By Roldo Bartimole
Last week I did something I have not done for than two years and hope not to have to do it again.
I went to a Monday afternoon Finance Committee meeting at Cleveland City Council. Members were presented details of a project of a couple of hundred million dollars for the East Bank of the Flats.
The faces of members have changed somewhat but the activities have not changed at all.
It’s still a legislative body lacking in the badly required discrimination when giving away public money.
Moreover, with the city administration boosting a wealthy private developer, the hearing remained as always a dance of fakers on all sides.
After watching the show, my estimation of Mayor Frank Jackson has diminished considerably. The administration’s due diligence on this financially troubling deal leaves much to be desired.
Further, the once refreshing, now characterless Joe Cimperman, in whose ward the project will be, has now diminished to a hack politician going nowhere good.
After the meeting, I approached freshman Council President Martin Sweeney, always graciously solicitous, and said, “You’re worse than George Forbes. You’re a dictator.” Now, I exaggerated a bit.
However, Sweeney ran the three-hour, hurried meeting that essentially gave developers unknown millions of dollars in subsidies with little probing. The public cost, as you will see below, is immense and mostly unknown.
Sweeney took care to keep colleagues in the dark, releasing a 57-page report to members sometime on Friday, probably after many had left for the weekend. The meeting was scheduled at 1 p. m. Monday.
Sweeney, and his boss, Mayor Frank Jackson, likely figured most - if not all - would not have the time to decipher a 57-page legal document.
They were right.
Allowing no time for consideration is an old leadership trick, docilely accepted by Sweeney’s 20 colleagues. Maybe it will be a lesson learned by some of the new members. They need to review their participation in these decisions.
The Flats developer – the Wolstein Group and Fairmount Properties via a limited partnership of the two – places the entire development cost at $230 million. We will be able to track the government subsidies. �It is unlikely that will be true at all of private investment.
We also can expect changes, including the possibility Wolstein wants control of the property with the option of some kind of gambling or casino operations in mind. No restriction is in the deal.
It was said that the developers controlled some 60 or 70 percent of the project area but, if you included Phase 2, Wolstein only owns some 37 percent, (and some believe even less) if you are ready to accept anything from the developer’s mouth.
A piece of property to be taken by eminent domain for Phase 2 includes a large parking lot. It will remain parking in the Wolstein development as it is now. That led Councilman Mike Polensek to puzzle, “Take a parking lot to make a parking lot?” Slippery Steve Strnisha had a quick-tongued non-answer: “It’s important for single management and ownership” of the property.
Government now serves private interests more than public interests, as this double-dealing deal so well conveys.
To oppose the project would be to oppose “progress.” This is not allowed. Don’t be negative. The Pee Dee will editorialize against you and ruin you. That’s why the deal was approved that night quietly and unanimously.
Sweeney allowed Council members – on this give-away one member called “fast tracked” – 10 minutes of questioning time. Strictly enforced; obediently obeyed. The time allotted included the answers to the posed questions. Fast tracked? This little engine was bullet train expressed. (Sweeney did allow another 10 minutes if needed. Only two members took up some extra time.)
Sweeney also rushed the decision by having the meeting – which included a number of Council committees in addition to Finance – on an afternoon when Council members were scheduled to take a bus tour of various neighborhoods at 4:30 p. m.
Now, George Forbes would have used another tactic. He would have the committee meeting drag on for hours and hours with the same result.
When Sweeney read off the four pieces of legislation and asked, “Any objection,” not a member of any committee, even those who had been critical, uttered a word.
Strnisha, former city finance director, now an executive with Greater Cleveland Partnership (Cleveland Tomorrow plus), was there selling the multi-million dollar give-away.
Someone prompted a council member to ask the question: “Are you the same Steve Strnisha that sold the Gateway garages to Council on the prediction it would make money for the city.” Actually, the two garages are set to lose $77-million, despite Strnisha’s exuberant support before Council.
It was Slippery Strnisha back for another oily performance.
He was accompanied in the selling by Ken Silliman, formerly with the White administration and now chief of staff for Mayor Jackson. Silliman predictably gave his firm affirmation that this was a good deal for the city.
Anybody got a bridge to sell?
They’re such good soldiers. Peddling what they’re told to sell. Let the taxpayer beware.
You could tell that lots of money was on stage for the taking. The public relations line-up was impressive. There was Tom Andrzejewski standing aside Joe Rice – both ex-Pee Dee reporters turned to PR and, of course, the always versatile Nancy Lesic there with a trifecta of conflicts. She represents developer Wolstein, City Council, and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority.
The Port Authority, by the way, now should be known by its more apt name, the Bank of Developers Open House for Subsidies or (BDOHS).
Others with monetary interests flooded the Council hearing room.
Sitting in the front row were former school board member (and a lot of other things) Ken Seminatore, former Brookpark Mayor Tom Coyne, political operative and landowner Tony George, and former Cleveland Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Helen Smith, lobbying their interest in the future of the Flats.
That foursome wants more money to go from Wolstein to owners of more than one-third of the property Wolstein wants to gobble with the help of BDOHS, which will provide eminent domain powers.
Another Flats operator, Larry Flynt, yeah, that one, wasn’t there. A story going around, however, suggests that Wolstein offered him more than $1 million for his Flats property. Flynt’s response, “I didn’t come to Cleveland to make a million dollars. I came to Cleveland to make MILLIONS.” He’s in the right spot.
What does the money deal look like? As you might expect in desperate Subsidy City, really horrible. An open checkbook to a wealthy developer.
Here’s the line-up of public loot (your money):
Oh, that last one. That was just in my notes not the 57-page agreement.
Do you see why I get upset at the Pee Dee and other news outlets and their tolerance of legalized civic corruption?
The Pee Dee last Friday praised the politicians under, “Progress (there’s that word) on the East Bank, an editorial that concluded by labeling the proposed project “an important cornerstone” and a testimony “that big thinking can pay off in Cleveland.” Can these people read?
Finally, let me have some calmer words. The City Hall visit gave me a chance to hear Fannie Lewis again. Fannie often displays the wisdom of a hard life lived.
I approached her as we both waited for an elevator. Age has caught up on her. I’m not sure she recognized me at first. She is bent by time but that’s physically. I believe she still could win re-election in Ward 7 even if she had passed.
I told her that I wished I had kept a record her truisms through the many, many years I’ve observed her at City Hall. She simply smiled.
She had spoken another gem that afternoon.
Fannie told the standard lineup of suits at the table when millions of dollars are being discussed, “A hammer hurts whether it hits you in the hand or the head.” Another of her homemade aphorisms The context was about the power and damage of eminent domain.
No price tag was attached to her advice.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATadelphia.net (:divend:)