By Roldo Bartimole

Has the mortgage come due? Do we have the payment ready?

In 1996, the Economist magazine – when Cleveland was near delirious about its “progress” – asked the question in a headline: “Has Cleveland mortgaged its tomorrows?” That was a relevant, and prescient, question based on Cleveland Tomorrow’s promotion of Cleveland as the “comeback city.”

Well, now eight years later that heady estimation of Cleveland’s leaders looks more a mirage or a memory gone sour.

What some critics – count me among them – saw as the mirage was well described by the Economist piece of July 20, 1996.

“How secure is its resurrection?” asked the Economist of Cleveland’s well-promoted comeback.

“Cleveland, they say, is America’s leading ‘comeback city.’ A civic organization, Cleveland Tomorrow (now folded into the Greater Cleveland Partnership), declared a few years ago that the city ‘has the prototype revival strategy other American cities turn to, learn from and use.’ (That was before Cleveland became known as Poverty City.)

“But Cleveland’s revival is not quite what it seems. This is a story of carefully massaged redevelopment” that the magazine said has been heavily publicly subsidized. It went on to describe what Cleveland and Cuyahoga County did.

“A tour of downtown makes the point,” the Economist noted. “On Lake Erie shore stands the heavily subsidized $90-million Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, which contains John Lennon’s glasses and Elvis Presley’s suits. A short distance away (linked by a $70-million federally financed railway - the Economist is wrong about this as local funds subsidized the Waterfront Line because RTA and Cleveland Tomorrow couldn’t process federal paperwork fast enough - is Cleveland’s $435-sports complex, partly paid with a local tobacco and alcohol tax.

“A stroll through a walkway paid for by federal environmental programs leads to Tower City, the main shopping center, which benefited from federal loans and grants (some $80 million, my note). Those who tire of shopping can wander up the road to the city’s popular theater district (Playhouse Square), refurbished at a cost of $38 million, half of it from public funds.

The Economist missed other publicly subsidized development. It didn’t mention Gateway with its $180-million stadium, its $124-million arena. Or its $40-million site construction and $22-million land costs, to say nothing of the interest payments for bonds still being made by Cuyahoga County each January, now some 15 years later. Nor does it mention the two parking garages built by the city at some $40-million and bleeding red since construction. Add to all the above, except one garage, property tax exemptions forever. Now you get an idea of where city leaders have taken us in the last two decades.

The Economist piece did give some credit to Cleveland Tomorrow and the city for setting up projects “to supply venture capital to local firms, along with quasi-academic centers to stimulate research and investment in manufacturing biotechnology and petrochemicals.”

But the article ended this way:

“New buildings look good, but often money is better spent on people. Oddly, the city’s earlier barons knew that. John D. Rockefeller poured his millions into education (not here though). The Mathers, of coal fame, put theirs into hospitals. And even the Van Sweringens, who ran a huge railway trust and were great builders (they put up the skyscraper that later housed Tower City), had a different view of urban development. They financed a whole new suburb, Shaker Heights, early this century. And they did it without a public subsidy.”

Now that the tapped out city has suffered a big loss with the rejection of the school levy, the question needs to be asked again: Are Cleveland’s priorities wrong?

As we watch Mayor Jane Campbell and her administration push ahead with lakefront plans, we can say surely: Yes and they are not about to change.

The public agenda isn’t for the public; it’s for the private sector. That’s an enduring big mistake. It continues to insure public poverty, while generally not insuring private abundance.

The lakefront plans are preparatory to open up land for private housing and luxury developments. But how can those developments succeed when land and existing developments cannot attract private investment now?

As far as new parkland, the city doesn’t have the resources to maintain what parks and recreation facilities it now holds.

City Planner Chris Roynane’s comments that the developments, described in the Plain Dealer as the “largest development plan in the city’s history,” would be “a way out of poverty,” suggests some delusional thinking. It’s remindful of the claims that Gateway would create vast economic development. It rather has been a public drain.

The lakefront, as envisioned by the city, would be a continued financial drain on a very limited city budget.

As I’ve noted in the past, the city unloaded significant park acreage to the state in the 1970-80s because it couldn’t maintain the facilities. Now even the state is having trouble financially meeting investment for park needs.

The state has assumed responsibility for former city properties: Edgewater, 130-acres, Gordon (not including the city’s portion) Park, more than 100 acres; Wildwood, some 100 acres; Euclid Beach State Park, more than 50 acres; the adjacent Village Angela, more than 44-acres; and the E. 55th marina, some 35 acres.

How can the city now add hundreds of acres of parkland and be financially responsible for upkeep?

In addition, these plans call for moving the Cuyahoga-Cleveland Port Authority facilities at a cost estimated at $658 million and who knows what other infrastructure needs. How would those costs be paid?

A massive infusion of capital that would create jobs would be great, but where would those funds come from? The city? No. The state? No. The feds? Not likely under the Bush administration which has no urban policy.

Mayor Campbell wants, as past mayors, a big project to point to as an achievement and so-called progress. Such “progress” is illusory. They only offer promises, as pointed out by the Economist article, of progress. They ignore the costs and especially who pays the costs.

As reported in the PD, one critic noted that the Campbell lakefront plans are essentially only desires. “It’s not a plan, it’s a vision. There’s not economic substantiation to this vision.” That sums it up aptly.

MAYOR TAKES COURAGEOUS STAND ON POLICE OVERTIME ABUSE

Mayor Jane Campbell deserves special credit for refusing to whitewash overtime abuse problems in the police department. The Plain Dealer reports that she has named non-police investigators to probe the overtime claims made by police officers. When the police investigate themselves, there is an inherent and obvious conflict of interest.

It’s not easy to stand up to the police, who exert political power and have damaged many a mayor. The public, the news media and honest police officers ought to support strongly Mayor Campbell for her actions.

The police should not be able to force the city, thus the public, to pay them overtime when it isn’t necessary. The same can be said of Cleveland firefighters who via their contract force the city to assign firefighters on overtime simply because some members have the right to turn down work on weekends and holidays.

from Cool Cleveland columnist Roldo Bartimole roldo@adelphia.net

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