Civic Commons holds an East Cleveland merger forum -- and it doesn't go well

Photos by Anthony Price

There are some problems that “thought leaders,” “facilitators,” and whiteboards filled with talking points can’t fix.

That became obvious really fast last night at a Civic Commons forum in East Cleveland about the idea of the town merging with Cleveland.

About 60 people came to the event at the East Cleveland Public Library, including East Clevelanders, Clevelanders, and people from suburbs from Euclid to Pepper Pike. Despite the serious financial problems that beset the town of 17,000, no one spoke in favor of a merger, and more than a dozen East Cleveland residents spoke out against it.

Civic Commons moderator Andrew Samtoy asked people to list negatives about a merger, and residents responded with such force that Samtoy never dared to ask for positives.

East Clevelanders said they’d lose their own mayor and council, City Hall and police, autonomy, political power, home demolition program, and direct grants from the federal government. Many questioned whether Cleveland’s poor neighborhoods are any better off than East Cleveland.

“I see Cleveland has a lot of big developments,” said M. LaVora Perry of the East Cleveland Narrator, but “those don’t trickle back to the core community. Certain neighborhoods seem to be thriving,” she added, but in others, “I don’t see anything being done.”

Several East Clevelanders said, to applause, that the Nov. 2012 Cleveland police chase and fatal shooting, which ended in East Cleveland, made them not want to join Cleveland. The East Cleveland police, one man said, have a good relationship with the community and are more likely to defuse a crisis without force.

Many in the room asked why the forum was held at all. Almost all of the merger talk of the last several months is coming from Cleveland leaders and commentators. Public opinion among East Clevelanders is strongly against a merger. So the Civic Commons’ attempt to get them to talk about merging backfired, setting off fears of a condescending and hostile takeover.

“They’re trying to build a narrative to convince East Cleveland residents to support the idea,” said Michael Smedley, chief of staff for East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton. “They want to have a series of community forums to get you beyond your fears.”

More likely, the Civic Commons simply had no idea what it was getting into.

The event was a lesson in how not to introduce oneself to a community. The Civic Commons had no East Clevelanders scheduled to speak when it announced its event. It held the forum on the same night as East Cleveland school board meeting and city council committee meetings. It promoted the event heavily on Twitter, Facebook and public radio, but those outlets don’t reach a lot of East Clevelanders, who still promote civic events with flyers and announcements at other town meetings. Despite a weeklong social-media barrage, many East Clevelanders expressed surprise that the forum was so lightly promoted. By the event’s end, Civic Commons director Mike Shafarenko was promising they’d do better next time.

Exchanges between East Clevelanders and Cleveland city councilman Zack Reed got testy. Reed introduced himself with a joke — “I’m a little late, because [when] we do take over, we’re going to get rid of those red light cameras” — that angered many in the takeover-wary crowd. Reed sharply challenged East Cleveland councilman Nathaniel Martin’s claim that East Cleveland’s mayor is more accessible than Cleveland’s.

The event became a lesson in East Cleveland’s distrust of outsiders. Some residents talked angrily about the flight of businesses and capital from their city, including the Cleveland Clinic’s 2011 closing of Huron Hospital. Some cast the merger idea as a land grab by University Circle interests.

Finally, Cleveland councilman Mike Polensek salved the tensions with a mix of diplomacy and expressions of solidarity. “We came here as guests,” he said. “We’re not trying to take over.”

Most Cleveland city councilpeople are not in favor of annexing East Cleveland, Polensek said. “We’re here as neighbors, to assist,” he said. Cleveland has already taken over East Cleveland’s water department, he said, and he raised the possibility of more shared services and mutual aid agreements.

But Polensek warned three times, in a polite and neighborly way, that East Cleveland needs to deal with its serious fiscal problems if it wants to stay independent.

“The elite cannot push any agenda if your city is solvent,” he said. “If you get your act together, and have a balanced budget, you can make the city what you want it to be.”

