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Ed Morrison · Unbelievable
September 26th, 2008
Cleveland missed deadline to join fight on city residency laws
Losing this case will strike at some key neighborhoods in the city.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:13 am
good grief.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:49 am
We need a revolution, no joke. How does this keep happening?
September 26th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Hey, law directors can get fired.
Also, it only takes an hour to drive to Akron. You’d think someone could have checked with the docket office around 2pm the next day instead of just assuming it got there on time.
September 27th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Ed, what recourse do I have as a Cleveland resident affected by this imbecilic incompetence??
September 27th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
lmcshane:
Join the growing number of Clevelanders who are committed to change.
September 27th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
What does that mean? Vote for Obama? I am already voting for Obama, yet I get more mail sent to me everyday. What the hell is wrong with his campaign staff? Frankly, I am more than fed up. Today’s announcement that we are going to get another fix of federal money for our incompetent Cuyahoga gang to blow on their friends just disgusts me. I want my street fixed. I want Frank Jackson to use this money to buy up houses and then give them away to families that need a home. Families who WORK and will invest their own money to fix them up and people who will pay taxes. I do NOT want my tax money going to a useless CDC or any of the plethora of other useless agencies. Just fix my street.
September 28th, 2008 at 12:49 am
lmcshane, I hear you. On the one hand, we need boarded up homes in neighborhoods with tons of them to get demolished or fixed up. Otherwise these neighborhoods will have a hard time ever recovering.
But you bring up a great point. The orange barrels are always up. 480 has been worked on since I moved back here in ‘97 and the end is not in sight. But yet our sewer systems back up they are so old, our streets get patched but not fixed, and I keep wondering if we haven’t missed a deadline to apply for money to do these things as well.
I will say a few of the streets in my neighborhood got resurfaced this year but it’s piecmeal and frustrating. I keep thinking it affects how company execs from out of town feel, what they take away about us when they check us out to see if they want a branch of their companies here. To me, the boarded up homes and roads both need to be addressed.
September 28th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Thanks Carole. The houses being demolished are strategically decided upon to benefit development schemes like the stinking subsidized NRP senior housing projected to be built at and around 2000 Denison. The demo liens are not repaid. They are “forgiven.” We have had a few of these “deals” here in Brooklyn Centre and I am sure if any one in the media bothered to dig around, they would find many more of these schemes all over Cuyahoga County.
September 28th, 2008 at 8:32 am
I do want recourse. My job is financed by the people who live in the City of Cleveland. I am grateful for the job and I would never think to live any where else, because I feel indebted to the people who fincancially support our libraries. You would think that teachers and our safety forces would feel the same way. After all, when those levys come around they should be able to vote to retain their jobs. Communities need to see that at a very basic level, we need all need clean water and locally grown food, waste disposal, maintenance of our utilities, medical and safety response. We have all completely lost our understanding of the role of local, state and federal government.
September 28th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Some ideas:
Start a new Democratic Party in Cuyahoga County. Take the lessons of Obama and his masterful Internet connectivity and apply these tools locally.
Find a candidate for mayor you can support. Run a slate for City Council. ID new candidates for County Commission to replace Dimora and Hagan.
Encourage business leaders to start an alternative chamber more responsive to entrepreneurs and re-igniting innovation (instead of building buildings).
Connect young professionals across the region to provide moral and financial support. Leverage the powerful Internet tools in your hands…
(There is now a 3,000+ network in Indiana: Check out http://smallerindiana.com…I‘ll be meeting with them next week to see how we can guide this network in the transformation of the state.)
Recall that only about six people threw up a stop sign for the convention center vote last summer. They tried to do the impossible — create an opportunity for the citizens of Cuyahoga County on the $400 million tax. They threw the Powers That Be into a fit — with no money and less time. So, instead, we had a plane flying over Indians stadium encouraging the public not to sign a petition that would give them the right to vote on the tax. Remarkable what a small group can do.
It’s your city, your region, your country that the older generation is driving into a ditch. They will be long gone when the bills come due.
It’s almost not important what you do; it is far more important that you (and others) do something.
September 28th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Ok Ed them is fightin’ words lol. First, love the list. But ‘the older generation?’ Don’t you mean the entrenched bureautcrats? I know at least a handful of people who are either directly involved with the City now or recently have been, who are under the age of forty (some under 30) who haven’t helped us much.
I agree with your last sentence wholeheartedly
September 29th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Tell me honestly Ed–what do you make of this?
http://www.cleveland.com/parmasunpost/news/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1220542653283580.xml&coll=4&thispage=2
September 29th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Speaking out has to happen. I know you allude to Tim, Gloria, Norm, Roger…in the six people you identify as throwing a roadblock up against the Medical Mart tax. I know that there are more. These people are heroes in my book. It is scary and it is sad that we are afraid to damn the obvious fraud killing our communities.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Laura, if that cost of demolition is being written off or forgiven for developers, we need to get the particulars and get the money back. Money sloshes around too much, it seems, with little accounting for it, and there is a lot of “customary” stuff going on that needs intense scrutiny and a sharp pencil.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Yep, there’s that Corruption Tax again, Tim.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Ed, is secession too much change to commit to, all at once?
It would be nice to opt out or walk out and take our chips with us.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Well, people have been seceding from Cleveland for over a decade by moving out of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.
For brief period in the early to mid-1980’s, it looked like Cleveland might pull a turnaround. The last decade, though, has seen a continued slide down. The Brookings report on Cleveland outlined the challenges facing leadership in the city.
My guess is that over the long term, you will start seeing Akron as a more of the dynamic urban center in NEO. Cleveland and Cuyahoga County can recover, if we (collectively) start cleaning up the politics in the city and the county.
Short of that, though, there’s not a lot of long term hope. Political corruption trumps economic development every time.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Ed, please don’t legitimize that attitude. If Cleveland is a hole than we are all going down that hole together. Cleveland-Lorain-Akron-Canton-Youngstown.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
You started something hopeful with Map the Mess. I know that the mainstream media could care less, but it shines a light on the cockroaches.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
THEN… we are all going down…
September 30th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
No, Ed is right. Corruption eats everything in its path–you can’t outgrow it. We need honest government first. Otherwise the “economic development” gets funneled off to elected officials and their friends: all of it, every time.
September 30th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Mark, I now work with your daughter
You started calling it a long time ago. It’s time to start calling our local reps every day to demand accountability. If they don’t care about OUR kids, and they continue to ignore US–well, then, we can still make their lives unbearable by buzzing in their ears 
September 30th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
I’m not saying I’m out of the loop, Laura, but somehow the actual hiring is news to me. Did it happen since this morning?
First cleanup step: draft Bill Callahan for County Commissioner!–you heard it here first.
September 30th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I am not endorsing any one for commissioner at this point. We need total reform. Of course, that commission has failed to actually happen. What a surprise. I can say that I wholeheartedly endorse your daughter’s appointment to work for Cleveland’s libraries. She has probably read more books than most adults have read in their entire life time.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I second Mark’s emotion. Where do we sign up to help him run the campaign????
October 1st, 2008 at 10:58 am
L, the way to keep a happy worker is to stock a lot more manga. I’m just saying.
October 1st, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Gotcha
October 1st, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I second that thought, Mark.
Callahan for Commissioner (keep Jones, the other two can go).
They are gratuitously inaccessible…
October 1st, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Laura:
Don’t get me wrong. I am hopeful. I have been in other situations in which corruption has undercut economic development, and a committed group of citizens has been able to turn matters around. It takes time and focus, but it can be done.