The Observation Deck

I want to invite all Observers to visit my mayoral campaign website at www.fitzgeraldforlakewood.com. Although it is still a work in progress, I think it helps define some of my qualifications, accomplishments, and differences with the current administration. As the year progresses, I hope to continually add more content to this site and use it as an interactive tool to communicate with Lakewood voters.

I welcome any suggestions you might have, and feel free to contact me either through the site or by emailing the campaign at info@fitzgeraldforlakewood.com.

Thanks for your consideration.

I had not received any response yet to my post from 4 days ago: "Who is running for mayor? Who should be elected?" so thank you, Councilman Fitzgerald, for letting us know about your website. I will check it out.

Doug

Mr. Fitzgerald,

I recently attended a seminar where a well known, well respected Lakewoodite mentioned that local municipalities fighting amongst themselves while Cleveland was languishing could be compared to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We are all well aware of the mayor's convictions regarding regionalization and whether Lakewood should participate in regional efforts vs. Lakewood-centric effort and to what degree.

Can you please define your thoughts on this as well?

Thank you.
Charyn Compeau
Lakewood Voter

Thanks Ed for sharing the website. I tried to sign up for the e-mail list, but I got an error message.

I have no idea why, but I'm a junkie for signing up for political candidate mailing lists lol.

This should be an interesting race this year…I think there will be some good choices.

Bryan,

Sorry for the error message...we're working on it! If you notice any other errors, please let me know. I will be fleshing out all of the content in the coming months.

Charyn- I actually don't know about the mayor's convictions on regionalization. As was recently disclosed to City Council, after inheriting a 6 million dollar surplus from the last mayor, the next mayor is estimated to inherit a 2 million dollar deficit. Some minor sharing of resources occurred in the last four years, but nothing transformative. The key is to preserve Lakewood's individuality and sovereignty, so to speak, while achieving economies of scale.

I think the perfect test case for this would be Winterhurst. Winterhurst is already a regional facility in many ways, but only Lakewood pays for its upkeep and employees. Its a great deal for hockey players from Bay Village, who only have to pay for ice time, while we pay for everything else. As in other areas, our policy with Winterhurst has seemed to just drift, and there's been no real effort to make something happen with surrounding communities. If we want to preserve Winterhurst, which I believe we should, and other equally valuable city services, we need to actually take the lead in finding innovative solutions which preserve our Lakewood-centric approach to city services and quality of life.