Hanging over the forum, but never quite spoken, was the awful math of abandonment. East Cleveland is about to borrow almost $7 million to pay off its many debts and deficits. It’ll borrow against future local government funding from the state, which likely means even more layoffs and service cuts to come. The city’s tax base has shrunk dramatically in the last few years, shrinking its budget from $17 million in 2010 to about $11.5 million this year.

The price of independence is rising. Will a time come when even proud and independent East Clevelanders are no longer willing to pay it?

As the meeting wound down and the crowd thinned, Smedley, the mayor’s chief of staff, who had earlier declared, “there is no benefit at all to a merger,” acknowledged that it could be the fallback plan if the city can’t claw its way out of fiscal crisis.

First, Smedley said, East Cleveland needs to see if neighbors such as Cleveland and Cleveland Heights can help “give us a real shot at saving this community.”

“What we’re trying to do is to position ourselves to give us the best shot at it, and if we fail, we know that we tried our best,” Smedley said.

“And then, if merger is where we need to be at that point, I guarantee you, the government… as well as the residents, who’ve been pouring their hearts and souls into trying to save this community, will be ready to sit at the table.”

CLE + GOP? I blame legal pot

Who’s more likely to come to Cleveland? I asked last night. The Republicans, or LeBron?

“Republicans,” my co-workers said. Good call.

LeBron and Cleveland would have to swallow their pride to get back together. But to bring the 2016 Republican convention to Cleveland, the GOP and the deep-blue city would just have to agree to a slightly uncomfortable, short-term, mutually beneficial arrangement: We get their hundreds of millions of dollars in travel spending, they get a chance at our votes.

Today, to the surprise of most of Cleveland, we’re in the finals. The Republicans actually called us a “world-class city.” It’s a seductive compliment. Cleveland boosters repeat it to each other all the time, but never hear it from an outsider.

As for Denver and Kansas City? “We felt fortunate to get to know them,” says the polite suitor, as if writing an email after a sparks-free third date.

Today, Clevelanders are blinking in the afternoon light, surprised to get this far. Never mind that Dallas is still the favorite, still culturally familiar ground for the Republicans in a red state full of conservative donors. If the party decides to hold its convention in state it wants to nudge into the win column, we’re the choice.

From clevelandrnc2016.com, the website supporting our bid:

In the 2012 presidential election, no county in Ohio cast as many votes as Cuyahoga County… a voter swing of as little as 15% in Cuyahoga County would have turned Ohio red. The 2016 Republican Convention presents an opportunity to win the hearts and minds of Ohioans early.

So we’re going into the finals with swing-state advantage. That’s the biggest surprise today.

How’d we beat Denver?

OK, the new convention center gets some credit, and the hotel boom it’s kicked off. The Rock Hall gets some credit too. Republicans like rock ‘n’ roll -- even if they have to use country music as campaign themes because no rock stars will give them permission except Kid Rock, Ted Nugent and Meat Loaf.

Still, how did the Rs choose Lake Erie over the Rocky Mountains?

I blame legal pot.

No Republican really wants to hold a convention in a state where marijuana is legal. That’s not just because they don’t like the law. They fear awkward viral iPhone photos of blazer-and-tie-clad delegates puffing joints, passing out in hotel fountains after downing more edibles than Maureen Dowd, and generally making Johnny Manziel’s twitpics look dignified. They don’t want Vice trolling the town for clickbait like “I Sold The Kansas GOP Chair A Huge Bag Of Reefer.” People expect Democrats to be closet stoners, but it’d hurt the GOP brand.

Cleveland is a harmless place to bring Republican delegates because our vice isn’t marijuana. It’s self-pity.

The most the Republicans could do to embarrass themselves in a very Cleveland way would be to get photographed in a very Cleveland T-shirt. They should especially avoid the ones that say, “There’s Always Next Year.”

East Clevelanders don't want to merge with Cleveland

"Cleveland takes small steps toward merger with neighboring East Cleveland," reads a Cleveland.com headline today.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and council president Kevin J. Kelley have asked Cleveland State's urban school for info on mergers. Councilman Jeff Johnson told reporter Leila Atassi Monday night what he's also told me: he thinks the big city should annex its troubled neighbor, for the sake of both towns.

There's just one problem.  East Clevelanders don't want to be annexed.

