Clevelander17

A school district merger would be at least as complicated--politically and logistically--as a municipality merger. But it probably does need to happen in certain areas. In general, I think you're still suggesting short-term band-aids to problems that are more structural in nature. The factors that determine which suburbs thrive and which struggle are essentially codified into law. I'm not sure that these factors really did exist 50+ years ago when a different set of suburbs/neighborhoods thrived, though I also don't think we were as divided back then. It will be interesting to see if the state legislature follows through in fixing the local income tax situation where a person pays a full share of income taxes to the city in which they work. If that happens, suburbs like Beachwood, Independence, Westlake, etc. are going to have to do some soul-searching. Unfortunately any change would also put the screws to larger cities like Cleveland itself. In general it would force a wide variety of parties to figure out what's important and potentially spur on municipal partnerships and mergers more than any policy that we've seen in a long time in this state.

Hey my mom grew up in Parma Heights, but truthfully I don't know enough about the area to suggest any merger scenarios. That being said, I wasn't the one that made the suggestion! :)

This is not about splitting it up for the sake of splitting it, this is about unifying neighborhoods and institutions. 1) Forest Hill Park is already partially contained in Cleveland Heights, so this would be a chance to unify it under one government, because as of now it's being neglected, particularly on the East Cleveland side. Maybe all parties can agree to have the MetroParks take over? I think that that would be my preference. 2) Nela Park and the surrounding North Noble neighborhood is something that I think makes the most sense to potentially go to Cleveland without much debate if Cleveland needs to have "assets." 3) Lake View Cemetery is split between Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, and East Cleveland, with Cleveland containing the smallest share of the cemetery. I truthfully think it's irrelevant which city has it, but I could be missing something. I think I mentioned this before, but the area I think would benefit most from being unified under one government is the Superior Triangle neighborhood and I think it makes the most sense to go to Cleveland Heights. This is no asset, in fact it's a burden, but part of the problem is that it's split between two cities and no real plan can be implemented to turn it around because one of the cities has much bigger problems.

a) While you can cherry-pick examples, your suggestion still overwhelmingly puts inner core suburbs and their residents at a disadvantage and doesn't offer a real solution for their problems, with or without ceding local rule. And you're still rewarding suburbs that, through fluke of geography and history, are able to survive or even thrive. b) Brecksville and Broadview Heights don't "share" a school system. School districts are independent of municipalities and oftentimes predate municipal borders. In fact, about half of Broadview Heights actually feeds into the North Royalton school system. But since you brought it up, North Royalton and Brecksville-Broadview Heights school districts should probably merge with one another...along with at least a dozen other school district mergers that should happen in Greater Cleveland. c) In regards to sharing services needing to come before mergers, I have to disagree, and I think that's a copout. It still ignores the fundamental fact that there isn't a good argument why we need so many separate municipalities (and school districts) in the first place.

I agree, but just so we're clear here, I would never advocate that CH completely take over EC. I'm just saying that CH should take over the southeast portion of EC, which would still be a tough sell to CH residents. That area consists of a few high-rise apartment buildings along Terrace Road (negative), the other half of a blighted neighborhood in the Superior Triangle (negative), another transitional but rough neighborhood along North Noble, all of Forest Hill Park (positive), Nela Park (positive), and the other half of Forest Hill housing "subdivision" (positive), and another part of Lake View Cemetery (positive). Basically I'm just suggesting that several neighborhoods and parks that Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland ALREADY share be unified under CH's control IF EC is going out of business. CH would have no business taking anything northwest of Terrace Road.

How? How exactly does merging with two other cities with the same financial and social issues (but arguably to a worse extent) help GH? Maybe some money can be saved around the edges with employee contracts, but would it be enough to do the types of things that really turn neighborhoods around? Now merging with either one of its western neighbors, Cuyahoga Heights or Valley View, would help GH tremendously. But that's not going to happen because of the whole parochialism thing on the part of CC and VV. This is an endless cycle of neighboring suburbs that have no interest in merging with one another. Heck we couldn't even get the very similar suburbs of Orange, Pepper Pike, Moreland Hills, and Woodmere to follow through on their exploration of a merger.

So essentially what you're arguing is that the older, more diverse, landlocked communities shouldn't demand structural change, but instead merge with one another to create larger suburbs with the same inherent problems? And then the newer suburbs that benefit from fluke of timing and absurd local income tax laws should be allowed to maintain their statuses quo, interacting with the rest of the region only when it's to their own benefit? FYI, since I know Garfield Heights pretty well and you pointed it out, the city may have big financial issues, but there's no way the residents would accept a merger with Maple Heights and Bedford Heights. GH residents are a proud bunch and when they look to the east that's exactly what they're hoping to avoid (even if it might be an inevitable outcome).

Well Barrett is out for the year. Unbelievable.

More than that. Many of the suburbs that are surviving or even thriving are doing so because of barriers their residents have been able to put up and maintain. These barriers are not of the physical type as discussed earlier, but of the economic, political, and legal variety.

