Collaboration and resouce sharing: great idea. Merging cities: enough already

On Wednesday, June 17, the League of Women Voters, Cuyahoga Area, Heights Chapter; FutureHeights; and the CH-UH Public Library presented a public forum about inter-city cooperation entitled “Does sharing help?”

South Euclid Mayor Georgine Wilo, University Heights Councilman Kevin Patrick Murphy and Cleveland Heights Councilman Mark Tumeo spoke to residents and other listeners and answered their questions.

I would like to thank the organizers and the panel for taking the time to provide information and their opinions to interested residents, and also offer my thoughts on collaboration and merging city governments. Collaboration, or pooling of resources to reduce costs, is certainly a wise proposition, not just for times of financial distress but also as a means to ensure frugality and responsibility with taxpayers' money.

Purchasing of new equipment, joint police and fire efforts and, as was discussed at the meeting, a shared animal warden, are all excellent examples of sharing resources and increasing buying power to save money. Let’s continue these types of efforts and worry less about merging cities.

I continue to struggle with Cleveland Heights Councilman Mark Tumeo’s proposition to merge municipalities. While Mr. Tumeo prefaced his proposition by saying he was merely trying to start a discussion, as a professor would do to spark debate in a classroom, I would hope that his position is based on the will of his constituents to push for a merger rather than pushing his own agenda.

I heard comments at this meeting from our elected officials, that residents “don’t understand the difficulty in running a city government,” and that as mayors and council members they need to help educate residents about the best option to ensure financial viability. There was a lot of talk of the dark days ahead and how we need to “act now” or face the consequences. My crystal ball broke a long time ago and it wasn’t worth much when I had it, so I wonder where these select few obtained theirs.

Once again, I get the impression that the people we elect to represent us continue to forget that they work for us. We hired you! Now all of the sudden the residents don’t understand the issues and need to be educated.

Maybe the real issue is that the residents don’t agree with you, and wish that discussions about merging would be replaced by continued discussions and actionable opportunities for collaboration and sharing, which would be more productive. These could include continued joint bidding on paving and infrastructure improvement contracts, which takes advantage of economies of scale. How about investigating means to provide residents with more buying power with home repair contractors? For example, if I need to fix my driveway apron, wouldn’t it be nice if the city could facilitate pooling several residents’ individual projects to lower the cost of replacement? These are examples of real opportunities with immediate benefits, such as saving cities and residents money and improving the quality of their city and homes.

My family and I chose to live in University Heights, a city with a population under 14,000 with its own police, fire, mayor and council; a city where my voice as a resident would not be muffled by 46,000 others or 400,000 others; a city where we enjoy some amenities and benefits that other municipalities have deemed irrelevant or not beneficial to the bottom line.

This was our choice. I certainly respect that other people make different choices and it is not my place to tell them they are right or wrong. If my city starts to look only at the bottom line, I will be very disappointed that the people we elected lost focus on the human beings and families who view their city as a home and not just a business.

Our elected officials should not forget that the residents do know what it takes to make ends meet and continue to make sacrifices to do just that for our households, families and the business we may work for or even own. Election to public office is not a result of an electorate that is misinformed and needs education; it is the result of an electorate that expects elected officials to listen to them and act on their behalf.

Rick Adante lives in University Heights on Fenwick Road and plans to run for city council in the November 2009 election.