While reporting in East Cleveland for my new commentary, "A City's Limits," I discovered public opinion there is strongly against a merger. The idea got booed down at a public forum in December. The long-suffering town doesn't want to give up its independence, its City Hall and cops, its mayor and council. Only one out of the town's 12 elected officials is pushing for a merger.

East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton is against merging with Cleveland. Norton is evasive about this with reporters, and Plain Dealer columnist Brent Larkin is slamming him for not giving him a straight answer. Larkin doesn't know that when Norton was sworn in for a second term as mayor Jan. 2, he came out against a merger.

What's going on? Norton got burned by George Forbes, who claims Norton supports merging. But Forbes told me his conversation with Norton happened off the record, during Norton's reelection endorsement interview with the Call and Post. (Forbes is general counsel at the Call and Post and has a strong say in its editorials.) Forbes, trying to play journalist and power broker at the same time, botched both roles. He told the whole town about the "off the record" conversation with Norton -- or at least, his version of it.

East Clevelanders, who've been abandoned after waves of white flight and black flight, are skeptical that anyone else really has their interests in mind. Any move that comes off like a hostile takeover will backfire. Merger supporters like Forbes and even Larkin are in danger of coming off like Vladimir Putin coveting Crimea.

Johnson's metaphor of a marriage sounds a better note. But it'll be a long, difficult courtship.

For more on the fraught politics of a merger, check out my commentary, "A City's Limits." Written for the April issue of Cleveland Magazine, it's online now.

My new Frank Jackson profile, out now

It’s time to stop underestimating Frank Jackson — that’s the headline of my new profile of Cleveland’s mayor, in the March issue of Cleveland Magazine and online now.

For years, people have dismissed Jackson with clichés. He's not a cheerleader for Cleveland. He doesn't use the bully pulpit to champion causes. He's not inspirational. Not a visionary. Those clichés persist because Jackson belongs to that rarest of species, the introverted politician. We’re used to being governed by glad-handing extroverts.

But seven years into Jackson’s time as mayor, it’s time to judge him by different standards. After his unlikely political victories for school reform and the school levy, it’s time to acknowledge his successes and understand his talents. That will actually help us demand more of him.

My profile explores how Jackson used his shrewd understanding of people’s motivations to get the school reforms and levy passed. It follows him from Glenville to the Cleveland Clinic to City Hall and catches him dropping witty side comments, near-riddles and risky, blunt comments that provoke nervous laughter in audiences. It examines his surprising, up and down relationship with Gov. John Kasich. It explores how his belief in equity and fairness and his instincts for consistency and patience play out in how he governs.

The story also probes the most consistent and illuminating criticism of Jackson in political circles, that he has a small circle of trust, yet can be overly loyal to those he does trust. And it looks at how all those habits and beliefs affect how he’s handling some of his biggest challenges of 2013, including the investigation into the November police chase and shooting and his latest efforts to develop the waterfront.

Meanwhile, 40 pages away in the March issue, our columnist, Michael D. Roberts, offers a different perspective on the mayor. Less impressed with Jackson’s school victories than I am, Roberts argues that the mayor’s record is disappointing and ought to invite a strong challenger when he runs for re-election this fall. Roberts’ column in our Talking Points commentary section, “Inaction Jackson,” is online here.

I’ve often written about the mayor on this blog, but the March profile is my first magazine-length look at Jackson since he took office in 2006. If the conventional wisdom is right and Jackson coasts to a third term this November, he’ll be mayor through 2017. So now’s the time to ask, what more do we expect of him?

If you’d like to link to my profile, please use this shortcut: http://j.mp/FrankJackson.

Cleveland's residency law struck down

Expect a new exodus from Cleveland with the Ohio Supreme Court's ruling today. It struck down all residency requirements for city employees, including Cleveland's 27-year-old law.

Cops were high-fiving each other in the Justice Center this morning as the news spread, according to Henry Gomez's report on cleveland.com.

Mayor Frank Jackson, who had fought to uphold Cleveland's residency law, admitted defeat. "Cleveland will survive," he said. "We've been through difficult times before."

