WEIRD CONVERGENCE: Two weeks ago Crain's had an editorial blaming the projected Cleveland City deficit on continued increases in City Hall employment (sorry, can't link, it's subscription only). This week Roldo in the City News says virtually the same thing. That's right, Roldo and Brian Tucker... together for the first time anywhere!
I have two comments about this line of attack:
1) If the Campbell Administration really wants to promote e-government, now's the time to start posting all the current finance and job numbers on the City website -- the same numbers Finance Director Baker is giving to City Council. I don't know if Roldo's numbers, or Crains' for that matter, are right or wrong. I don't know, for example, how many of the jobs they say were added in recent years were uniformed safety forces. But as a citizen I'd like to be able to find out for myself, without taking time off work to go hang around City Hall. That's what the Web is good for, and since we're about to have a really nasty municipal melee over numbers, this would be a great time for our City to put the numbers where everyone can see them.
2) The logical inference from the Crain's/Bartimole analysis is that they want City workers laid off, quickly. Let's do the math.
Optimistically, the City might be able to average $50,000 in saved salary and fringes for each worker laid off. (That assumes a fair number of police and/or firefighters in the mix, since those are the only General Fund workforces that have hundreds of people making over $40,000 a year.) So to get rid of a $50 million shortfall we'd have to get rid of a thousand jobs... one-seventh to one-eighth of all General Fund employees.
Leave aside, for now, the question of what this would do to services. What would it do to Cleveland's staggering economy? These are all Cleveland residents we're talking about. Since layoffs would start with the last hired, they'd certainly include large numbers of Black, Hispanic and female workers. Lots of younger residents with families, lots of new homebuyers two payments away from foreclosure. And they'd be going into a job market with (as Roldo points out) 13%-plus unemployment and no end in sight.
What a great scenario. Does this make it a little easier to understand why Campbell and Jackson "gambled on the Cleveland economy climbing out of the recession when preparing the 2003 city budget" instead of cutting the workforce last year, as Crain's and Roldo says they should have?
So maybe the firefighters are exploiting overtime. Maybe the City should have foregone the last class of police recruits. And maybe there are one or two dozen unnecessary staffers on the second floor of City Hall. But none of this comes close to fifty million bucks. That's a revenue problem, caused mostly by national economic failure and state budget politics, and there's no "tough decision" Campbell and Jackson can make to fix it in the next two years.
Taxes or layoffs, that's the choice. Or not, I guess, since everyone seems to agree that a tax hike for municipal services (unlike, say, a convention center and "the arts") is unimaginable... and that struggling to keep Cleveland residents employed by the City in the midst of a horrible private job market is indefensible.
Roldo and Crain's, united at last. Weird.
9.29.2003
MY CLEVELAND CULTURE FOR THE WEEKEND: Hearing Daniel Thompson read a poem he wrote in a Parchman, Mississippi jail in 1961 -- and then two more -- to a cheering, SRO crowd of immigrant workers and their supporters at Sagrada Familia church Sunday evening.
The event was the Cleveland stop of the national Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. In the hall to greet the bus riders from Chicago and points west were over a hundred folks from the Dover, Ohio area -- Latin American workers in a poultry factory in Kidron who are campaigning for representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 880. Not to mention lots of people from Sagrada Familia parish, the West Side Hispanic community and the labor movement.
And... Afi-Odelia Scruggs, my favorite former Plain Dealer columnist, who sat down at the keyboard to belt out "Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Set On Freedom", followed by "Jesus Is On the Mainline" in English and Spanish.
Whoo-eee!
Here's Thompson's Parchman jail poem, reprinted from Art Crimes #3 courtesy of Agent of Chaos:
Freedom Rider Graffiti
by Daniel Thompson
Poem scraped with contraband
Fifty-cent piece on the prison wall
In Parchman, Mississippi
Summer, 1961
Know now
No hero here
No how
If ever
Hung
On tree
The way
They done
JC
I'd be
Cross
I guess
Hell
Yes
The event was the Cleveland stop of the national Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. In the hall to greet the bus riders from Chicago and points west were over a hundred folks from the Dover, Ohio area -- Latin American workers in a poultry factory in Kidron who are campaigning for representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 880. Not to mention lots of people from Sagrada Familia parish, the West Side Hispanic community and the labor movement.
And... Afi-Odelia Scruggs, my favorite former Plain Dealer columnist, who sat down at the keyboard to belt out "Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Set On Freedom", followed by "Jesus Is On the Mainline" in English and Spanish.
