The Observation Deck

Over 50,000 people still, that's important.

That's great news!

Unless the rules have changed, 50K is the magic number.
Cities at or above 50K qualify for Federal CDBG funds, which are important for things like street repaving.

Mike Deneen wrote:That's great news!

Unless the rules have changed, 50K is the magic number.
Cities at or above 50K qualify for Federal CDBG funds, which are important for things like street repaving.

And redoing the front of Geiger's!

I do not see reason to celebrate to be honest.

Here we are sitting in the "Best Suburb In Cuyahoga County" in one of the "Top Ten
Coolest Cities To Visit" and we are excited about decline?

I know I personally think I can do a better job of attracting people.

Where is the payoff, for all the money we have spent on?????????

FWIW


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Jim O'Bryan wrote:

Mike Deneen wrote:That's great news!

Unless the rules have changed, 50K is the magic number.
Cities at or above 50K qualify for Federal CDBG funds, which are important for things like street repaving.

And redoing the front of Geiger's!

I do not see reason to celebrate to be honest.

Here we are sitting in the "Best Suburb In Cuyahoga County" in one of the "Top Ten
Coolest Cities To Visit" and we are excited about decline?

I know I personally think I can do a better job of attracting people.

Where is the payoff, for all the money we have spent on?????????

FWIW


.

Well a few things to consider Jim. First, our decline was much lower than the rest of the county as a whole, so not too bad since the entire region is losing people.

Second, over the majority of the past decade Lakewood was under, how to I put this nicely, subpar mayoral leadership at best. All the positive press is a very recent, and well deserved, phenomena. Let's see what happens if we manage to elect competent leaders consistently over the next decade.

Ultimately though, population loss is a regional issue (sorry for using the R-word). Lakewood alone is not going to change the trend, it's something northeast Ohio needs to figure out together.

Bryan Schwegler wrote:

Jim O'Bryan wrote:

Mike Deneen wrote:That's great news!

Unless the rules have changed, 50K is the magic number.
Cities at or above 50K qualify for Federal CDBG funds, which are important for things like street repaving.

And redoing the front of Geiger's!

I do not see reason to celebrate to be honest.

Here we are sitting in the "Best Suburb In Cuyahoga County" in one of the "Top Ten
Coolest Cities To Visit" and we are excited about decline?

I know I personally think I can do a better job of attracting people.

Where is the payoff, for all the money we have spent on?????????

FWIW


.

Well a few things to consider Jim. First, our decline was much lower than the rest of the county as a whole, so not too bad since the entire region is losing people.

Second, over the majority of the past decade Lakewood was under, how to I put this nicely, subpar mayoral leadership at best. All the positive press is a very recent, and well deserved, phenomena. Let's see what happens if we manage to elect competent leaders consistently over the next decade.

Ultimately though, population loss is a regional issue (sorry for using the R-word). Lakewood alone is not going to change the trend, it's something northeast Ohio needs to figure out together.

Wow, Jim and Bryan, I have questions for both of you. Please forgive me as I still feel myself as being pretty new to the some parts of the scene in Lakewood.

Jim, what do you mean by, "I know I personally think I can do a better job of attracting people. Where is the payoff, for all the money we have spent on?????????"

It seems like here you are saying that we, and by that you mean, we, the City? We, the taxpayers? have spent money, "all the money", on trying to attract people, so our population numbers would be higher? What money have we spent? On what? How much? Who spent it? The census number is terrifying. We are ONE HUNDRED people over the number we need not to lose our status as a city? I agree with you that that's not something to celebrate. You say you could do a better job of attracting people. What would you do? What money would you use? I kind of need you to set the scene here to understand what you're talking about.

Bryan,

I agree with you, and am relieved that the decline here is less than it is in this area overall. One of my Facebook 'Friends' has characterized Cleveland's change in population as, "last one here, turn out the lights". In no way do I feel that there is some kind of an exodus from Lakewood going on. Overall, the people I interact with seem happy to be here. They are mostly parents which has to be a good thing; everyone in my gang is very focused on bringing up the next generation-- and Lakewood, though not completely ideal-- is a pretty good place. We want to raise our families here.

My question is, why do you say our leadership has been subpar? I know that Ed Fitzgerald is so ambitious that you have to wonder how much time he had for his hometown, at the same time, he held the fort, and seemed to be pretty straightforward in terms of decisions that had to be made in terms of the budget, etc, which is a good thing. What do you think we could be with good leadership-- or as you put it, "competent leaders"? How would that be different from now? I can answer that question in terms of what I would like to see from the School Board and the School District, because that's what I've spent most of my time focusing on. I would love to know what that would look like from the city, or should I say, the City...?

Thank you both.

