Where were Eckart, Roman, Akers on this community problem?
By Roldo Bartimole
Sometimes what is not happening is what is really happening.
At the Cuyahoga County Commission meeting last week, homelessness was a major subject. The Commissioners - Jimmy Dimora, Peter Lawson Jones and Tim McCormack - voted $538,275 for shelter services for homeless women via Catholic Charities for this year.
Then a discussion pursued about two buildings, 2219 and 2227 Payne Ave. to be used for women's shelters. There was an urgency to place management of the services "before the snow flies," as it was put. The Commissioners voted to negotiate with Mental Health Services, Inc., to take on the task of running both sites.
There had been a demonstration in front of Cleveland City Hall the evening before, mostly directed at Councilman Joe Cimperman. Cimpy once again got himself into a seemingly contorted position on an issue in his ward.
The details don't matter because the Commissioners did the right thing by committing to proceed to provide the needed services. Interestingly, McCormack noted that it wasn't long ago that "men were being arrested" for sleeping on Public Square, no doubt a reference to former Mayor Michael White's bizarre attendance (from a window in the Renaissance hotel) as he watched police followed his orders to clear the square of homeless early in the a.m.
The Commissioners ran into another testy situation when an advocate for the homeless challenged the Commissioners about shelter overflow which leaves some - sometimes as many as a hundred, he said - sleeping outside a Salvation Army shelter in the rain and soon presumably soon in the snow. He argued with the Commissioners, concluding after a flat challenge to provide more space, "We need more room."
Dimora assured him that the board wasn't "an enemy," and by the following week would have some answers.
Housing for people without resources is a difficult problem; for the homeless even more so.
What didn't happen, however, was what has been happening concerning another need for occupants, visitors to the city in meeting after meeting.
I looked around the Commission's rooms for those civic leaders concerned about the community. You know, the ones who crowd meetings for hundreds of millions of dollars for a new convention center. I missed them.
Where was Dennis Eckart, head of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association?
Where were Joe Roman and Steve Strnisha of Cleveland Tomorrow?
Where was David Daberko head of Cleveland Tomorrow and National City Bank?
Where was Bruce Akers, mayor of Pepper Pike and public front for the Mayor's and Manager's Association?
Where were all the labor leaders, John Ryan of the AFL-CIO?
In other words, where were the big hitters who cried so hard all summer (and still are conniving) for a new convention center when it comes to this community crisis?
Nowhere to be found, to be sure. Maybe they were all tuckered out with their fight for another big spending project that benefits them to be worried about anyone else.
"We wish that they'd be concerned," said a County official, "to make the connection of the economics of the most vulnerable with the least vulnerable."
You cannot have a viable community building stadiums, rock halls, convention centers or other visitor venues and leave behind the people who live here. It's policy for trouble.
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ANOTHER GIMME GUY
With assholes in the business community like Werner Minshall, why does the media comment focus mainly on evils of local politicians?
Minshall, co-owner of the Galleria and Tower at Erieview, formerly owned by Dick Jacobs, bought the properties at discount prices. He apparently now wants the city to enrich him with a deal. A chip off the old block.
Minshall, the son of former GOP Congressman Bill Minshall, apparently has the same right-wing mentality as dad.
Minshall had "unflattering words" for Mayor Jane Campbell and Cleveland business leaders, according to an article in Crain's Cleveland Business.
Minshall, indeed, sounded absurdly reactionary, claiming that local political debate is dominated by a "labor, Democratic leftist approach." Could that be a description of Cleveland Tomorrow and Jane Campbell?
One businessperson there described his remarks as "inflammatory." I would add stupid but predictable.
What Minshall wants is a free ride. He wants the city to give him city land recently bought back from Jacobs who used for real estate speculation for 10 years. The land lies directly to the east of the Galleria and Tower. Then he wants that site to be anointed for a new convention center. That would make his investment a nice profitable gamble the easy way.
Minshall reminds me of his father.
Minshall's father was a right-wing Republican congressman financed by the military-industrial complex. Among his many contributors was Richard Scaife, a family famed for its right-wing reactionary politics. He was a member of the House Subcommittee on Military Appropriations. As I wrote in 1972, Minshall "helped appropriate more than One Trillion Dollars for the military." That's when a trillion was a serious number.
Military contractors from coast to coast filled Minshall's political coffers. Amusingly, even the Plain Dealer military writer at the time sent him a political gift, $2. However, when Roy Adams gave $2 that was not just a contribution, but, as I wrote them, a Cause.
Werner's attack on Campbell got the top headline in Crain's. "She's not a stupid politician," he said, according to the weekly. "Her problem is that she doesn't intellectually understand business or business development."