Whoo-eee!
Here's Thompson's Parchman jail poem, reprinted from Art Crimes #3 courtesy of Agent of Chaos:
Freedom Rider Graffiti
by Daniel Thompson
Poem scraped with contraband
Fifty-cent piece on the prison wall
In Parchman, Mississippi
Summer, 1961
Know now
No hero here
No how
If ever
Hung
On tree
The way
They done
JC
I'd be
Cross
I guess
Hell
Yes
9.22.2003
DIGITAL VISION BLOG: I've been resisting the urge to write about "digital divide" issues here, because I work on those issues for Cleveland Digital Vision... so it's an area of professional responsibility rather than personal opinion. However, I will break my rule long enough to announce that there's now a Digital Vision weblog associated with the newly rewritten DV website.
I invite you to check it out.
I invite you to check it out.
9.15.2003
George Nemeth at Brewed Fresh Daily responds to the Mayoral Leadership Poll posted here yesterday. George says the Mayor needs a Klingon tactical officer.
9.14.2003
MORE ON CLEVELAND PUBLIC POWER RATES: Public Power Magazine publishes a big statistical directory every Winter with info on municipal electric systems across the U.S. It's not on line, but yesterday I was at the Library and decided to take a look at the 2003 issue. Turns out it lists the total retail kilowatt-hour sales and the total retail revenue from said sales, for each municipal electric utility in 2001. So I did the math...
The average kilowatt-hour sold by Cleveland Public Power in 2001 cost 9.4 cents. (Remember, this averages all sales to customers of all sizes).
There are eleven other municipal electric utilities in the counties surrounding Cleveland. The average price price per kilowatt-hour to customers of the Painesville and Orrville systems was 5.8 cents. Amherst and Wellington charged 6.5 cents; Lodi, 6.7 cents; Wadworth, 6.8 cents; Seville, 7.0 cents; Oberlin, 7.3 cents; Grafton, 7.9 cents; Cuyahoga Falls, 8.0 cents.
Only Hudson came within a penny of Cleveland's price, at 8.6 cents -- still 8% cheaper than CPP.
The City of Columbus, the only other big-city public power system in Ohio, sold its average retail kilowatt-hour in 2001 for 6.6 cents... 30% less than Cleveland Public Power.
Same product. Same kind of ownership (Ohio cities). Same legal requirements. Hell, they're all part of the same state association and go to conferences together! So why does Cleveland Public Power charge so much more than all these other "muny lights"?
The average kilowatt-hour sold by Cleveland Public Power in 2001 cost 9.4 cents. (Remember, this averages all sales to customers of all sizes).
There are eleven other municipal electric utilities in the counties surrounding Cleveland. The average price price per kilowatt-hour to customers of the Painesville and Orrville systems was 5.8 cents. Amherst and Wellington charged 6.5 cents; Lodi, 6.7 cents; Wadworth, 6.8 cents; Seville, 7.0 cents; Oberlin, 7.3 cents; Grafton, 7.9 cents; Cuyahoga Falls, 8.0 cents.
Only Hudson came within a penny of Cleveland's price, at 8.6 cents -- still 8% cheaper than CPP.
The City of Columbus, the only other big-city public power system in Ohio, sold its average retail kilowatt-hour in 2001 for 6.6 cents... 30% less than Cleveland Public Power.
Same product. Same kind of ownership (Ohio cities). Same legal requirements. Hell, they're all part of the same state association and go to conferences together! So why does Cleveland Public Power charge so much more than all these other "muny lights"?
KNIVES COMING OUT AT CITY HALL: So now Cleveland's looking at a $12 million General Fund shortfall this fiscal year, and another $50 million shortage for 2004-05. Funny that no one mentioned this in August when the sales tax hike was on the table. Gee, what do you think this news would have done to a Convention Center ballot issue?
In point of fact, there's nothing at all surprising about the awful state of City revenue. Income tax collections started losing ground in the national 2001 downturn, after almost a decade of steady growth. Two years later our employment base and our taxes are still slipping. George Zeller of the Council on Economic Opportunities points out that new unemployment claims in Cuyahoga County, which were slowing a little earlier this year, have started accelerating again, with over 13,000 new claims filed in July and August -- a 7% increase over the same months in 2002. (See George's data for all Ohio counties here.) The national "jobless recovery" looks a lot like a deepening recession here, which is the worst possible news for a City Hall that gets over half of its operating income from a tax that jobless people don't pay. Add millions in unfunded costs of "homeland security", along with less money in the Local Government Fund (courtesy of Statehouse tax-cut zealots), and Cleveland's budget is in deep doo-doo.