Betsy Voinovich

Betsy Voinovich wrote:My question is, why do you say our leadership has been subpar?

Hi Betsy,
I don't want to hijack this thread too much being off topic, so I'll give a quick synopsis of what I mean by subpar and a few bullets on what I think are the qualities and necessities of a good leader. Definitely open to discussing more if you want.

So over the last decade-ish, we've had three mayors in Lakewood. Here's my thoughts on each:

• Cain - I was pretty young still when she was mayor and not paying too much attention to the scene yet, but I did have a few dealings with her when I worked for the pools as well as impressions from others. My impression of Cain was that she was pretty abrasive, aggressive, and didn't "play well with others" so to speak. Her West End debacle (which I'm not judging the project, don't want to dredge that up, but rather her handling of if) where she pretty much humiliated the city on 60 Minutes is the capstone of her career.
  
• George - Oh where to begin with him. This is a mayor who over the course of his career squandered a rather large surplus into a huge deficit (which I'm still convinced he tried to hide since the truth of how big it really was didn't come out until Fitz came into office) that crippled the city budget. He lacked charisma, he was not inspirational, he didn't have vision. He also didn't engage the public as he should, he ran when conversations turned difficult, he was unresponsive.
  
• FitzGerald - For better or worse, Fitz was probably the best mayor we had over the last decade. He inherited the giant mess George left and did a pretty good job cleaning it up, especially considering he came in right during the fiscal meltdown and beginning of the "Great Recession". He had a vision, he worked on implementing it. He engaged the public, he was responsive, he was actually the best at being inspiring of the three. His biggest issue was that he is a "ladder climber" as some would call it, looking to advance his career (which is debatable whether that's good or bad) and left the city without completing his term. But I truly believe Lakewood finally started feeling better about itself when he was mayor, it's also when most of the positive press started....coincidence? Maybe.

Mind you, others probably have different opinions of these guys, but those are often colored by personal relationships with the parties. I didn't know any of them. I didn't go to school with any of them. This is my observation from the outside, being completely objective.

So what do I think are the qualities of a good mayor?

• Passion and vision - They need to make Lakewoodites feel good about being Lakewoodites and our future. They need to sell that vision to not only us, but the outside world. Be Reagan or Clinton at the local level, they were great at this.
• Do what you say you're going to do - be honest, forthcoming, and open.
• Be responsive to your constituents and engage with the public, don't hide yourself in the bat cave once you're elected.
• Build a great team and manage them well. The mayor is not good at everything, he needs to get the best people to carry-out his vision. Don't hire your friends or people you know if they're not the best for the job
• And if they did a good job at my first point, they should harness the positive energy they'll have created by engage the people of Lakewood to achieve their goals of moving the city forward.

So that's longer than I wanted it to be, and it still doesn't necessarily contain everything I'd want to say, but it's a start.

Betsy

WOW, everything Bryan said with a couple notations.

Tom George's biggest mistake was letting people continue to think he entered office with a
huge surplus when in fact he did not. Madeline had slow down payment on some major bills
so that it would look like she had a huge surplus which she ran on. When Tom took office he
should have made it clear immediately it was not true.

Tom George's biggest fault, too nice a guy. He never could have made the cuts Ed did. That
said, Ed knew he was not sticking around so making cuts and pretty swing sets helped him
fly into his next gig, where I imagine he will be for a couple years then off to Columbus.

But back to the question you asked.

Lakewood has taken their eye off the ball, and like Jack in the Beanstalk trade his daily
milk supply and living for a handful of magic beans. Which would bring us back to Cain,
for helping us all lose sight of what we do best.

Because of that we have no milk, no way to make money, and while we have waited for
the magic beans, maybe I should say magic beef to grow, what we do best has been
allowed to fall apart and into terrible disrepair. And to understand how and why is
fascinating, but the fastest way is that we were told Economic Development would save
us along with regionalism. Both are false, and anyone should be able to understand why.

The world has lowered the bar with the help of people like Frank Luntz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz who taught the politicals and those
paying attention, it is not your actions but how you describe them. You need not
accomplish anything, merely claim you have. That people can live on frosting, and never
need cake, as long as you keep spooning it to them. So we have the inevitable issue that
we celebrate today. Only losing 1/3 of our population over the last 20 years. We are
supposed to be celebrating our downsizing, when the only thing that matters is our
size and density. We collectively as a city has spent more money on "designing" signage
for 6 blocks of downtown, than we have spent on housing. WE have been told that signs
on I-90 bringing people to Jimmy Johns, the Melt and Geiger's will allow us to survive
grow and prosper! We have been told it is far more important to have crappy strip malls
instead of clean safe housing. I might be wrong, but without the apartments at the end
of Detroit, we just lost our 50,000+. Traded for 60 minimum wage jobs and 32 $200,000
open garage condos.

