ROLDO: Don’t Go a Step Too Far on Parks

By Roldo Bartimole

The Plain Dealer and columnist Mark Naymik are performing the kind of the service newspapers should provide the public. They have spotlighted the poor job the State of Ohio has been doing on Cleveland area state parks and beaches.

They are reporting it in a way that those with the responsibility to perform cannot ignore. It is being reported and followed up. That’s like a good right and then a good left from a fighter. It’s exactly the kind of persistence often missing in reporting.

But there’s a problem.

I hope the Plain Dealer and Naymik don’t do a disservice by pushing the public into demanding that Cleveland Metroparks to take over the parks presently leased to the state. They seem to be grabbing on to solution too quickly.

The reason is simple.

In the 1970s Cleveland was experiencing dire financial problems. Then City Planner Norm Krumholz tried to convince Mayor Ralph Perk to give up Cleveland parks – Edgewater, Gordon and Wildwood – to the state. The State of Ohio had more resources than the city. It would lighten the city’s burden.

Republican Perk balked at first – during the term of Gov. John Gilligan – but deeper financial problems and, oh yeah, the change in governorship to Republican Gov. Jim Rhodes, made it more palatable for Perk. The deal was struck for the state take over the parks. The city, however, maintained ownership.

Krumholz now says that the same reason he wanted the state to take over from the city is the basis of his belief that the state should maintain responsibility for care of the parks. Of course, the way they should be properly maintained not the way they are now and the way Naymik and the Plain Dealer have rightly exposed.

That reason is bigger pockets.

The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources has a program budget of $71.5 million last year with $29.8 million devoted to state park operations and $36 million to the division of parks and recreation. The state also simply has more ability to raise fund. More equitably since it has the entire state population.

The last property tax for 2011 brought Metroparks $54-million for all its operations. Its funding rests primarily with the residents of Cuyahoga County via the property tax.

Just as Krumholz didn’t think the taxpayers of Cleveland should be responsible for cost of the parks he doesn’t believe the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County should be responsible for their care now. The cost is too high.

Metroparks appears to want the city’s parks. Not unusual. Agencies like to expand. The way I see it Metroparks views the public relations value of taking the neglected parks as an easy path to a tax levy. I get the impression that the PD wants this too. It would be a coup for the PD as well. Maybe even a big prize winner.

I also don’t like the fact that Metroparks is ruled by an unelected board of only three, appointed by one judge. Too much opportunity for mischief.

But it’s a bit dicey for the PD because the paper has made it a mission to pass a Cleveland school levy.

Both on a ballot this November could boomerang. With people voting for parks, but not schools.

A campaign for Metroparks likely has a much better opportunity of passage than more money for the Cleveland schools.

It’s just the reality of things.

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Crain’s Reporter Finds Criticism Wrong

Last week I took a hard crack at the reporting by Crain’s and the Plain Dealer about the Browns announcement of a new deal with chefs for food service at the city’s football stadium. The two news outlets ate it up.

Both articles failed to report what it would cost and who was paying the bill.

I questioned that and a lot more.

Subsequently, I got an e-mail from Joel Hammond, who wrote the Crain’s piece, that he check with the Browns and was told the following:

“The Browns project, the team tells me, was paid for as part of its new agreement with Aramark (the concessionaire), in other words, Aramark is footing the bill for the physical improvements to Cleveland Browns Stadium.”

So take that Bartimole.

Hammond was upset at being, as he noted, “scathingly attacked.” He has a point.

The problem is that the articles were written as the team management would want them written. Nothing negative or even questioning was pursued. So typical.

That’s one of the problems with how certain people and institutions are covered. They are given the benefit of reporters who are uncritical. This is an institutional problem with the news media.

I’d like to know if City Council gave approval for the Browns to build new food concessions on city property. Were members even asked? Or is it too much to ask? Or whether City Council finds it acceptable that its property will be used for only certain patrons, as these outlets are. The richer patrons, of course, the better the food. The new outlets serve only certain higher paying fans at games.

As I noted last week, Hammond wrote that the facilities would be available to others on special occasions – “200-plus corporate events, weddings and parties to which the stadium plays host each year.” Income producing for the Browns and concessionaire.

That poses two other points: Since the Browns Stadium is tax exempt, the concessionaires and the Browns don’t pay taxes on the new food outlets. Secondly, this tax dodge represents an unfair competitive edge on other restaurant facilities that do pay property taxes. We still don’t know how much these renovations cost.

It’s time that sports franchises are treated to critical reporting. They are profit-making businesses that get soft and special treatment by the news media. It should stop.

Reporters ignore the obvious.

These are rich businesses owned by wealthy people.

The Browns were valued at $1.015 billion in 2010. That’s about double what Al Lerner paid for the franchise, $530-million in 1998. That was after Lerner helped Art Modell’s move to Baltimore. These figures are from WRHambrecht, a sports financial group and Forbes Magazine.

Is it possible that our politicians and our reporters and editors don’t understand the implications of that wealth and the deal the Browns have (negotiated by Fred Nance for the city, now suspiciously with the Browns) a $250,000 annual rental never to increase over the 30 year lease. This payment is dwarfed by the property taxes (more than $400,000 annually) the city pays JUST FOR THE CITY LAND upon which the tax exempt Browns Stadium sits? Yes, the land is taxed; the building not.

Is it forgivable that they simply ignored this through the years of covering the Browns? Do they understand that the Browns tax bill comes at the expense primarily of the Cleveland schools?

You know the Cleveland schools, desperate for money. So desperate that a phony reform is embraced by Mayor Frank Jackson, Gov. John Kasich and, of course, the Plain Dealer, Greater Cleveland Partnership, Cleveland and Gund Foundations. Co-conspirators, I think the term goes. All this emotion simply to try to fool people into voting a property tax increase. All while this combo pushes for tax abatements that rob the schools.

This brand of coverage that continually ignores the obvious creates the kind of media bias that favors power and wealth.

 

 

Roldo Bartimole has been reporting since 1959. He came to Cleveland in 1965 to report for the Plain Dealer where he worked twice in the 1960s, left for the Wall Street Journal in 1967. He started publishing his newsletter Point of View in 1968 and ended it in 2000. In 1991 he was awarded the Second Annual Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in Washington, D.C. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland chapter, in 2002, and was named to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, 2004. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]

 

 

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