You can take that spotlight off downtown Wi-Fi and arts funding, kids -- the big news in Cleveland politics this Fall and Winter will be cuts in basic services. Already the police and fire unions are saying "Hey, leave us out of this!" -- not so easy when the Safety Department uses about 60 cents of every General Fund dollar (Safety costs 100% of the city income tax, and then some). Campbell and Jackson are both swearing no tax hikes, probably because Byrd-Bennett is next in line for a levy this Spring. Cutting "political fat"? The Mayor could sacrifice a couple of press aides, a planner or two, maybe even a Tech Czar or CTO if things get really desperate... but that would just leave her facing the same awful arithmetic with a crippled staff operation. Saving $62 million will involve much bigger, more damaging sacrifices -- serious layoffs, closed rec centers or fire stations, stuff that makes voters and Councilmen mad.
So if you've missed the knife-fighting at City Hall since Mike White left, cheer up. The knives will be out soon... and not just for cutting budgets. The 2005 election starts now.
WHADDAYA MEAN, LEADERSHIP? Speaking of the 2005 election, I keep reading that the Mayor has lost it already -- two whole years before most voters will pay any attention at all. This seems a little premature, to say the least. But even stranger is the reasoning of the "one-term Jane" predictions, which always seem to come down to her "failure to provide strong leadership"... to not being a "big city mayor", in the words of the Free Times (a big-city newspaper if ever there was one).
Where, exactly, do these guys want to be led to?
You can't accuse Campbell of lacking programs or goals for the City -- look at the humongous laundry list in her State of the City speech.
You can say she bobbled the Convention Center process. But should she have sold it to unwilling voters (the PD), killed it in the cradle (Free Times), or just done whatever the "arts community" wanted? The bottom line is, she personally killed an unpopular tax proposal. I can hardly wait to see an opponent turn that into an issue.
Maybe Whiskey Island is being mishandled, maybe not -- but really, do you think most voters give a fart who buys Whiskey Island and what they do with it? Whiskey Island? Sober up.
On the plus side, no one disputes that Campbell has wrestled the City's books into some kind of order, made it less frightening to work at City Hall (and less depressing to visit), and brought the City's technology vision from around 1984 up to at least 1999. Her press operation needs some work, but the web site is a whole lot better. This all seemed important a year ago. Now I hear you yawning.
In truth, this is all inside baseball. Campbell will have two automatic advantages in the next election -- incumbency and name recognition -- offset by three big vulnerabilities: She's trying to govern a very poor city in very bad times (see above); she's white in a majority-black community; and she has no flair for drama, either in program or personal style. To me, these add up to a difficult re-election no matter what else happens.
But that's a handicapping observation, not a criticism. Handicapping is not civic debate. Honest civic debate starts with the question "What is important and possible for government to accomplish?", and then judges officeholders by whether they do what they should and can.
As Cleveland approaches the midpoint of this Mayor's first term, I think we need this kind of discussion. In fact, I think we owe it to the city, to Campbell, and to ourselves. Citizens, let's put our cards on the table!
CALLAHAN'S MAYORAL LEADERSHIP POLL
Cleveland voters: What will Jane Campbell have to accomplish in the next two years to get your vote for a second term?
Non-Cleveland voters: What will Jane Campbell have to accomplish in the next two years to get a campaign contribution from you toward her re-election?
You can list as many required accomplishments as you like, but please be very specific. Responses like "show more leadership" or "build more collaborations" will be unceremoniously deleted. Also remember to specify whether you vote in the City of Cleveland.
Post your response as a comment here. Or post it someplace else (like your own blog), let me know and I'll link to it.
In point of fact, there's nothing at all surprising about the awful state of City revenue. Income tax collections started losing ground in the national 2001 downturn, after almost a decade of steady growth. Two years later our employment base and our taxes are still slipping. George Zeller of the Council on Economic Opportunities points out that new unemployment claims in Cuyahoga County, which were slowing a little earlier this year, have started accelerating again, with over 13,000 new claims filed in July and August -- a 7% increase over the same months in 2002. (See George's data for all Ohio counties here.) The national "jobless recovery" looks a lot like a deepening recession here, which is the worst possible news for a City Hall that gets over half of its operating income from a tax that jobless people don't pay. Add millions in unfunded costs of "homeland security", along with less money in the Local Government Fund (courtesy of Statehouse tax-cut zealots), and Cleveland's budget is in deep doo-doo.