Expect hundreds of cops and firefighters to move to the suburbs as soon as this summer, further shrinking Cleveland's tax base and housing values -- that is, if they can find buyers for their houses. (The ruling allows all city employees to move out of town, including civil servants, but the safety forces' unions led the 20-year fight against Cleveland's residency law.)

Jacqueline Marino contemplated what a ruling like this could cost the city in "It's Wonderful Living in West Park," her essay in the October 2005 issue of Cleveland Magazine.

Politically, the ruling could defang other legislation passed by Cleveland and other cities. It's a new precedent about conflicts between city and state laws and the "home rule" provision of Ohio's Constitution, which gives cities "all powers of local self-government." The state legislature banned residency requirements in 2006. Today, the court upheld the ban on the grounds that the Constitution gives the legislature the power to “provid[e] for the comfort, health, safety and general welfare of all employe[e]s."

Here is the Supreme Court's summary of the ruling, which links to the full opinion. Here's the story on the ruling from the Toledo Blade.

Cleveland vs. Detroit: What we take for granted

I got back from a weekend in Detroit to see this story, which almost wasn't news: Frank Jackson and Tim Hagan had a nice talk about Cuyahoga County acquiring the convention center site from the city of Cleveland.

Hagan had suggested that the city just deed it over for free. Jackson replied it was a valuable asset, so county should pay for it. But they'll work it out. They had a pleasant chat, and they're confident they'll have a deal by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, Detroit may give up ownership of its convention center too -- but only after an ugly, dirty, ridiculous, YouTube-worthy, crazy fight.

Cobo Center is getting old and out of date. Not as far gone as Cleveland's convention center, yet. But it costs $15 million a year for the city to keep up. It will probably lose its biggest event, the North American International Auto Show, if it doesn't undergo a major renovation. But the city can't pay for the work. It's flat broke.

So the state legislature, metro Detroit's three counties, and Detroit's mayor came up with a plan to transfer Cobo Center to a regional authority. But Detroit City Council voted against it. They don't want the center to give up preferential hiring and contracting for Detroiters.

Two councilwomen are playing the race card to attack the plan. Barbara-Rose Collins (whom voters threw out of Congress 13 years ago amid scandal, and who occasionally wears a tiara to council meetings) started ranting about "European rulers" at last week's city council meeting, then sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers"!

They're suing Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel, Jr., a good guy who calls for regional and racial cooperation. People outside Detroit who want to help the city are recoiling, appalled.

Compared to Detroit's convention center battle, Cleveland's looks remarkably civilized. That reminds me of a few things about Cleveland politics that we take for granted.

Detroit and Cleveland are very similar -- 1920s boom towns, manufacturing capitals, formerly among the nation's biggest cities, scarred by racial tension, now shrinking from industry's decline. But today, Cleveland rarely sinks into the battles between city and suburb, black and white, that wound Detroit over and over.

It's not that Cleveland is a racial utopia. It's definitely not. (Just look at how often local news stories attract ugly comments from readers with racial grudges.)

But in Cleveland politics, racial divisiveness is ultimately a losing strategy. Leaders who appeal to our better instincts deserve some of the credit. Geography deserves some too -- the simple fact that the Cuyahoga River has been our racial dividing line, not the city limits.

Detroit's racial geography lines up roughly with political boundaries. The famous 8 Mile Road is not just the boundary between Detroit and the suburbs, but between one county and two others. So politicians in Detroit and the suburbs who think along racial lines can play the race card and win re-election. Kwame Kilpatrick, the recently disgraced former Detroit mayor, was infamous for this.

But Cleveland's mayors -- Frank Jackson in 2005, Jane Campbell in 2001, Mike White in 1989 -- win office by attracting votes from black and white and from both sides of town. City council presidents need east-west coalitions to survive. County-wide candidates, too, know a multi-racial coalition is the easiest way to victory.

Just after Frank Jackson was elected, I asked him how he might improve race relations as mayor. Here's what he said:

I don’t think it’s really about improving race relations as much as it is carrying out what you said. If I look at what I do in the city of Cleveland not as black, white or Hispanic, or East Side or West Side, but look at it as doing it for Cleveland, that’s a message from me. If you do not play up the issue of differences or what divides us, then it will tend not to be as prominent.

