PD WANTS TO PROFIT FROM CLEVELAND’S CARCASS

By Roldo Bartimole

The PD has put out a “Dear Mayor or Community Director” letter seeking ads that will lure city employees, now free from the residency law, to the suburbs.

The Pee Dee’s stake in this attempt to migrate city residents to the suburbs: advertising.

Here’s what the pitch says:

“On Thursday, June 11, 2009, the Plain Dealer reported on the end of the Cleveland Residency Rule for the City of Cleveland city workers. The end of the residency rule means that city workers can move to the suburbs immediately.

“These workers are heavily concentrated in the zip code 44111, West Park.

“This is a great opportunity for suburbs like yours to specifically market to these residents with stable jobs and growing families, to consider your city as an option for relocation.”

Mayor Frank Jackson should immediately call upon the PD to stop this campaign to remove Cleveland residents to the suburbs.

What kind of Regionalism – which the PD constantly says we need – is this?

The plea asks for internet ads that will help lure people from the city.

Under “DETAILS OF THE PROGRAM” the PD offers a direct mail portion, stating “8 by 10 full color postcard, delivered to 6,606 residents of 44111 who earn at least $40K in income.”

For an Internet portion, the PD offers “Banner ads delivered to the real estate homepage and the city section of Cleveland.com. with 25,000 impressions and ads that will remain “live for 30 days.”

The cost, according to the Plain Dealer, $4,500.

So for a campaign for $4,500 the PD will sell out the city of Cleveland.

Great people.

For more information call, Misty Pennock at 216 970-5928.

Or maybe contact Publisher Terry Egger at 999-4216 or Editor Susan Goldberg at 999-4123 and tell them of your pleasure or displeasure at the PD trying to help carve up what’s left of the carcass we called Cleveland.

RTA Takes Us for the Wrong Ride
Plus: Commissioners, Libraries and Mayor Jackson -- A Mayor for the Times?

Is RTA taking us on another ride? As a transit system, it seems more like a servant of the same old special interests when it should be taking care of transit-dependent citizens. Yes, I believe the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) does have a money problem with sales taxes and ridership down. Raising fares hardly seems the solution.

However, I also know that RTA hasn't paid enough attention in the past to its spending. If it did RTA wouldn’t have to be cutting crucial services now. We're being told that there is a $5.5 million problem. The solution for RTA's management is to cut services and raise the price by 25 cents.

That appears to be not a palatable solution. If CEO and General Manager Joe Calabrese and his RTA board can’t find $5 million in his more than $240 million (2008) budget, then we need to get someone who can do the job.

RTA has become too accustomed to providing services that aren’t really necessary. Too comfy saying yes to the downtown scrounges.

The Euclid Corridor Improvement Project (Health line) was a perfect example of spending transit money for non-transit purposes. The road was plenty wide for RTA buses. I’d like to know the annual upkeep costs of this Euclid Avenue beautification program.

If you’ve got a lot of extra money to spend, fine, beautify. However, RTA’s primary task is to move people from where they are to where they need to go, especially working people who can’t afford private vehicles.

RTA spent $69 million of OUR dollars for the Waterfront line, rushing it to please Mayor George Voinovich and his buddy Dick Pogue. They wanted it up for the opening of the Rock Hall of Fame and their parties. To get it done, RTA had to forget about federal subsidy, which probably would have covered 80 percent of the cost. The Waterfront Line was ill planned and now it ill serves.

The Waterfront Line service has been cutback. It’s important that RTA tell us just how much it costs to keep this line operating at any level. Maybe it should be mothballed totally.

Equally unnecessary for RTA was the walkway from Tower City to Gateway, a cost of some $11-million to $13-million. I’ve never been able to get an undisputed figure. RTA has to “reimburse” Tower City for utility charges on the walkway.

It’s time RTA got tough and told the Gateway Economic Development Corp., which operates the Gateway facilities, that it has to pick up the cost of the walkway and pay to have its fans delivered to its doors. Why should RTA’s riders pay for this?

