The Observation Deck

As we approach warmer weather and Easter Weekend we proudly give you Lakewood Observer, Volume 21, Issue 8. A great look back and forward on the city we all love, Lakewood, Ohio.

It pains me to say, we still have letters and articles about the School Debacle, or their so called “Committee” over closing Grant errrrr 1-3 schools, which means Grant if you have watched the people behind this debacle. I could fill newspaper after newspaper with residents begging the BOE for the truth, or real facts.

It breaks my heart that Lakewood has to go through this time and time again, always pitting elected officials against residents, though to be honest, neither of them actually cause it. Most of these massive failures like the 50-Year-Committee (wasting $60+ million in public funding), or the “BuildLakewood” hospital debacle (costing Lakewood residents over $283 million in losses), the ill-fated “Way Finding” (only a loss of $150,000) and others like the failed “West End Strip Mall, High End Shopping (Marc’s Plaza) and others, and it gets downright embarrassing the dollars a small group have cost this city.

Lakewood, especially in recent years, has generated a type of parasitical/predator to host/victim relationship-- that allows these people to not only start these nightmares, but financially and in other ways benefit greatly by the city’s losses. Each time the parasite promises “rec centers,” “high end shopping,” “a new Shangri-La like experience.” While each time delivering nearly nothing, but awards to the parasites from the parasites for their expertise at fleecing Lakewood.

If you go back and look at the lowest points for Lakewood, and the committees involved, and you will see the same couple of names jump out at you, being in the background starting the nightmare, cheering for it all along the way, and then family and friends profiting from it, while the rest of us hold the bill for another round of fleecing, parties, and self-awarded trophies for their "good work."

Now if you will, imagine Lakewood, Ohio, with a working full-service hospital in the center of town, and nearly $400 million in our rainy day fund.

Are you starting to understand just how far down they have dragged this amazing city?

While you ponder that, check out the latest issues with some amazing stories from one of Lakewood's seniors heading off to Cairo, while another family headed to France for their medical system. This issue also has positive news from the schools, and non-profits, and some info from new businesses opening, and long time Lakewood businesses closing.

Please take the time to pick up this latest information from one of our 100+ delivery points, and or download the digital version here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.lakewood ... sue_08.pdf

See you in two weeks, enjoy the warming trend.

I want to take a moment to amplify a couple of points that Jim O'Bryan has just remined us of.

For the past decade or more, we have witnessed the naked cannibalization of our City's public assets and real estate for projects that rarely, if ever develop, even when generously cascaded with tax subsidies or tax benefits or other financial inducements made at the public's expense.

We have witnessed constant giveaways of public property that go nowhere. Obviously, closing one or more of our schools is just more of the same. Another misguided dead-end.

The loss of Lakewood Hospital and its demolition on the brink of a global pandemic still shouts at all of us as does the constant embarrassment of the years-long vacancy of the lot at the corner of Detroit & Belle.

Failure writ large.

As an observant resident of Lakewood, I know that our future is a future without a public hospital and now a future without adequate facilities for our basic primary educational needs.

What is the value of "walkable" streets without the basic infrastructure of healthcare and education? Need I say more.