You can take that spotlight off downtown Wi-Fi and arts funding, kids -- the big news in Cleveland politics this Fall and Winter will be cuts in basic services. Already the police and fire unions are saying "Hey, leave us out of this!" -- not so easy when the Safety Department uses about 60 cents of every General Fund dollar (Safety costs 100% of the city income tax, and then some). Campbell and Jackson are both swearing no tax hikes, probably because Byrd-Bennett is next in line for a levy this Spring. Cutting "political fat"? The Mayor could sacrifice a couple of press aides, a planner or two, maybe even a Tech Czar or CTO if things get really desperate... but that would just leave her facing the same awful arithmetic with a crippled staff operation. Saving $62 million will involve much bigger, more damaging sacrifices -- serious layoffs, closed rec centers or fire stations, stuff that makes voters and Councilmen mad.
So if you've missed the knife-fighting at City Hall since Mike White left, cheer up. The knives will be out soon... and not just for cutting budgets. The 2005 election starts now.
WHADDAYA MEAN, LEADERSHIP? Speaking of the 2005 election, I keep reading that the Mayor has lost it already -- two whole years before most voters will pay any attention at all. This seems a little premature, to say the least. But even stranger is the reasoning of the "one-term Jane" predictions, which always seem to come down to her "failure to provide strong leadership"... to not being a "big city mayor", in the words of the Free Times (a big-city newspaper if ever there was one).
Where, exactly, do these guys want to be led to?
You can't accuse Campbell of lacking programs or goals for the City -- look at the humongous laundry list in her State of the City speech.
You can say she bobbled the Convention Center process. But should she have sold it to unwilling voters (the PD), killed it in the cradle (Free Times), or just done whatever the "arts community" wanted? The bottom line is, she personally killed an unpopular tax proposal. I can hardly wait to see an opponent turn that into an issue.
Maybe Whiskey Island is being mishandled, maybe not -- but really, do you think most voters give a fart who buys Whiskey Island and what they do with it? Whiskey Island? Sober up.
On the plus side, no one disputes that Campbell has wrestled the City's books into some kind of order, made it less frightening to work at City Hall (and less depressing to visit), and brought the City's technology vision from around 1984 up to at least 1999. Her press operation needs some work, but the web site is a whole lot better. This all seemed important a year ago. Now I hear you yawning.
In truth, this is all inside baseball. Campbell will have two automatic advantages in the next election -- incumbency and name recognition -- offset by three big vulnerabilities: She's trying to govern a very poor city in very bad times (see above); she's white in a majority-black community; and she has no flair for drama, either in program or personal style. To me, these add up to a difficult re-election no matter what else happens.
But that's a handicapping observation, not a criticism. Handicapping is not civic debate. Honest civic debate starts with the question "What is important and possible for government to accomplish?", and then judges officeholders by whether they do what they should and can.
As Cleveland approaches the midpoint of this Mayor's first term, I think we need this kind of discussion. In fact, I think we owe it to the city, to Campbell, and to ourselves. Citizens, let's put our cards on the table!
CALLAHAN'S MAYORAL LEADERSHIP POLL
Cleveland voters: What will Jane Campbell have to accomplish in the next two years to get your vote for a second term?
Non-Cleveland voters: What will Jane Campbell have to accomplish in the next two years to get a campaign contribution from you toward her re-election?
You can list as many required accomplishments as you like, but please be very specific. Responses like "show more leadership" or "build more collaborations" will be unceremoniously deleted. Also remember to specify whether you vote in the City of Cleveland.
Post your response as a comment here. Or post it someplace else (like your own blog), let me know and I'll link to it.
9.04.2003
NORTH OHIO 2: George Nemeth excerpted my last entry on Brewed Fresh Daily and got a string of comments from readers. I can't figure out how to link to George's comment page, but here's what's there now:
The concept is great in that it emphasizes the potential and power of the region. However, it ignores the reality that NEO is connected to the rest of Ohio, the Great Lakes, and the Mid West. Statehood is another way of running away from the fact that we are still dependent in some way with the rest of the world. In fact, from my observation, the creation of a duplicate state government by OUR powers-that-be would probably MORE THAN DOUBLE the overhead and bureacracy that we suffer with in Columbus.
steveg
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's more people than many countries!