Despite the fact that these RTA facilities help Tower City, RTA pays some $1 million a year to Forest City Enterprises, owner of Tower City. It’s annual fee for RTA’s use of space into Tower City. RTA pays an addition $32,000 to “reimburse” Tower City for central plant operations. It even pays a utility charge for use of the escalators! There’s room for negotiations here to lower costs.

Isn’t it time to renegotiate these fees lower since there’s less use and Tower City seems to always get reductions of its property taxes?

The County or the State needs to provide more funding to RTA too. Why shouldn’t there be subsidies for mass transit? It’s a method of lowering pollution and reducing traffic. We build enough roads for cars.

A small surcharge on every car in the County each year should produce the kind of revenue needed for mass transit.

Mayor Jackson -- A Mayor for Our Times?

Sometimes you try to put people into boxes they don’t fit into. Mayor Frank Jackson is one of those people difficult to place. At least for me.

Is he just another politician? Or is he, as he says, the “right man” for the times. These not so good times.

I talked to Mayor Jackson because I happen to look at an old clipping that told me something about him and where he came from. I wanted to know more.

The clip was something I wrote in 1984 about the death of Lonnie Burten. Burten had been the Councilman of Ward 5, the city’s poorest ward, in Jackson’s Central area. Jackson didn’t succeed Burten after he died but he did eventually take that seat. He became a rescuer of that depressed ward. As its Councilman, Jackson brought it bundles of federal money.

Lonnie Burten had toppled two of the toughest old-time black politicians - Charlie Carr and Jimmy Bell. He got shot by someone during one of the campaigns against Carr. He survived that attack.

However, he died by heart attack at 40. I wrote upon Burten’s death: “Burten had the potential to become a true folk here. He did not achieve that status because he seemed to lack focus for his tremendous energy and thus the impact that creates legends.”

Burten and Jackson were youthful friends. When Jackson moved to 38th and Central, Burten “was the first person to knock on our door” and they became friends over the years. Burten went to college; Jackson to the Army.

People told Burten he was “crazy” to run against Carr. Crazy enough to get shot but live to defeat the legendary Carr in 1981. Jackson and the late David Donaldson, despite the danger, campaigned with Burten.

Burten later tried to topple Council President George Forbes. He came within a vote of winning. Councilman Mike White put so much pressure on first-term Councilman (now judge) Larry Jones that Jones changed his vote from Burten to Forbes.

“I told Lonnie that he needed 13 votes not just 11 votes,” recalled Jackson.

Preston Terry III succeeded Burten with Jackson’s help. But, as Jackson puts it, “things went awry” and Jackson ran and defeated Terry in 1989.

Jackson laughed. He didn’t really want to be a Councilman. He was a city prosecutor at the time. He laughed again because he said, “I didn’t want to be Council President,” followed by “I didn’t want to be Mayor either.” It seems Jackson rises without any visible passion for power.

And that’s the strange thing. I believe him. From time to time for years I would make it up to Jackson’s Council office for talks. He never gave me the impression of wanting a higher office. He did have very strong opinions and I’d say a streak of stubbornness for his views.

But he also always played his cards close to the chest.

Mayor Jackson’s re-election spokesman Tom Andrzejewski said, “It’s still painful” for Jackson when I asked to talk to the Mayor about Burten’s influence upon him.

Jackson, in his low key way, said, “He passed away. It bothered me. We were pretty close.”

Jackson did say that he often thinks of Burten.

Burten was a larger than life person though likely pretty much forgotten or unknown to most Clevelanders.

“Burten,” I wrote in 1984, “was always a study in contrasts. Avoiding drink, meat and smoking and apparently in good physical condition, he died of a heart attack. He was stricken while demolishing a house he once lived in on East 38th Street…He had lived in a corner of the house, which was heated by a kerosene space heater… Damage from a fire had made the house uninhabitable.

“The fire had destroyed many of Burten’s belongings. Among the rubbish a visiting reporter found a leather-bound copy of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. Burten gave the copy to him.

“He was a politician, a ghetto philosopher, a carpenter, auto mechanic, even an artist. One of his pieces, a multi-media portrait of an elderly black man, hangs in an office at Case Western Reserve University.”

