Roldo: City Remains Well On Course to Nowhere

I’ve been away for a while and not motivated for a while longer. It’s a “What Does It Matter” state of mind.

Mayor Frank Jackson is still peddling his LEDs 10-year deal. This time with a competitive bid (giggle). Everyone with even some cursory reading knows it’s the kind of deal you don’t’ sign for 10 years. Too much change coming too fast. Too much advancement to be expected to make long-distance decisions. Only fools and deal-makers take the road Jackson urges. Seems only Councilman Brian Cummins is showing some real conscientiousness as his colleague generally slough off their legal duties. How do we reward this guy?

I read in the International Herald Tribune while away and I think it said enough for any reasonable person to give great pause on Jackson’s desires to move ahead with his LED program. But move he will and an obliging, subservient and cowardly City Council will bend as it always does in such situations.

The piece made clear that you don’t jump into LEDs deals. Why Jackson wants to so badly move is worrisome. We need more honesty than we are getting from the mayor and his administration.

In another move while I was gone, Jackson assigned Darnell Brown (husband of Terry Hamilton Brown who wants to be County Chief Executive) to examine the organizationally leaky city water department. The irony, of course, is that it has been his job as a chief executive on Jackson’s staff to oversee the department. Isn’t this now something like asking a defendant if he would like to be the judge at his trial? Sounds that way to me.

My memory tells me that the city almost lost the water department about the time it did the sewer system to the court-formed Ohio Regional Sewer District in the early 1970s. Decidedly poor management caused the transfer of the city’s sewer system under a court judgment. The Cleveland water department escaped the same treatment, probably because it would have been too heavy a blow to the city at the time. Indeed, the late Judge George McMonagle, I’m told, put the city’s water department under receivership but the city eventually got the order removed. Some compromise was achieved. Now, if you get enough suburbanites upset with billing I can see this issue being revisited.

Jackson seems to be going through the motions. If he’s as tired of the job as he seems to me maybe he should just step aside. As one long-time city hall observer said to me today, “Jackson is honest but he has a different mindset than the job required.” I think that’s a perceptive assessment. He’s stubborn when he should be at least somewhat flexible. Once a decision is made, as in the LEDs issue, he can’t back off.

That puts us in an unusual position. Jackson is a popular mayor in many ways but an ineffective one in too many other ways. There are so few other choices around. But the need is certainly there.

Then worse of all has been Jackson’s naming of the committee to redo the Group Plan as part of the Medical Mart/Convention Center project. A so-called new vision for our public spaces to be created by the revamp of the Mall over the convention center. Where the money will come from you can guess.

Again, it seems as if Jackson is just taking what’s been given to him by the Greater Cleveland Partnership crowd and give his approval. That’s follow-ship not leadership.

The list of appointees reads as your typical high-profile, do-nothing committee, heavy with name people and corporate executives – just what we need to give us honest answers. Right? Its result couldn’t already be known, could they?

You know what the final plan will be – some expensive development that doesn’t fit the need or create the human connections to make whatever develops feasible.

Boldness is again trying to be sold as our civic duty. Bullshit.

(Carl Stokes in his first few years enlivened the Mall area with simple, not very costly forms of entertainment – a musical band, a few inexpensive food spots. It drew happy noon-time crowds. Then followed some of the “parties in the park” drawing crowds for a few hours too. People then went home or stayed downtown to have a drink and some dinner. The costs were kept low. But we have to pretend to be bigger than that. It was Stokes who also opened the Flats east bank to the possibility of entertainment venues. No big projects, a bit of nudging here and there. And the photo of him and that big flashy smile splashing through the water at Edgewater Park with kids stringing out left and right from him showed joy. No big money deals. No big profit promises just little efforts, joyfully done.)

I found a letter to the editor in the Plain Dealer very perceptive on this issue. I believe it captures the heart of the matter. I repeat it in full. It’s by C. Lal Lalwani of Fairview Park:

“Architect Daniel Burnham’s vision – more than 100 years old – about Cleveland Mass is overplayed.

“This is 2010, when life and people seem to be millennia away from the life of 100 years ago.

“Walking along Michigan Avenue in Chicago toward the much celebrated Millennium Park gives one a wonderful feeling, with people on the street, shopping, living and mingling. It’s not the park’s structures that cause that feeling.

“In our situation, the connection between mall spaces and day-to-day business and activities is missing. Public Square, Euclid Avenue and Terminal Tower are still the places that bring people downtown. There is no connection between people and the mall.

“As long as spaces are devoid of people and activities, the mall will remain only an ornament.”

Simple truth. Simply stated.

Trying to force a false solution to a simple problem and it won’t work no matter how many big shots are on the committee. Isn’t that how we screwed up the lakefront with expensive buildings that aren’t people friendly? Lost is the greenery to the lake and water. How could this be? Well, it is.

Even the Plain Dealer headline reveals the foolishness: “Jackson names powerbrokers to city spaces panel.” We don’t need no stink’n powerbrokers!

Dan Gilbert, Al Ratner, Ronn Richard; Paul Dolan; some bankers and a couple of public names. Whose interests do they represent? Not the average person that’s for sure.

What a shame. Another fake “public” board, more fake “public” hearings, all in preparation to bless the spending of tens of millions of dollars on something that won’t work. And under the auspices of a public discussion and decision. What simple crap. It hasn’t worked before. It won’t work now.