Finland with their high tech mobile phone business is just 5 million.
But we really should not be investigating the erection of new boundaries...
Valdis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
two words...west virginia
mike
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I understand the frustration. Having spent two years on a "task force" dedicated to statewide economic development, I've become suspicious of purported relationships between economy and 19th century political boundaries.
That said, the problem is fractal: the more tightly you frame the geography, the more clearly you see finer economic fault lines.
My home state - Montana - has somewhat fewer than 1 million people spread across an area just slightly smaller than California. There are at least three distinct economies here. I wonder how many economies NEO has?
Dave Bayless
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A problem with this idea is it has no limits. What's to prevent a group of wealthy suburbs to insist they are their own state, and need not contribute to poorer areas? Seperatism is also pretty bad for any economy, witness the carnage in the Quebec economy as they flirted with seperation for the past few decades. It's one reason I didn't move to Montreal.
Jerry
Hmmm... let me think this over and get back to you all.
The concept is great in that it emphasizes the potential and power of the region. However, it ignores the reality that NEO is connected to the rest of Ohio, the Great Lakes, and the Mid West. Statehood is another way of running away from the fact that we are still dependent in some way with the rest of the world. In fact, from my observation, the creation of a duplicate state government by OUR powers-that-be would probably MORE THAN DOUBLE the overhead and bureacracy that we suffer with in Columbus.
steveg
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's more people than many countries!
Finland with their high tech mobile phone business is just 5 million.
But we really should not be investigating the erection of new boundaries...
Valdis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
two words...west virginia
mike
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I understand the frustration. Having spent two years on a "task force" dedicated to statewide economic development, I've become suspicious of purported relationships between economy and 19th century political boundaries.
That said, the problem is fractal: the more tightly you frame the geography, the more clearly you see finer economic fault lines.
My home state - Montana - has somewhat fewer than 1 million people spread across an area just slightly smaller than California. There are at least three distinct economies here. I wonder how many economies NEO has?
Dave Bayless
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A problem with this idea is it has no limits. What's to prevent a group of wealthy suburbs to insist they are their own state, and need not contribute to poorer areas? Seperatism is also pretty bad for any economy, witness the carnage in the Quebec economy as they flirted with seperation for the past few decades. It's one reason I didn't move to Montreal.
Jerry
Hmmm... let me think this over and get back to you all.
BIG OLE CRAZY IDEA DEPT... THE STATE OF NORTH OHIO: Travel is broadening, and not just because of the McDonald's at every interchange. In July we spent a couple of weeks at Yellowstone, admiring the teeming herds of mosquitoes and contemplating the cauldron of magma bubbling a couple of miles under our feet. It was fun. And on the way there and back, I got to see Wyoming.
Here are some interesting facts about Wyoming:
It has a total population of 493,000 -- just about 15,000 more than the City of Cleveland.
These half-million people have two United States Senators of their own. They have a state government of their own, too, with all the powers reserved to states by the Constitution: They get to choose their own tax structure, run their own schools and highways, and pass their own laws about everything from zoning to the death penalty, from utility rates to the drinking age.
Wyoming made me think: Why don't northeast Ohioans have our own state? I mean... what does being part of Ohio get us?
The 2000 Census shows twelve states with fewer residents than Cuyahoga County's 1.4 million. If you define "northeast Ohio" as Cuyahoga, plus all the counties touching Cuyahoga, plus all the counties touching them -- fifteen counties in all -- you've got a region of 4.1 million residents, which is more than 27 of the 50 states have. These NEO counties include the nation's fifteenth biggest consumer market and pay about a third of all of the state's taxes.
So why are we continuing to drive 140 miles down I-71, the world's most boring highway, to beg the likes of House Speaker Larry Householder (R-Perry County) and Senate President Doug White (R-Adams County) for the things this region needs? (In case you think this is just a Democrat thing, I'd say the same thing if it was still Vern Riffe (D-Scioto County)... but boy, that seems like a long time ago!) Why don't we keep our own tax money and decide how to spend it ourselves? Who really wants a Bicentennial Barn, anyway?
You want a "regional perspective" and a "regional strategy" for the future? Here's a nice, clear, Big Idea for the New Century... the northeast Ohio statehood movement.
