CLEVELAND LEADERS IGNORE THEIR PEOPLE

By Roldo Bartimole

Where are the political activists? Where are the Citizens?

Cleveland needs them badly.

The city has sunk into a silent obedience of acquiescence. Voters are in hiding. Leaders hide from them.

This is a serious problem.

A prognosis for a dead city.

The past is always with us. It foretells the future.  We must pay attention.

We can go back to 1970 for this period’s start.

It was after the turmoil of the 60s, which included riotous activity in parts of Cleveland. It was reaction to the racism that had affected Cleveland for a  long time.

Between 1960 and 1980 this city lost 300,000 residents.

It’s been a slow decline. The city gave up its transit system, a number of parks to the state, the city sewer and port system were regionalized.

The city’s strategy started slowly. The first sign of change was tax abatement. It signals the Establishment had turned from coopting the  population to grabbing what it could.  Cleveland’s prime law firm Squire, Sanders & Dempsey wrote the tax abatement law passed  by  the state legislature in Columbus.

National City Bank, one of the most profitable at that time, was first to line up. It already had planned to build at the corner of E. 9^th  & Euclid. At the time this was one the busiest foot traffic spots downtown.  

At that time a Bond Clothing store stood there. a major example of Art Moderne commercial, building, says the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.

The Bond Clothing Co. occupied the corner for many years.

It was soon gone.

National City Bank got a $14-million. 20-year abatement for a structure it had already planned to build. It was graduated: Each five years a quarter of the abatement vanished.

The new bank building afforded NO retail outlets along the E. 9^th and Euclid retail area. It faced out blank concrete and glass to the sidewalk.

It said to the public, “retail downtown is dead.”

A second abatement was passed for a BP building behind Tower City. But it was never built there.

Dennis Kucinich won the mayor’s race riding on  opposition to the abatement issue but spent his two-year term failing and was replaced by Republican George Voinovich.

Voinovich played a cautious game on both abatements and Muny Light, as the city’s electric power system was known. He was careful because he knew Kucinich’s base still represented a threat.

The threat of a still aroused Kucinich constituency caused Voinovich’s caution. He didn’t move to pursue abatements.

Indeed, building continued downtown without abatements: the $78-million Medical Mutual; the $47-million Eaton Center; the $50 million Ohio Bell buildingand the $200-million Sohio Building on Public Squareand the $128-million North Point building.

It didn’t mean the corporate establishment had been beaten.

They saw a new stadium planned. Art Modell, owner of the Browns, would want new digs. He was still making money. He paid the city $2.4 million but his operating budget was $56 million by his own accounting.

Remember the then Cleveland Indians were his tenant.

County Commissioner Vince Campanella pushed for a new stadium via a property tax. Voters nixed it badly.

New coalitions of politicians and corporate leaders were forming. It would produce the next huge move to subsidize downtown.

Council President George Forbes and soon to be owner of the then Indians Dick Jacobs form one unit; the next mayor Michael White and Sam Miller and the Ratners of Forest City created another.

It helped create the city and its morale we have today: Support the builders, not those who have dire needs.

They were helped by a federal program that released government dollars to cities with serious economic problems.

But the money flowed to developers, not the poor.

White’s friends at Tower City got $10 million for its new Avenue retail, another $7.9 for the Ritz Carleton hotel where White and Sam Miller would breakfast on Sundays. Other portions of the Tower City complex got $2.7 million and $2.6 million injections of cash.

Forbes’ friend Jacobs got UDAGs of $3.5 million at the new Galleria (along with hefty 20-year  abatements  for the new Marriot Hotel,  $7.73 million and the Society Center (now Key) the $10 million). Forbes even saw to it that the Jacobs combine got full use of the historic Mall A for an underground parking facility to serve the hotel, also fully tax abated.

By the way, the UDAGs were typically for 20 years at zero interest. In other words, free money, none payable until the end of the 20 years.

Other UDAG and abatements flowed to other developments across the city, including Playhouse Square, likely the most productive for the city.

Does anyone have to spell out what it means to have no citizen oversight and rampant connections of business and politics?

But  the party wasn’t over.

Forbes and White had been close political allies. However, in 1989 they opposed each other for mayor. White won with some 86,000 vote to Forbes 68,000 with a 52 percent turnout.

White ran as a progressive and with promises to turn attention to back to the neighborhoods.

He gave promise in his inaugural speech.

“We say today that we do not accept that ours must be a two-tier community with a sparkling new downtown surrounded by vacant stores and white-washed windows…. We face a great challenge but ours must be the generation to reclaim Cleveland’s future from poverty and despair.”

He promised also to not to seek a tax increase in his first term.

But before he took office White asked and got a favor from Forbes who hadn’t vacated the council presidency.

Pass another major tax abatement for a Public Square complex, $122-million next to what now is Key Center. Forbes saw to its passage. But it was never built since the market, not the subsidy, deemed it unworkable.

Then White broke his no new tax pledge by pushing a $275-million sales “sin” tax that still exists today.

Now decades later the story seems awfully the same.

Millions more public dollars have been poured into the baseball stadium and the professional arena.

And looming high on Cleveland’s need list is another major subsidy demand for a new or revamped football stadium. Mayor Justin Bibb has opened with a $461-million offer. What could go wrong.

This follows another major downtown injection of public dollars via Mayor Justin Bibb’s “Shore to Core to Shore” plan. It will divert downtown property taxes to aid private projects on the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie downtown.

This one doesn’t fool around with  a 10-year or 20-year program but reaches out 45 years into the future.

Cleveland is on the hook  for longer than many who read this will live.