In other words, Campbell hasn't opened the floodgates of goodies for Werner Minshall, a newcomer to Cleveland real estate.
Werner likely learned what was important from his dad. Rep. Minshall, while voting the trillion for the military, could not bring himself to vote for a $250 million fund to fight Appalachian poverty. He also voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and for a plan to eliminate job discrimination.
Minshall was a stockholder in General Motors and various other war contract firms, including General Electric, RCA and Westinghouse Electric, along with a number of Cleveland banks.
So daddy probably left Werner well off and with the same expectations that government owes him special consideration.
Unfortunately, all those leftist in charge at City Hall will not do as Werner would like and make his purchase of the Galleria profitable, the way he's apparently used to enjoying life.
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CONSEQUENCES
Talk is that there will be layoffs by the city come January, including safety forces - police and firefighters. There apparently isn't any way to get out from under the looming $50 million deficit for 2004. Only an increase in the city income tax could address that kind of a shortfall. And that would have to come at the expense of a new tax for a convention center (ha!) and a new operating levy for the Cleveland schools.
In several pieces in on-line commentaries by Bill Callahan linked me with a Crain's editorial calling for layoffs by Cleveland. Callahan wrote that Crain's editorially called for layoffs. He wrote at the time, "This week Roldo in the City News says virtually the same thing." He also writes, "The logical inference from the Crain's/Bartimole analysis is that they want city workers laid off, quickly." He may infer that, however, nowhere in the article did I state the city should layoff employees. I did write there needed to be workforce cuts.
Here's what I wrote in the City News: "Campbell and Jackson also flunked the test of common sense finances. Jackson adamantly has objected to layoffs. Both should have anticipated the need for workforce cuts."
The city became fiscally satisfied (maybe lax) by finding pockets of money (most finance directors hide dough that they might need someday) in the past two years. While offering relief, it lulled the city into not making hard decisions.
Before that statement on cuts, I wrote that both Campbell and Jackson "gambled on the Cleveland economy climbing out of the recession when preparing the 2003 city budget." They also relied on one-time "discovered" injections of funds, and fee increases that have not panned out.
Workforce, rather than layoffs, cuts could have come from a real hiring freeze, by not creating new positions, by eliminating outside consultants, and by eliminating some unnecessary jobs and surely by cutting overtime.
Jackson's insistence on no layoffs forced Campbell to make choices that failed to control costs. Campbell, unfortunately, fears challenging Jackson. If she had faced reality and taken steps necessary to meet fund shortages, she and the city would not be in the position they find themselves now - facing large layoffs.
Hard decisions have been avoided and that postpones solutions and simply makes them more difficult as a result. It's the old story, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
A possible and equitable answer to the financial problems of cities would be a graduated local payroll/income tax, rather than the present regressive non-graduated tax. It would take from those who have. That, however, would take state action and some courageous politicians.
The latest figures for the police department presently reveal overtime for officers at $10,481,525 and for civilians $1,636,918 with at least four more pay periods to go. It appears overtime will equal or surpass the 2002 totals of $14.4 million, which was $2.4 million more than the previous year.
The projected overtime for the fire department for this year is $5,125,750 or $1.1 million over last year, which was $700,000 more than the previous year. (I mistakenly reported in the City News that $15,600 was budgeted for overtime for the firefighters. That was the figure for only the civilian and not uniformed personnel, which was budgeted at $4.3 million.)
No one says it's easy but it appears that controls haven't been instituted over years.
Now, as I said in the article, "By not facing the situation last year (really the 2003 budget), they have an intractable problem that will cause them a lot of pain and trouble." That's a more than reasonable expectation for 2004.
Callahan also challenged the figures I used for employment by the city. I noted that in 1993 the general fund total staff numbered 5,437 and that for 2003 a preliminary budget published by the city showed a workforce of 7,455. Finance Director Robert Baker that same week told me that the actual figure in the final published budget for 2003 was 7,612, or an extra 157 positions from the time the first budget was published. I figured using the same general fund figure from the same totals for each year that I was comparing apples to apples.
Callahan in a telephone call said that he examined the budget department by department and found that rather than 2,000 more jobs there were in the neighborhood of 600 more jobs between 1992 and 2002. I understood him to say that the figures I used came from figures that didn't distinguish between full and part-time jobs. His figures were full-time equivalent figures.
Baker last week, asked about the Plain Dealer editorial claiming city employment up by 2,000 in the 1990s that the figure was less than half that since 1992. He then said it was less than 800, closer to Callahan's figure. However, even 600 more employees at a cost, say of $40,000 a year including benefits, amounts to $24 million a year, no slight sum. That would nearly total the 2004 deficit in two years.
Callahan's comments can be reached via an internet search at "Callahan's Cleveland Diary" with interesting insights made periodically.
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