The Observation Deck

What a meeting tonight! I would first like to thank Councilman Anderson, Councilwoman Marx, Councilman O'Leary, and Councilman Nowlin for being respectful to the citizens of Lakewood. As for Mr. Juris and Ms. Madigan, they get an F grade from me in regards to respect.

First, there were two women tonight who spoke about making changes to Lakewood's breed-specific legislation. It appeared to me that Ms. Madigan was extremely cordial to these two women and even gave one of them roughly six and a half minutes to speak (more than the allotted time, which I recall to be five minutes).

When Marguerite Harkness, CPA got up to speak, I felt that Ms. Madigan was extremely curt when trying to cut her off. At this time, another citizen stood and said that she was giving her speaking time to Ms. Harkness. Ms. Madigan refused to allow this. Ms. Harkness then simply continued to speak, since the woman speaking about BSL was given more than the allowed amount of time. Then, I recall Mr. Juris standing up and turning the citizen's microphone off and the legislative liaison pulling its plug from the wall. By this time, numerous citizens were protesting against the behavior of Juris & Madigan. At some point during this chaos, I recall Ms. Madigan threatening to have the citizens escorted out by the police. After this, I believe it was Mr. Juris that came back into the room and shouted to the citizens at the top of his lungs. Eventually, everything calmed down somehow.

Now that the juicy part is over, I will explain what transpired prior to this. When public session began, I said that I wanted to know why Mayor Summers missed the October 1st deadline that the MetroHealth System had earlier informed him of, to conclude negotiations with MetroHealth to run Lakewood Hospital. I also asked why he was refusing to let the public have a copy of that proposal that was killed because he missed the deadline.I also asked what the second proposal from MetroHealth was. Ms. Madigan then informed me that the meeting was not a question-and-answer session but that she would ask the mayor to answer at the end of the meeting. At the end of the meeting, I recall the mayor's only comment was that he didn't know anything about a second proposal from MetroHealth and that if someone in the audience had a copy, that he would love to see one. However, he never volunteered to release a copy of the first proposal for the citizens to view.

Save Lakewood Hospital put many hours into doing reseach and doing an economic impact study, as well as taking a tour of the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Medical Center, which is similar to what we would have in Lakewood. In my opinion, this is research that should have been done by council.

As for Ms. Madigan and Mr. Juris, I was appalled by their behavior.

I've been saying what an asshole Shawn Juris is for years. So glad this idiot is not running for reelection. What a loser. Don't these people realize that THEY WORK FOR US!!

Lori Allen _ wrote:Save Lakewood Hospital put many hours into doing reseach and doing an economic impact study, as well as taking a tour of the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Medical Center, which is similar to what we would have in Lakewood. In my opinion, this is research that should have been done by council.

As for Ms. Madigan and Mr. Juris, I was appalled by their behavior.

A couple of nurses and others from Save Lakewood Hospital visited the Stephanie Stubbs Jones family health center in East Cleveland. It is a 50,000 square foot facility that was built after the hospital was torn down. The short version of their findings is that there are about 100 employees. Most are nurses, nurse's assistants, physician assistants, 2 doctors and no specialists. Their opinion was that the facility was a referral facility. If a patient needed anything more than routine care that could be provided in a routine doctors visit they were referred to another clinic facility.

The first stop a patient makes is at the Financial Triage Desk. If a patient does not have insurance they are refused service and directed to the free clinic.

This is what the Clinic has in mind for Lakewood. So a Lakewood patient will go to the new health center, pay for parking, pay the facility fee and pay the deductible and then be told to go to Avon. At what point do patients just go to Avon in the first place? Does the Clinic then announce cutbacks at the Lakewood Family health center because of a lack of use. Bet on it.

The Clinic intends to close the Hospital no matter what action Council takes. Their intent is to control the $34 million foundation, deplete the $50 million in LHA investments, keep out the competition and send Lakewood’s medical business to Lorain County.

Please say no to this bad deal.

Amy Martin wrote:I've been saying what an asshole Shawn Juris is for years. So glad this idiot is not running for reelection. What a loser. Don't these people realize that THEY WORK FOR US!!

Bill Call wrote:
The Clinic intends to close the Hospital no matter what action Council takes. Their intent is to control the $34 million foundation, deplete the $50 million in LHA investments, keep out the competition and send Lakewood’s medical business to Lorain County.

Please say no to this bad deal.

Bill

The Clinic is prepared to honor its contract through 2026. The Clinic was not the one demanding
out of its contract. Mayor Summers and Councilperson Madigan are driving the bus.

The Clinic has no plans for the $34 Million the Foundation has. That along with another $24
million will be snapped up the the "Do Not Call It A Rec Center/Refer To Soccer Fields As
Greens Space" Active Living Task Force Charade.

And yes, the Clinic is more than happy grabbing the LHA's $53 million, because Mayor
Summers and Councilperson Madigan are pushing them to do so.

Would you say no to $53 million? It is like the building on Hillard you always hated the
Clinic for taking for FREE from the City of Lakewood.

Our enemy is not the Cleveland Clinic, it is our elected officials.

.

Bill

I have a couple questions for you.

1) If the City was offering you $3 million in property for free would you wake it?

2) If you had a contract with anyone that could cost $35 million out of pocket over 10 years
and they offered to pay you, $75 million in assets, give you a huge chunk of property, and
allow you to have an exclusive territory for your business, would you take it?