I bring it up, because Madeline did not just handle it all poorly. But actually started us
down a pathway where instead of getting better and better at what we do, we have
collectively sat around waiting for the beans to grow.

What if instead of over $200,000 for signage downtown, we spent half on cleaning the
streets, and half on advertising Lakewood at colleges, as a great place to move? What if
we had spent 1/10th of what we spent on one wall at Garfield. (This would be us as a city
as we got no reimbursement from the state) into the Historical Society, as opposed to
saving one historical wall? They could by the house they now covet on Edgewater, they
could have bought the Lombardo House, and fixed all the roofs.

You see Bryan and Betsy, we cannot just walk away and say we cannot focus on this or
that. We have to constantly focus, and refocus on what works and what is not working. We
have to collectively look at the critical thought or lack of critical thought that allows
mistakes to happen, and not allow them to grow. We have to understand what Lakewood
is and where it fits in the region without becoming the bitch of the region.

We all can do better, including me.

When people rejoice of managing downsizing, instead of looking to growth, you end up
with a community trying to run people out of town for shiny objects, and every ten years
praying to good they were not too successful in their efforts.

The city needs a plan. The city needs to understand what it is.

I gave up decades ago wanting to be small and dainty. It has served me well.

Time for Lakewood to look in the mirror, and think, what has served us well.

FWIW


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Jim O'Bryan wrote:You see Bryan and Betsy, we cannot just walk away and say we cannot focus on this or
that. We have to constantly focus, and refocus on what works and what is not working. We
have to collectively look at the critical thought or lack of critical thought that allows
mistakes to happen, and not allow them to grow.

Couldn't agree more with this statement. That's why I'm a huge proponent of a city manager style government because you can't effectively make this happen without strong continuity of leadership and I think a city manager has a better chance at that happening than an elected mayoral government....but that's a discussion for another time.

FWIW, historical data and analysis on the long-term successful cities around the country show a very strong correlation between success and consistent, long-term leadership at the top.

Jim O'Bryan wrote:What if instead of over $200,000 for signage downtown

Holy crap. I can tell you one thing - we did not move here for the signs.

I'd say it was a mix of relatively affordable housing (got more bang for the buck than comparables in Cleveland Heights/Shaker Heights), we kind of preferred traffic patterns and places to go on the West side, and wanted to be near downtown but not in Cleveland.

I think going forward concentrating on making the Lakefront more accessible would be a bonus, it's something Lakewood has over all the landlocked burbs we're competing with. But the decline in regional jobs is going to chip at the population no matter what. I'm just lucky I work at a company that is more national and not dependent on the local economy.

Bryan Schwegler wrote:FWIW, historical data and analysis on the long-term successful cities around the country show a very strong correlation between success and consistent, long-term leadership at the top.

Bryan

Of course the key word is leadership. Not ladder climber, not manager, not good friend, but
leadership. I would also believe that many cities have gone south, through constant
"leadership" when the leadership has been, or traveled too far down a road that did not
pan out.

I would not mind city Lakewood try a city manager. Of course my problem is they too are
human and suspectable to all of the same pressures and influences of any mayor. I love
the concept by have watch many companies, "manage" themselves out of business.

FWIW


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Jim O'Bryan wrote:Of course the key word is leadership. Not ladder climber, not manager, not good friend, but
leadership. I would also believe that many cities have gone south, through constant
"leadership" when the leadership has been, or traveled too far down a road that did not
pan out.

Can you lead people where they don't want to go?

The census numbers could have been worse. The City dodged another bullet.

Here is how I see it:

There is limited demand for 100 year old housing.

There is an increasing demand for low density housing and housing in the exurbs. It is a national trend.

Cuyahoga County instititutions have signed on to the regional model and will do nothing to preserve and protect Cities like Lakewood. Think Tri-C.

The region is unlikely to have an increase in population so Lakewoods population will most likely continue its decline.

Housing prices in Lakewood are declining less than Parma but more than Fairview and much more than Avon or Avon Lake; that reality creates its own incentives.

Our City leadership is good but a bit myopic.

We are on our own.

So where does that leave us?

Does the City have any competivie advantages and if so:

What are they?
How do we take advantage of them?

Starting points:

Not every old apartment building or house should be preserved. Housing becomes obsolete. How best to cull the herd? Housing is the key but what kind of housing?

Rockport might be a starting point.

Cook and Clifton might be another.

It's time for direct action. Which takes money which must come from our own resources which means its time to challenge the government unions.

We have a government to serve the people not a people to serve the government. Or do we?