We're fortunate most of our leaders think like that. I wish more Detroiters did.

Ralph Nader debates Bob Barr in Cleveland

Bob Barr, former congressman and now Libertarian candidate for president, walked up to me, with WCPN host Dan Moulthrop at his side. Moulthrop shook my hand. "Welcome to Fringe Fest '08," he said.

I turned to Barr, who kept a poker face. "Good seeing ya," he said, offering his hand. I guess he's gotten used to being called fringe this year.

Cleveland's City Club hosted a third party candidates' presidential debate about the economy this Thursday. Appearing were Ralph Nader, who's at about 2.3 percent in the polls; Barr, who's at about 1.5 percent; and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, a Baptist minister, talk show host and columnist whom the pollsters don't even ask about.

The City Club room wasn't as packed as it was for the Jones-Sutherland or Mason-Butler debates. This one was organized and announced on very short notice. But several dozen people attended, so the room was pretty close to full.

You count on third-party candidates to bring up issues the major parties aren't touching. Nader, Barr, and Baldwin did that -- and also taught a lesson in how the hard-left, libertarian right, hard-right can agree on challenges to both Democrats and Republicans.

All three are against the financial bailout and think the government should prosecute Wall Street firms and banks for fraud instead. ("Tarring and feathering," Baldwin suggested, "might even be appropriate.") They all want to pull the United States out of international trade agreements, from NAFTA to the WTO (though Barr, a free-trader, says he's all for open trade and lowering tariffs, but against international organizations that can overrule American laws). All are against the war in Iraq and want our troops out (probably much faster than Obama would take them out). Barr, who regrets his 2002 vote for the Patriot Act, warned the Bush Administration had implemented a "tremendous unbridled growth of government power, and as a result, erosion of our civil liberties." Nader agreed.

The agreement was so striking that one audience member suggested they "combine forces" and field one candidate. This led them to politely point out their differences. "I believe in strong regulatory agencies, and single-payer health care," said Nader, who said thousands of Americans die each year because they don't have health insurance. Baldwin explained he is strongly pro-life and pro-gun rights.

Illegal immigration also showed their differences. Baldwin wants to shut the borders and crack down on illegal immigrants. Barr wants to open the borders to anyone who wants to cross, including workers, but screen travelers carefully to make sure they aren't a terrorist threat. Nader emphasized how migrant workers are exploited; he said U.S. policies toward Latin America hurt economies there and displace workers, that a crackdown should focus on employers, not migrants; and that migrant workers have to have the same rights as Americans, or else U.S. labor standard will erode.

One young questioner asked if participating in Social Security and Medicare should be voluntary. Yes, Barr and Baldwin said. Social Security, Barr said, is an "immoral program, whereby government takes, by threat of force, money from individuals. No, answered Nader. "What would Americans who are elderly be doing now," with retirement accounts' values dropping with the stock market, "if not for Social Security?" He launched into a passionate defense of "a sense of community" in society and argued that we, like the social democrats of Western Europe, should use government to create universal health care, "decent wages," paid maternity leave, sick leave, and day care.

(WCPN has some audio clips from the debate. C-SPAN taped the debate and is replaying it, but their online link doesn't seem to work, so here's a fuzzy version on Google Videos. The New Yorker recently ran an interesting profile of Barr.)

Where the mortgage meltdown began

The U.S. government's planned $700 billion rescue of the nation's financial system looks different when viewed from Cleveland.

You could say the financial crisis began here, and in the poor neighborhoods of older cities like ours, when mortgage lenders gave out reckless loans, and Wall Street investors bought them in bundles.

Major financial institutions that invested heavily in subprime loans have collapsed. The Treasury Department wants to buy up bad mortgages and mortgage-related securities, to try to stop the lending crisis.

In July 2007, I told the story of one house on Cleveland's West Side and the people who lived there -- aiming to explain how bad loans hurt one address and several families, then a neighborhood, then our entire economy. You can read my article here.