to challenge those unions?

5. The guy that operates a business in Lakewood lives in Cleveland Heights. His wife just had a baby. He was upset that University Hospitals was moving her doctor from Cleveland Heights to a new facility on 271. The Clinic is busy moving Lakewood doctors and specialists to Avon. Is that regionalism in action? Does that encourage people to stay in Lakewood?

6. NOACA has spent over one billion dollars to widen freeways and increase the number of freeway inner changes but Lakewood can’t get 10 cents in redevelopment dollars. Do wider freeways encourage out migration or am I missing something?

If our regional institutions are busy moving jobs, infrastructure and economic activity to the exurbs why should the people stay behind?


If our current regional institutions are busy moving to the exurbs why should the people stay behind?