North Carolina. North Dakota. North Ohio. Sounds good to me.
And it certainly makes as much sense as Wyoming.
Here are some interesting facts about Wyoming:
It has a total population of 493,000 -- just about 15,000 more than the City of Cleveland.
These half-million people have two United States Senators of their own. They have a state government of their own, too, with all the powers reserved to states by the Constitution: They get to choose their own tax structure, run their own schools and highways, and pass their own laws about everything from zoning to the death penalty, from utility rates to the drinking age.
Wyoming made me think: Why don't northeast Ohioans have our own state? I mean... what does being part of Ohio get us?
The 2000 Census shows twelve states with fewer residents than Cuyahoga County's 1.4 million. If you define "northeast Ohio" as Cuyahoga, plus all the counties touching Cuyahoga, plus all the counties touching them -- fifteen counties in all -- you've got a region of 4.1 million residents, which is more than 27 of the 50 states have. These NEO counties include the nation's fifteenth biggest consumer market and pay about a third of all of the state's taxes.
So why are we continuing to drive 140 miles down I-71, the world's most boring highway, to beg the likes of House Speaker Larry Householder (R-Perry County) and Senate President Doug White (R-Adams County) for the things this region needs? (In case you think this is just a Democrat thing, I'd say the same thing if it was still Vern Riffe (D-Scioto County)... but boy, that seems like a long time ago!) Why don't we keep our own tax money and decide how to spend it ourselves? Who really wants a Bicentennial Barn, anyway?
You want a "regional perspective" and a "regional strategy" for the future? Here's a nice, clear, Big Idea for the New Century... the northeast Ohio statehood movement.
North Carolina. North Dakota. North Ohio. Sounds good to me.
And it certainly makes as much sense as Wyoming.
9.01.2003
LABOR DAY: I wrote what follows a year ago, for a blogging effort that didn't happen. It was all true then (except the people's names, which are aliases) and not much has changed since. So... here's my Labor Day story.
LABOR DAY 2002 -- When we moved into a house on West 54th Street in 1980, the guy across the street was a UAW member. Jim didn't work at one of the auto plants, though; he built towmotors at a small factory, just six blocks away on Denison Ave. But he was doing all right, until the towmotor plant closed in the manufacturing implosion of the mid-80s. He never found a real job after that, and finally Jim and his wife retired to Florida (I guess his pension was vested).
Jim's daughter Maryann now lives on West 56th. In the last five years she was among twenty thousand Cleveland women who went from welfare to work -- in her case willingly, via some computer training and an office job with a nonprofit that depends on county and private charity funding. (How'd she end up on welfare? The usual: got pregnant, got married, got pregnant again, husband went to prison, etc., etc.) Of course, after 9/11, the onset of Cleveland's recession, and a county budget crunch, the nonprofit had to lay her off. So now Maryann has gone from welfare to unemployment and has no idea what to do next.
Meanwhile Maryann's oldest child, Mark, graduated from a Cleveland public high school, which is a significant accomplishment in a system where only a third of the ninth graders will see a diploma. He's a big kid, a football player, very articulate and polite.. knows how to use a computer, how to talk on the phone, all those soft skills that job trainers get paid to teach the benighted job seekers. I saw him at the Pick-and-Pay two weeks ago and he told me the sad story: Got a minimum-wage counter job at a gas station. Left after a few weeks for a better-paying, long-term factory job; laid off two weeks later. Tried working as a salesman; didn t make the quota. I gave him the number of the hire locally program at a nonprofit organization of small West Side manufacturers where I used to be on the board. A few days later, I called his mom to let Mark know that the hospital where my wife works has a hiring notice out for porters. The July unemployment rate in Cleveland was 12%. Good luck, Mark.
The towmotor factory where Mark's grandfather had a UAW job just twenty years ago -- a modern, single-story factory building next to a major railroad, handy to highways, with lots of parking and a new electric substation installed by the city around 1990 -- is empty. It was sold to an automotive fastener company which fell on tough times and was bought out by Park-Ohio Industries, which specializes in buying, downsizing and saving small companies. Park-Ohio didn t want to use the building to make fasteners but apparently didn t want to sell it, either (maybe because they'd have to do some toxic cleanup first) so they've left it empty, except for occasional rental to a distribution or trucking business.
