TELL ME I'M NOT READING WHAT I'M READING

Submitted by Roldo on Mon, 01/19/2009 - 17:02.

The impoverished City of Cleveland – with all its problems – is giving Howard Hanna (Smyth Cramer) $250,000 to renovate the offices downtown that the realtor bought last October, the Plain Dealer recently reported.

“I want to thank the mayor because this was not a done deal. This was a deal where we had to go on the offense,” said downtown Councilman Joe Cimperman to the Plain Dealer.

Well, it sure is offensive to me.

The $250,000 supposedly is a loan to bring 100 employees from Seven Hills to Cleveland. But the loan, if the realtor stays five years, doesn’t have to be paid back.

So it’s a gift.

I thought Mayor Frank Jackson was against raiding another city. I thought he was for regionalism. (Actually, I don’t think he raided Seven Hills. I believe Hanna had made a decision to move employees downtown where others exist and found a way to pick up $250,000.)

Of course, the people brought to Cleveland will still be in the region. There is no advance in economic activity regionally.

This continues the now totally acceptable gift-giving to big business that has become in essence bribery. I’m not sure which the bribee and which is the briber.

The give-away policy stinks.

The $250,000 will come – if Council agrees and that’s not even a question to ask, they will – UDAG (Urban Development Action Grants) repayments. The UDAG program was based on Cleveland’s blight and poured federal funds here in the 1980s. Ironically, though it had to do with blight, most of the money went to downtown developers and mostly at a zero interest rate.

So it’s appropriate, one guesses, that the money finally paid off on these UDAGs - often of 20 year duration - be given to a real estate firm.

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a running tally of offensive expenditures

I'm considering where we can put a running tally of offensive expenditures by the county and the city and the state. I'm wondering if I can run a google apps spreadsheet on a page behind a blogger blog.

Roldo has been doing that for years

The problem is that nobody cares how many $100,000,000s is given to the powers that be, and don't forget all the money going to Case, Clinic, UH, Bioenterprises, etc... all that 3rd Frontier money going to Cosgrove, etc.... and citizens don't give a damn!

Really stupid people here!

Disrupt IT

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Somebody should give that

Somebody should give that boy a cookie!

Shame on us...

  This is a phrase Joe Cimperman loves to trot out at any rubber stamp developer event.  I attended the planning commission review of the NRP proposal for 2000 Denison.  He was presenting on the Wolstein project in the flats.  And, he dropped the "Shame on us..." line to get complete bobble head approval from the members on the Wolstein project. 

Yet, always thinking of himself, he kept the door open on his relationship with Ward 15 by not voting on the NRP proposal, pretending concern for the environmental and economic issues I raised and Gloria Ferris raised, so that he can parlay that into his white knight routine later on. 

Joe--I still haven't forgotten your campaign promise  to help us with the softball league in Tremont.  You never lived up to that promise either.  I will give you this...you can advertise and you can communicate...but I am not listening or buying it anymore. Shame on you.