CLEVELAND AREA JOBS... NO MOTION: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics posted its new metropolitan job numbers Wednesday.

Their June 2004 count of employment on nonfarm payrolls in the Cleveland/Lorain/Elyria metro area is virtually identical to June 2003... which was virtually identical to June 2002.


Which is to say, we're still at the bottom of a three-year trough... and not moving.

"HELLO, MY NAME IS SATAN": Good news, MaryBeth is back.

FEELING SAFER NOW? I don't spend much time on national politics here unless there's a direct Cleveland angle, but in this case I'll make an exception.

Here's Chapter 8 of the 9/11 Commission Report, entitled "The System Was Blinking Red".

The Kerry campaign should be passing out copies of this chapter as a talking book.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Clinton screwed up too. But Clinton isn't on the ballot this Fall. Bush and Cheney (and Rice, and Rumsfeld) are.

So just read it. Thank you.

(courtesy of Atrios)

IF YOU READ THAT, PLEASE READ THIS: A couple of days ago I wrote at length about City Council's focus on real estate, rather than human capital, in its list of strategic neighborhood investments. I leaned pretty heavily on an example from my own immediate neighborhood. While I didn't name the Council Member involved, anyone familiar with Cleveland politics could see that I was talking about Councilwoman Merle Gordon of Ward 15, who also happens to chair the Community and Economic Development Committee.

Up to a hundred people read this weblog weekly, and I don't know who most of you are. So it occurs to me that I shouldn't leave you with the impression that Councilwoman Gordon is especially obsessed with real estate projects, or oblivious to human needs in her ward.

I don't really have any idea of Gordon's overall philosophy of economic and community development. I do know, though, that she used ward allocation money to help get Art House on Denison Avenue started, for which she took a lot of grief from her opponent in the last election. And that she's a supporter of Brookside Center, the hunger center I mentioned in the piece, which is in the process of starting up a small computer center. And that she's one of three Council Members who help manage the Adelphia/City Council Neighborhood Technology Fund, which is the main source of local grant support for community technology centers throughout the city.

So if anything, Merle Gordon might be more attuned than the average Councilman to the human investment paradigm I'd like the City to adopt. I don't know. I haven't asked her. I should. I will.

But please understand, I'm not saying that that City Council (or any specific Council Member) is uniquely backward in their thinking about community economic development. On the contrary -- I think Council's list of priorities shows that it's right in the mainstream, in close synch with the CDC community and its supporters in the policy and funding worlds. I'll go further, and say I think Councilmen pretty well reflect the priorities of the most active civic leaders in their wards.

We're all operating on 1980s community development assumptions that have little to do with the economy of the 21st century, or our neighbors' place in that economy. And we all need to start examining those assumptions.

THE RECOVERY CONTINUES...



Numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, July 20.

CITY COUNCIL'S PROJECT LIST: WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE? The PD reported last Tuesday that Cleveland City Council and Mayor Campbell have agreed to a bond issue to raise $20 million for small economic development projects. The City will use repayments from its portfolio of old UDAG loans to pay off the new bonds, which means the Mayor and Council are borrowing against future income to create a pot of strategic ready cash.

Council's list of 21 priority projects, one for each ward, is here (pdf file). The PD's predictable problem with The List is the absence of downtown projects (apparently Councilman Cimperman's priority, live-work housing conversion on East 30th, isn't "downtown" enough). It seems that the Campbell Administration shared this concern, because a fifth of the pot is now targeted for downtown, whatever that means. The remaining $16 million -- $800,000 per ward, more or less -- is for the rest of us.

The history of this deal, you'll remember, goes back to the Great Convention Center Negotiation of 2003, when Frank Jackson demanded money for strategic neighborhood investments as the price of City Council's support for any deal. Campbell agreed to the concept and pointed to the availability of her "Core City Fund", another bond-financed pot underwritten by revenue from the City's Chagrin Highlands development deals. The Convention Center process fizzled, but Jackson made clear he would keep pushing for his agenda, and now it looks like he'll be able to deliver something -- committed cash, if not shovels in the ground -- in time for Council Members' re-election campaigns in 2005.

In principle, I strongly support Jackson's approach. Heck, I support it in practice -- it's sure better than nothing, which is the amount of new cash that Councilmen and their constituents could expect for local priorities if they'd left it up to the other side of City Hall.