A few months ago Park-Ohio asked the City to subsidize a plan to move one of its other subsidiaries into the building -- an industrial bucket maker whose home plant in Cicero, Illinois burned down over a year ago, putting two hundred Spanish-speaking workers on the street. Park-Ohio offered to bring those $8-an-hour jobs (but not the Cicero workers) to its vacant plant in Cleveland, if the City would just kick in tax abatement and a big low-interest loan. But the City is bound by a new Living Wage law which requires companies that get public largesse to pay their workers $9 an hour and respect their union organizing rights. Park-Ohio boss Ed Crawford wasn't willing to make any such promises. So the City's economic developers had to take a reluctant pass on the subsidies, which probably killed the deal.
Too bad. If Park-Ohio had brought its bucket factory from Cicero to Denison Ave., then Maryann and Mark, who aren't looking at any other great prospects, might have applied for jobs there at $8 an hour, right in the same building where Jim was building towmotors for UAW wages when I moved into the neighborhood. And I would have had the perfect metaphor for twenty-two years of recovery in Cleveland.
Happy Labor Day, everybody.
LABOR DAY 2002 -- When we moved into a house on West 54th Street in 1980, the guy across the street was a UAW member. Jim didn't work at one of the auto plants, though; he built towmotors at a small factory, just six blocks away on Denison Ave. But he was doing all right, until the towmotor plant closed in the manufacturing implosion of the mid-80s. He never found a real job after that, and finally Jim and his wife retired to Florida (I guess his pension was vested).
Jim's daughter Maryann now lives on West 56th. In the last five years she was among twenty thousand Cleveland women who went from welfare to work -- in her case willingly, via some computer training and an office job with a nonprofit that depends on county and private charity funding. (How'd she end up on welfare? The usual: got pregnant, got married, got pregnant again, husband went to prison, etc., etc.) Of course, after 9/11, the onset of Cleveland's recession, and a county budget crunch, the nonprofit had to lay her off. So now Maryann has gone from welfare to unemployment and has no idea what to do next.
Meanwhile Maryann's oldest child, Mark, graduated from a Cleveland public high school, which is a significant accomplishment in a system where only a third of the ninth graders will see a diploma. He's a big kid, a football player, very articulate and polite.. knows how to use a computer, how to talk on the phone, all those soft skills that job trainers get paid to teach the benighted job seekers. I saw him at the Pick-and-Pay two weeks ago and he told me the sad story: Got a minimum-wage counter job at a gas station. Left after a few weeks for a better-paying, long-term factory job; laid off two weeks later. Tried working as a salesman; didn t make the quota. I gave him the number of the hire locally program at a nonprofit organization of small West Side manufacturers where I used to be on the board. A few days later, I called his mom to let Mark know that the hospital where my wife works has a hiring notice out for porters. The July unemployment rate in Cleveland was 12%. Good luck, Mark.
The towmotor factory where Mark's grandfather had a UAW job just twenty years ago -- a modern, single-story factory building next to a major railroad, handy to highways, with lots of parking and a new electric substation installed by the city around 1990 -- is empty. It was sold to an automotive fastener company which fell on tough times and was bought out by Park-Ohio Industries, which specializes in buying, downsizing and saving small companies. Park-Ohio didn t want to use the building to make fasteners but apparently didn t want to sell it, either (maybe because they'd have to do some toxic cleanup first) so they've left it empty, except for occasional rental to a distribution or trucking business.
A few months ago Park-Ohio asked the City to subsidize a plan to move one of its other subsidiaries into the building -- an industrial bucket maker whose home plant in Cicero, Illinois burned down over a year ago, putting two hundred Spanish-speaking workers on the street. Park-Ohio offered to bring those $8-an-hour jobs (but not the Cicero workers) to its vacant plant in Cleveland, if the City would just kick in tax abatement and a big low-interest loan. But the City is bound by a new Living Wage law which requires companies that get public largesse to pay their workers $9 an hour and respect their union organizing rights. Park-Ohio boss Ed Crawford wasn't willing to make any such promises. So the City's economic developers had to take a reluctant pass on the subsidies, which probably killed the deal.
Too bad. If Park-Ohio had brought its bucket factory from Cicero to Denison Ave., then Maryann and Mark, who aren't looking at any other great prospects, might have applied for jobs there at $8 an hour, right in the same building where Jim was building towmotors for UAW wages when I moved into the neighborhood. And I would have had the perfect metaphor for twenty-two years of recovery in Cleveland.
Happy Labor Day, everybody.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)