We both know how committees work, all sorts of people get put on for all sorts of reasons.
Some are up to snuff, and some like me have no business being on them. So it is hard for
me to fault the Lakewood Hospital Association for their lack luster job of keeping the Clinic
to task on the contract.

HOWEVER, there were 3 elected officials that were their to protect the City of Lakewood and
to make sure, the Lakewood Hospital Association and The Cleveland Clinic were keeping
their end of the contract. These officials were elected to protect and serve the voters,
they are our first line of defense in this entire process. Nothing went out of the hospital,
not services, not patients, not plans without them knowing it and approving it.

The Fact that two of them mislead, were less that truthful, well lied and said none of it was
true, and that it was just a rumor is not forgivable. They were not lying to just me, it was
just that I was the one that knew they were lying.

The Clinic was ready to release all details in September 2014. It was our elected officials
that conspired to keep the truth from us, and other council members even when asked.

This deal stinks, and the stench is coming from City Hall.

They take an oath.

WTF!

.

Are there any images of Ms. Madigan and Mr. Juris attempting to squash free speech? Do they still televise these Council meetings? Just for the record Mr. Summers and Mr. Siley, with Ms. Madigan in attendance, pulled this crap on the residence of Grace at a Planning Commission meeting. Without any prior notice they curtailed our right to speak by imposing a 3 minute limit on each resident. A very effective tactic if you're attempting to end serious, honest discourse and make no mistake that's exactly what this clique is about.

m buckley wrote:Are there any images of Ms. Madigan and Mr. Juris attempting to squash free speech? Do they still televise these Council meetings? Just for the record Mr. Summers and Mr. Siley, with Ms. Madigan in attendance, pulled this crap on the residence of Grace at a Planning Commission meeting. Without any prior notice they curtailed our right to speak by imposing a 3 minute limit on each resident. A very effective tactic if you're attempting to end serious, honest discourse and make no mistake that's exactly what this clique is about.

Hi Mark,

I believe do have some cell phone video footage and some audio recordings of the aforementioned behavior. It will take me a few days to get it on my computer and all together.

Thanks, Scott.

I've been following Lakewood Council since 1991.

Juris is the worst council member we've had in those 24 years.

Thank you Lori Allen for posting this story and thank you Scott Meeson for posting the video. Mr. Juris, you're a lout. The fact that you felt comfortable unplugging the microphone on a Lakewood resident and subsequently walking out of the room reaches a level of disrespect that speaks volumes about you and the administration you support. I would add that it is not lost on anyone that Ms. Madigan ran this meeting and that at no point felt compelled to control Mr. Juris's actions. Again this speaks volumes about the political culture Mr. Summers has established. You're bankrupt, the lot of you. It becomes increasingly obvious with each passing day.

I would like to mention one more issue that I noticed at this meeting. Not only did it appear that the Mayor had no intentions of answering any questions his citizens asked of him, he also sat by and appeared to stare into space and let all this chaos transpire. I believe that perhaps maybe Mr. Summers is not running this city anymore. If he is, I feel his lack of leadership at this meeting should make every Lakewood resident wonder , do you want this type of leadership to continue? We do have an election coming up in November.

By the way, since Ms. Madigan appeared to state to many residents who tried to speak at this meeting, "this is not a question and answer session", I would like to ask, where then, Ms. Madigan do we go with our questions?

I believe that we would be told to speak with the Citizen's Questions Board member by the name of Helen Wait!

The disrespect that comes across on the video is some of the shouts from the ladies in the audience. Maybe that's commonplace at these things; I don't go to them (shame on me).

todd vainisi wrote:The disrespect that comes across on the video is some of the shouts from the ladies in the audience. Maybe that's commonplace at these things; I don't go to them (shame on me).

Todd

Civic Discourse should come with civic respect. Generally in Lakewood it does, however every
once in awhile things raise to war like stature. Depending on the amount of time, the pressure
can grow, and find ways to release itself. And example of this would be Chickens. Working in
public over the course of years the pro-Chicken people made a case, and handled everything
properly in the light of day and got their test. There were heated debates but the eruptions
were kept to a minimum. Process in the open, legal with representation.

The hospital deal is not this. It was done in secret with no real reason I can see except,
that every party pushing it knew it would cause an uproar. So if you condense the amount
of time people know, and increase the potential outcome, lost jobs, health uncertainity and
a certain hike in taxes, fuses get short.

Cut a person off in mid-sentence for an arbitrary time limit imposed in very few other cities
and the frustration grows. Act like you are board or put off by the words of the people that
elected you to public office, and the frustration grows and grows and grows.

There is no excuse for this, but ELECTED OFFICIALS signed up for it. Residents did not.

Elected officials run to be servants of the community, and represent the community. No
one in the audience ran to get screwed in a bad deal by people way over their pay grade.
No one in the audience was looking to sit their on a Monday to save the city from ruination.

When you get pulled away from Dancing with The Stars to babysit public officials that have
no love for what they do and even less for the people they represent it gets frustrating.

I have to be honest I have never in all my travels in all the cities we have papers, seen
another group of elected officials that fear and hide from open discussion as much as
Lakewood elected officials. They will never walk outside of their comfort zone for an honest
discussion with the people that elected them.

Last November I wrote that 2016 will be the most contentious summer in the history of
Lakewood. Believe me it hasn't even started, its going to get ugly.

.

Jim O'Bryan wrote:When you get pulled away from Dancing with The Stars to babysit public officials that have
no love for what they do and even less for the people they represent it gets frustrating.

.

Yep!