“He had a natural and charismatic flair,” said a professor told me.

He told me Burten had aspirations of being an academic but he told Burton his future was in politics, not academia.

Isn’t that what Cleveland needs right now? Someone with charisma. Unfortunately, Burten died. And it’s not clear he ever would have been able to go as far as Jackson has.

Jackson says he’s the right man to be mayor of Cleveland at this time. It’s clear to me that he was in the right place to take advantage of Jane Campbell’s inability to understand Cleveland politics. She was there for the picking; he for the taking.

I’ve been curious about whether Mayor Jackson had an ideology behind his political ambitions. It doesn’t seem so.

He does say “You always remember where you came from. You always go back home.” That’s his political reference point.

I believe he means it, too.

However, Jackson has been a mayor – unlike, say Dennis Kucinich – who has gone along with all the major projects that don’t seem so favorable for the economically deprived. He favors the Medical Mart and Convention Center, the expensive Port Authority relocation and all kinds of development subsidies.

Though he says of his philosophy, “You can’t live large when others are suffering.”

I don’t believe he’s living large. He laughs when people say he doesn’t really live in his home in the deprived Central area. “They say I really live in Shaker,” he says laughing.

Maybe Frank Jackson is the right person to be mayor of Cleveland right now. But for how long? I asked him how long he thought he wanted to be Mayor of Cleveland.

He says he wants to build on his foundation. He sees balancing the budget as a major achievement. It is an achievement when so much of government is drowning in red ink. But it’s a holding action.

The closest he comes to giving a hint of when he’s likely ready to leave the office is this: “I don’t want to be an impediment to my own purpose.” It’s often hard for politicians to recognize that point.

Jackson is a low key kind of guy. He projects a steady hand at the helm, even if that’s the mark of a caretaker Mayor.

The person who upends him will have to offer Clevelanders – and voters will have to be ready to accept – some flair and excitement. They will have to be a sharp contrast to Jackson.

It may not be long, I believe, when Cleveland will want someone who gives them something to look forward to, some spark and flair. Someone who will promise more than a balanced budget.

I don’t think it’s this election. I don’t think we can wait too much longer. Cleveland needs a big lift.

County Commissioners On Another Money Waster

Cuyahoga County Commissioners dug themselves a big financial hole by purchasing the Ameritrust property from Dick Jacobs. Now they are getting ready to dig a bigger hole for the Medical Mart.

The Ameritrust deal, which they say has cost the County $40-million, will likely be a money drain for the County for years, possibly decades to come.

The County now may be playing a game of chicken with property owners near the proposed Medical Mart and Convention Center. They also may be playing themselves into another budget hole.

The commissioners taxed Cuyahoga resident for some $800 million with a 40-year quarter percent sale tax increased, imposed without a vote. (RTA could make better use that money.)

So you can expect that Commissioners Tim Hagan, Jimmy Dimora and Peter Lawson Jones will tap taxpayers now for new digs – whether rented or constructed because of the Medical Mart. And they will likely pay top price because they will need the space ASAP, the usual recipe for a rip-off.

I suggest that MMPI solve the problem of obtaining the properties needed at Ontario and St. Clair itself. It has the contract now. It should do the job, not wait for the County to solve its problem.

For the County to just offer to knock down its administration building at 1219 Ontario seems to suggest that once again the public will pay and the private speculator – MMPI – will profit.

Why doesn’t the Plain Dealer complain bitterly now – BEFORE – this silliness becomes reality?

Libraries Into Power Plays?

The Cuyahoga County Public Library system’s threat to close libraries on Sunday - which they say is its busiest day – makes no sense at all.

Except as a threat. It’s poor decision-making to threaten a public that provides libraries with generous funding.

Yes, cuts likely have to be made if state funding is sharply cut.

But you don’t say to the public – We’re going to cut you where it hurts you the most.

This, I suggest, is a public relation disaster in the making.

It would be hard to find people who are anti-library or would want to see their libraries hurt.

This kind of thinking, however, tests people’s goodwill.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATroadrunner.com
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