So the Ohio Citizens League's Council reduction plan won't be on the ballot in May:
...[T]he Ohio Citizens League announced Tuesday that it was "idling" its efforts to reduce Cleveland's council from 21 to 11 members. Those efforts included collecting 31,000 signatures for a May ballot issue.Score one for Marty Sweeney. Or maybe for Cleveland voters who weren't as eager to sign the OCL petition as Tony George of Westlake, Michael Gibbons of Fairview Park, and Peter Kirsanow of the Bush Civil Rights Commission and NLRB expected us to be... not to mention the League's newest leader-spokesman, Ed Crawford, another big GOP money guy who entertains Presidents at his 71-acre estate in Kirtland Hills and runs a business headquartered in Euclid.
Edward F. Crawford, chief executive of Park Ohio Holdings Inc. and a league member, said Council President Martin J. Sweeney convinced the group he was committed to making council more effective and efficient and tackling other "good government" issues.
Sweeney said he told group members he believed the current ward-based system works well, and made no guarantees to change his mind. "There is no deal," he said. "I didn't commit to anything."
Crawford said the group's signatures are good for at least another year, and the league hasn't ruled out a ballot issue if it can't reach resolution with council members. Its plan would reduce Cleveland's council to seven members elected by ward and four elected citywide. All 21 members are now elected by ward.
Sweeney believes the charter review process is the best way to address whether council should be reduced. Under that process, a charter review commission could put a council-reduction plan before voters by 2008.
(It may be of interest that Crawford's hometown of Kirtland Hills, with 597 residents living in 224 households, has a mayor and seven village council members -- i.e. a council/citizen ratio of 1 to 75, compared to Cleveland's ratio of about 1 to 23,000. Of course the Kirtland Hills councilmen are part-time, and may well be unpaid -- no one living there needs the money. Even so, having 1/75 of the residents on the village council seems excessive to me. I wonder if Crawford is circulating council reduction petitions there.)