A Good Reason Not to Cut City Council
By Roldo Bartimole
I would often bump into Councilman Ed Rybka in Council corridors during his 19 years as a member. There was a time when reporters could navigate Council’s back rooms and get to know members personally. Now members are boxed in as if they live in the Baghdad green sector.
In those days, I would greet him with two questions, “Ed, what are you doing here? Why are you here?” My intention was half-facetious and half-serious.
He was always a bit too conservative for me. I’d kid him about really being a closet Republican in an all-Democratic city. He also voted for most big projects that I opposed. Why am I writing this then? Because it’s important to have people dedicated to their wards as Rybka has always been.
If he did not know exactly what he was doing in Council in those early days, he certainly learned how to be one of the best members that I encountered in more than 30 years watching up close.
He was no shrinking violet either when it came to his ward. I’ve seen him blister administration officials at the conference table. His emotions would become raw with anger when he felt his ward or an issue was being mishandled by the reigning administration.
From time to time, I would take a ride through Ward 12 with Ed, as he showed the good and the bad, what he would like to do and what he was frustrated that he couldn’t do.
If there were any reason NOT to reduce Council from 21 members, I’d say the danger of losing an Ed Rybka would counterbalance all Brent Larkin’s arguments about the body’s dim bulbs and fakes. It gives neighborhoods at least some representation. Otherwise, city residents would be left to the mercy of Cleveland’s ubiquitous and self-interested foundations, civic groups and corporate interests.
The Plain Dealer would write stories about achievements in his ward and Rybka might get a line or a mention deep down in the story. Never, however, was it made plain that the advances in Slavic Village took years of his work – haggling with private interests, with Council leaders and with administrations. It did not happen by happenstance, it happened because of Ed Rybka’s dedication.
Rybka never got the credit due him. This neglectful attitude by the news media reduces the public’s image of Council members who are effective.
Rybka, elected in 1985, resigned a week ago to take a job with the Campbell administration as assistant planning director. Tony Brancatelli, who directed the Slavic Village Development Corp. for 15 years, succeeded him.
Rybka reminds me with a laugh, “Brancatelli is part Polish.” It’s almost a condition for a leader in this area still home to many of Polish ancestry.
I felt Rybka had been disenchanted with Council in recent years. A change in leadership brought Frank Jackson to the presidency and Rybka was not a part of the Jackson team, He was dumped from the powerful Finance Committee and his input at the legislative table diminished.
Rybka can be proud that for nearly 20 years he held the community of Ward 12 together. No minor achievement. It is not an easy job in a city sometimes disintegrating before one’s eyes.
“Nobody understands this job unless you do it,” Rybka told his colleagues during a Council Caucus the night of his official resignation. There were other changes that night. Emily Lipovan Holan replaced Ward 15’s Merle Gordon. Kevin Kelly recently replaced Mike O’Malley in ward 16. This gives Cleveland three young and eager members in wards on its southern boundaries.
To the end, it seemed Rybka didn’t want to let go. “Everyone was asking me” whether and when Ed would resign, said his wife, Janine, district administrator of the Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District. “I’m not going to believe it until I see it,” she told them.
“That was his baby his whole adult life,” she said. “That’s what he’s been,” she said of his dedication to the ward.
Cleveland neighborhoods have long suffered racial problems. Political leaders – black and white – have used race to their own benefit. Those problems could have plagued this area of the city. Rybka never used race as a tactic and fellow black council members have praised him for his outreach.
Rybka also can be proud of a number of developments in and near his ward. He helped guide the important Third Federal bank development, headquartered on Broadway Ave. in Ward 12, to fruition and lent a hand in one of the city’s major neighborhood housing efforts at Mill Creek just outside his ward.
Asked about his proudest achievement, Rybka paused more than a moment. “It’s yet to come,” he said. Legislation and bond funds have been achieved for an athletic facility in Morgana Park. It’s for “Broadway’s kids,” said Rybka with pride in his voice.
Most satisfying to him, he says, is being able to get a snowplow to a house that clears access to an elderly woman so that she can get to the community bus to meet a doctor’s appointment.
Those small achievements, I’d say, mean more to city people than the expensive construction of luxury loges, enjoyed mostly by suburbanites.
The Rybkas have two children Keith, 18, who graduated high school a week ago and will attend Niagara College in the Fall, and Hallie, 15.
His assistant Tony Zajac has served Rybka admirably for 15 years as his city hall assistant. Debbie Zeleny, a relative newcomer, runs the neighborhood office. When I called Zajac, he smoothly answered “Councilman Tony Brancatelli’s office.” When I told Rybka, he laughed and wondered if Zajac might slip after years of answering with his name. Zajac admitted it was strange but he hasn’t slipped yet, he said.
With the change, Rybka found quickly he had lost some perquisites of a Councilman. When he reported to city hall planning job, he encountered a problem he never had at city hall. The garage was “Full.” His council member’s sixth spot from the City Hall’s entrance now belonged to his successor. He had to find other parking.
A final little episode reveals Rybka’s sense of principle. After the Plain Dealer ran a teaser item about Rybka’s expected retirement, Ellen Psenicka of The Neighborhood News, a small publication that covers local news, called Ed. She wanted a “scoop.” Rybka assured Psenicka that his “last political promise” would be to notify her of his retirement before any other media.
In 82 years of publishing, the newspaper had never “scooped” the PD.
Psenicka wanted this satisfaction. The day before Plain Dealer told its readers of Rybka’s decision; there it appeared in The Neighborhood News headlines.
True to his word to the last.
AND NOW TO THE SURREAL AND ABSURD
The headline in the Plain Dealer, “Forbes wants tighter control of spending at Head Start,” has to be the most bizarre ever run in the newspaper.
It also suggests the newspaper and its editors have no memory whatsoever. Forbes for 15 years used his Council Presidency to benefit his friends and business associates, some with better deals than Head Start could ever spend in eternity.
With its front-page story, the PD celebrates George Forbes, as a government cleaning agent – now isn’t that as laughable a concept as you have ever heard?
Making the joke a belly laugh: His buddy County Commissioner Tim Hagan named Forbes to the position. What are friends for?
All this was reported in total seriousness.
The Plain Dealer did a great journalistic service in uncovering the scandalous misuse of funds at the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland.
However, the straightly written page one announcement of Forbes as the tool of reform qualifies as swallowing a bone to clear one’s throat.
Ah, Cleveland politics.
NEW OHIO REPUBLICAN ECONOMIC PLAN: We will flip you for your taxes. Heads you pay the taxes; tails you contribute the same amount to the Ohio Republican Committee.
from Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole Roldo@Adelphia.net
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