But looking at Council's list of "Economic Development Priorities", a person has to ask: Are these the best economic development initiatives they can devise for $800,000 per ward in unencumbered cash?

The striking thing about Council's project list is that it's all about real estate... vacant buildings, land assembly, retail area improvements, a couple of parks. This is standard-issue Cleveland "community development strategy"; renovate a building, clean up some land, put in new curbs and lights, build some new houses, and somehow safety and prosperity will follow for your residents. It ain't necessarily so.

Take, for example, the City Council ward where I live.

The "priority economic development project" for my ward is a $1.8 million renovation of an old Masonic Hall on West 25th, two blocks from my house. The Councilwoman wants to subsidize the conversion of the first floor into four retail spaces, and the two upper floors to "residential, possibly live work space". The building sits between a McDonald's and the local hunger center (which is expanding); it's across the street from an Aldi's, routinely crowded with poor people looking for off-brand groceries. The neighborhood strip plaza up the street, the Councilman's pride when it was built ten years ago, now almost always includes beggars in the shopping experience.

The two adjacent census tracts (1055 and 1056.2) were home to 1,113 families in 1999, the last census year. 24% were living below the Federal poverty line A quarter of the families had annual incomes of less than $15,000. 45% had incomes below $25,000. Of local residents "in the labor force", 11% were unemployed. (This was in 1999, when the official citywide unemployment rate was about 9% -- it's now hovering around 13%.) A third of adult residents lacked a high school diploma or GED certificate, and only 8% had four-year college degrees.

Why would the Councilwoman representing these families make the reuse of an old Masonic Hall -- a little retail space, a few live-work apartments -- her "economic development priority"? What opportunities will it bring them? Maybe a handful of $8 retail jobs, or a chance to clean the halls. How is this a "strategic investment" for the community?

Instead of one more building, why not consider an $800,000 strategic investment in the people themselves?

For example:

1) For $800,000, we could buy the neighborhood a really terrific community technology training center for four or five years. Like Tri-C's Rainbow Terrace Family Learning Center, which is not only teaching low-income parents computer skills but getting them through their GED exams and into college... or the Cleveland Housing Network's "Bringing IT Home", which combines computer training with financial literacy, getting hundreds of adults' credit repaired so they can get a small loan to buy a computer... or Esperanza's very low-budget program, which trained over a hundred low-income adults last year in MS Office applications and job search skills, and helped most of them get into jobs or college.

A fully funded, $200,000-a-year neighborhood center could reasonably expect to connect several hundred underemployed, undereducated neighbors with this kind of training every year. In four years that could add up to a thousand people on the path to better educations and incomes. Wouldn't that be a more "strategic" investment for the community than one more rehabbed building?

2) Or we could invest $800,000 in helping ward residents with high school diplomas to go to college. Let's say we formed a partnership with the Cleveland Scholarship Program and Tri-C, spent $100,000 to put a full-time college recruiter/counselor in the Councilwoman's ward office for two years, and used the rest of the money for scholarships (or to subsidize and guarantee loans) to help neighbors get Tri-C associate degrees? Suppose we pulled Metrohealth (by far our biggest local employer) into the partnership, and targeted those scholarships and loans to health industry job credentials? Don't you think that would be more productive for local employment than four retail spaces and a few apartments?

I'm picking on my Councilwoman here, which isn't fair; I'm sure she was asked to choose a project for The List, and simply chose one she thought made sense. City Hall isn't used to thinking of investment in human beings as neighborhood development. That's a natural reflection of the city's CDC paradigm, which has evolved over twenty-five years of struggling for public/private reinvestment in neighborhood housing, retail space and infrastructure. Council's "Economic Development Priorities" adhere faithfully and honestly to that paradigm.

But by now it should be clear that the CDC paradigm -- at least its Cleveland version -- is not really about economic development. Buildings don't earn income or create wealth, people do. In the 21st century, we mostly do it with intellectual assets -- education, information, skills. People who are uneducated, disconnected from the relevant technology, and stuck in low-value-added occupations will not sustain healthy, prosperous neighborhoods, no matter how many "projects" happen around them.

Cleveland's neighborhoods need a new "development" paradigm for the new economy, and we need it now.

A wide-open public discussion of The List -- our Council Members' declared priorities for strategic economic investments in their wards -- would be an excellent step in that direction.

