Here are the handouts will be providing at this evenings meeting.  For meeting details see the previous post at:

http://realneo.us/content/near-westside-public-meeting-cleveland-city-council-%E2%80%93-2009-ward-redistricting-process#comment-9741

Thanks to our community partners for assisting in getting the word out for this meeting.

Regards,

Brian Cummins
Cleveland City Council, Ward 15

-- AND --

In search of a Medical Mart mathmatical formula…
…and more details!

See full post at Brewed Fresh Daily here.

WHAT:
A community meeting to share information with the public pertaining to the approved Charter Amendment that requires Cleveland City Council to re-divide the City into wards using a population-based model with a ratio of one ward to every 25,000 residents. Estimated population figures compiled by the US Census Bureau and other reliable sources are being used to estimate population, which hs now been determined as 427,000, requiring a reduction of 2-wards from 21 to 19.

WHO:
Near Westside Cleveland City Council Members.

Location

A look at City Council campaign funds

Posted by hgomez February 12, 2009 11:35AM

On Thursday we learned how deep Mayor Frank Jackson's campaign pockets are heading into a re-election cycle.

The following (see below) is a PD report of the announcement made at the end of the day today.

Although many of us have our doubts as to the actual benefit or success a Med Mart/Convention Center investment will have, the fact that the damn location decision has been made is a relief...particularly given the fact the Mall site prevailed.

George Voinovich was a very selective conservative. That made him also a very selective “moderate” Republican.

My experience with Voinovich tells me he used his ethnic background to represent wealth in the community and in the nation. He successfully portrayed himself as personally frugal and the image carried him a long way.

I once told an audience that Voinovich would never be Governor because people saw him as a Mayor, nothing more. I was obviously very wrong.

While on the subject of cities, some analysts look to the nation's economic woes, it's impact on tax receipts for cities and foresee municipal bankruptcies growing at alarming rates.  Cities may need to look to municipal bankruptcy, chapter 9 of the bankruptcy code, to protect themselves and taxpayers. We haven't seen this since the Orange County bankruptcy in 1994, which lost over $1.5 billion.

I never thought Councilman Mike Polensek was a bad guy, maybe a frustrated, burned out, partially-jaded reformer facing difficult tasks in Cleveland, but not a bad guy. However, in my mind, you can't justify the latest problem involving his asking a local development nonprofit organization to buy a house for him while he secured financing.  He can say he gave the nonprofit a modest profit for helping he can say it was only a short-term thing and he can say he only did it for his mom, but....

EDWARD J. "CITIZEN" HAUSER, beloved son of Walter and Theresia; dearest brother of Harold, Sylvia, Thomas, and Caroline Widemann (husband Reiner); dear uncle of Nicole and Erik; dear friend of Cathy Stahurski; dear nephew, cousin and friend to many.

Ed Hauser died suddenly November 14, 2008. Northeast Ohio has lost its most ardent, studied and tenacious citizen activist.

A few days ago I was talking to someone about the election. This person is well educated, reads the PD and Sun News, watches TV news and is a very active senior citizen. This person works full time and uses the internet well. When talking about Obama I was surprised to hear this person say "aren't you concerned about his terrorist connections?" At first I thought she was referring to Bill Ayers, but she soon clarified things by saying that she received emails almost daily about Obama secretly being a Muslim, refusing to show his birth certificate, etc.

There's something about tech entrepreneurs talking to superstar tech entrepreneurs that is, as Sarah Palin might say, "so gosh,darn excitin'." While I could have done without people getting so braggy about Columbus and a booming tech industry, but I was excited to meet some tech superstars, who hit the road on behalf of Barack Obamma's presidential campaign at an event called 2.Ohio.

Location

How bad a shape are Cleveland and this area?

As bad as it can get.

Dinosaurs like Lou Stokes – for whom more buildings, roads and gutters are named than Tom Johnson – and Arnold Pinkney – who helped elect a mayor 40 years ago – are deciding who the next Congressman (woman) from the 11th district will be.

Who gave them the right? Not me, not you.

Have the news media dropped the “Cone of Silence” story too quickly? Was candidate John McCain cheating?

Here is a good account of the alternative newspaper sale from John Ettorre on Working with Words. It helps fill out the details of the story:

Here is Bill Moyers this weekend at the FreePress Convention in Minneapolis.

No one can say it better, no one can say it with as much knowledge, no one can say it more inspirationally.

Give yourself 40 minutes to hear about telling the truth to power and where the news media are  today and our responsibility for its future.

Some people just must have too much money.

Fred Nance of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey hasn’t submitted a bill yet to Cuyahoga County for his work on the $900 million deal for a medical mart and convention center. He’s the county’s lawyer on these matters.

A few thoughts on our morning newspaper as it struggles for relevance.

You have to give credit to Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg. She does have moxie that has often been missing in our morning newspaper.

The circumstances certainly were different but in 1967 Carl Stokes also had a black minister problem.

It wasn’t as explosive as presidential candidate Barack Obama’s differences with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. However, it was fraught with the tension of an unwanted attachment during a hotly contested and historic political campaign.

Bill Clinton said he (we) killed “Welfare as we know it,” or at least as some did think they knew it.

Welfare, as we don’t recognize it – meaning not for poor people – continues and thrives. Skimming the news in the Plain Dealer yesterday so reveals. The PD doesn’t call it welfare, however. Rather, the new welfare represents commitments to, I guess, what some would call progress.

The article in the Plain Dealer this a.m. on plans to "fix" the "messy" intersection at Van Aken and Chagrin roads gives my tummy some growls.

No one doubts that the intersection could have been devised better at some point.

Some praise the public effort to keep Eaton Corp., a Fortune 500 company, in Cleveland’s downtown. They are even willing to pay a price to see it happen.

The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority will help to keep the company in Cleveland, we are told, by selling land to the Wolstein/Flats project and by helping to “finance $150 million of the Eaton project,” according to a Plain Dealer editorial praising the deal.

Possibilities for Medical Mart Mischief

What do you think MMPI will do with nearly $1 billion to spend on the Medical Mart and Convention Center?

If the past has anything to do with the future, you might be very surprised at how enterprising the Chicago developer Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. can be.

The Plain Dealer is reporting tonight on its Cleveland.com site http://blog.cleveland.com/business/2008/04/enlarge_image_pdfmost_of_a.html tonight  that a deal is in the making to further subsidize the Wolstein project in the Flats, already in line for tons of public money.

You can blame past, present (and future) state representatives for the cutbacks in city budgets. They refuse to go where the money is to find needed tax revenue.
If state law were fair at all, it would allow local communities to tax all sources of income fairly, not primarily the worker’s weekly paycheck.
Ohio doesn’t allow local governments to go after tax revenue where it is. That is to tax people who have the money. Neither do I see local politicians getting exercised by the inequality.
Often low income wage earners who don’t have to pay a penny in federal taxes still have to shell out money they need for their families to pay local income, or payroll, taxes.

Such taxes are unfair, since there are no deductions, as there are with federal taxes, and doubly unfair when you work in a different community than you live. You get taxed, usually with some rebate, in both communities.