PRIORITIES: Just when you think things can't get any stranger... from today's PD story about Cleveland School District administrator layoffs:

One employee who may get a layoff notice from Barbara Byrd-Bennett is her son-in-law, Edmunson Suggs, a liaison between the district and the Cavaliers and Browns teams.

Huh?

Update for Wednesday, July 21... from this morning's PD, "Budget cuts affect struggling schools":

...Byrd-Bennett's son-in-law, Edmenson Suggs, will be laid off in the next round. He is paid $73,165 for his job as a liaison between the school district and professional sports teams.

Ruda said his position has not been cut yet because everyone in the office of extracurriculars is needed to help with the upcoming fall sports season.

"FREE PUBLIC WIRELESS" AT CWRU? Also from today's One Cleveland weblog:

Finally, wireless aficionados, Case Western Reserve University has big news on the free public wireless front. Steven Organiscak, Case's project manager for integrated technology planning, announced yesterday that Case has completed its 802.11g forklift. Yup, 1315 (count 'em) 802.11g free public wireless services available at 54 Mb/sec along with VPN access for Case staff, students, and faculty for tunnel access to the University. It's the biggest public wireless deployment of 802.11g in the nation.

I'm a little bit confused. As far as I can tell, almost all of these access points are inside university buildings, to be used by people who are there on Case business (including "guests"). There's outside access in the academic quadrangle, but this is also on University property where, presumably, random members of the public aren't encouraged to hang out with their laptops. The only CWRU access point that actually serves a public place is the one at Wade Oval.

Am I wrong about this? Can I walk down Euclid, Ford or Wade Park and connect to the Case guest network? Or is "public" just another word (like, say, "community") that means whatever I want it to mean?

MORE ON THE NATIONAL WIRELESS SUMMIT: Details are now posted on the website of the 2004 National Summit for Community Wireless Networks, August 20-22 in Champaign-Urbana.

The Summit, expected to be the largest community wireless networking event to date, will support the work of community wireless networks by facilitating the critical alliance of technologists and policy experts and by encouraging participants to discuss the great variety of challenges and opportunities facing their initiatives:

* Do community wireless networks really serve the populations they ought to reach, and if not, what needs to be done?
* What is the future of the FCC's unlicensed spectrum policies that enable the innovations that drive community wireless technologies?
* Can dozens of independently-operating community wireless initiatives join together to create a positive future for the movement?

There's now a list of participating groups, an agenda and registration page. Participants include Seattle Wireless, NYC Wireless, Austin Wireless City Project, a bunch of national organizations including EFF and the Association for Community Networking, as well as the Center for Neighborhood Technology and other Chicago folks. So I guess it's really national, and it's certainly going to be interesting.

Today's One Cleveland blog says they're involved, too, but they're not on the list of participants or speakers. An oversight, I hope.

So... my Cleveland carpool now seems to include Steve Goldberg, George Nemeth, and Steve Finegold of Tremont WiFi. Anyone else?

SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT A WIRED CITY? Check out the capital of Iceland.

Reykjavik, Iceland, likes to set records. In April 2003, the world's first public hydrogen fuel station opened. The world's largest geothermal system heats houses and even streets. Now Reykjavik is trying to become the first city in the world that delivers fiber to every home.

Since installing a fiber-optic backbone network four years ago, Reykjavik Energy, a city-owned utility, has connected 500 electricity substations with fiber and has begun running fiber from substations to homes. After a 100-home trial that began last year, the utility's goal is to connect 4,000 homes this year, 15,000 homes in 2005, and all 65,000 Reykjavik homes within five years...

During the trial last year, Reykjavik Energy provided 100M bit/sec connections by installing a customer premises switch from Swedish company PacketFront in each participating home. The wall-mounted switch connects to the fiber on one end and provides eight Ethernet ports on the other end. Four of the ports are used for an IP set-top box, two for Internet access and two for "general purpose."...

Reykjavik Energy provides the infrastructure, while partners deliver the services. "Our network is open to all service providers. The customer activates each service and pays each service provider directly," Finnsson says. "That's the beauty of it." Once a customer activates any service, the utility charges a fixed monthly fee regardless of the number of services used. The utility also receives revenue-sharing from service providers.

Hmmm. Adelphia Cable's current Cleveland franchise ends in two years... assuming Adelphia survives that long, of course. And we have a public power company. And a city water system. And One Cleveland. And a city election just around the corner.

Maybe some planets are lining up...