Racism, crime, schools, escapism, desire for more space, government subsidies for expansion, less societal financial burden, etc. (Not in that order.) It's multifaceted, many of those reasons are precisely why wide-scale municipal mergers will always be a tough sell in Northeast Ohio and personally why I would have a hard time supporting any of the inner-ring suburbs unilaterally merging with Cleveland without bringing along the outer-ring suburbs.

My reasons that this is happening? Or my evidence that it is happening? You asked me the former but I think you meant the latter.

A few things: 1. Read the comments on the Canton Repository story and there is definitely some anger amongst residents. Enough to force a change? Unlikely. 2. Publicly the HOF committee says that it was their decision to name it after him. Either that's poor judgement on their part or it's a front story for may have really happened. 3. Of course I'm aware that people pay money to have buildings named after them, but this was a locally-based building, overwhelmingly used by locally-based teams, that already had a name for a local resident. There's something a little bit different, a little bit unseemly about this situation, at least in my opinion.

There are some obvious differences between a local company buying naming rights for a stadium in which a professional team plays versus a nonlocal businessman (who's still alive) making a donation and having a committee "choose" to name after him a stadium in which amateur teams play. The big similarity is that these are both "publicly-owned" stadia in which control has been ceded to outside interests to do as they please, sometimes to no benefit of the public. But thank you for the context. I guess Benson wasn't willing to pay an extra $2 million to put up those large pictures of his penis on banners outside the stadium and besides the HOF committee had to draw the line somewhere, right? Thank goodness!

This is not an either/or discussion. I support a full Cleveland-Cuyahoga County merger, similar to what many southern and western cities have done in recent decades. I'm also fairly certain that that will not ever happen because of how divided the region is. Short of that, I'm not going to support any piecemeal policy that places an increasing amount of the burden on inner-ring suburban neighborhoods while outer-ring residents and their neighborhoods thrive at the core's expense.

I mean, let's be real here, most of the things that make Cleveland unique were established years before this current generation of leadership took office. They've been stewards, oftentimes along for the ride while nonprofits have driven growth in certain neighborhoods, and on quite a few occasions when they have been steering the ship they've made questionable decisions. Although I would love to debate whether cities are acts of nature (more specifically, human nature since we moved towards civilizations several millennia ago), the real point I was trying to make is really straight-forward: Some people in Cleveland Heights have been overly permissive and accepting of certain behaviors in the name of "inclusion," however in the name of survival I think that that attitude needs to change. In some corners of the internet, outsiders often argue that "Cleveland Heights is the next East Cleveland." While that statement is ridiculous considering all of what Cleveland Heights still has to offer in terms of its own stable "assets," there's no arguing that blight has slowly been spreading south from EC and with it, some parts of CH have deteriorated and dare I even say become unsafe. This should not be about ego, the future of East Cleveland has arguably a larger impact proportionally on CH than on any other municipality in the region. Forgive me for not having faith in the leadership of Cleveland to do what's necessary to fix East Cleveland's problems on the level that would truly benefit Cleveland Heights and the region as a whole. The argument at this point just seems to be that Cleveland should, by default (no pun intended), annex East Cleveland. As I've said over and over, I think there's a strong argument why CH would be a better fit and steward of the uphill portions of EC. And as an aside, yes I believe that this region is as dysfunctional and parochial as ever. We may be past the point of ever overcoming that. In the short-term, I'm simply advocating for policies that preserve one of my favorite parts of the region, my second "hometown," and an area that I think many folks would agree is one of the most unique in Northeast Ohio.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on how ridiculous it is to name the stadium for Tom Benson considering the history of the stadium. And I've yet to hear of any formal public backlash, but I hope it's coming. Or maybe it's not, and we now know the price of dignity in an old Rust Belt town. FWIW, even if the state backed out, between Malone College, Walsh University, the Canton City Schools, and various local private donors, I bet a tidy sum could be dug up to do whatever renovations are necessary to update the place. I'm not talking about making it into the Taj Mahal, but bring it into the 21st century. The Hall of Fame isn't going anywhere; perhaps community leaders should lean on the committee a bit since this decision seems to have been made without much care for local history.

I'm not sure I follow entirely, but I think you're getting at the possibility of Cleveland bringing things to East Cleveland that one might eventually call "assets," which would indirectly benefit CH. I guess I'm pessimistic about that since, again, there are still large chunks of the other 77.7 square miles that Cleveland leaders have yet to figure out how fix. Absolutely not. My point was that if the city has to choose between implementing policies that would make the city safer, but potentially cause people to cry racism, or to choose a policy of extensive inclusion, but have to deal with potential crime issues and an image of being unsafe, I'd take the former every single day. CH has a long history of being inclusive, perhaps to a fault, and perhaps to an extent that has put the future of some of its neighborhoods in jeopardy. There is a long list of other NEO communities that have been much less inclusive over the years, but these are communities where crime is less of an issue and the schools have a perception of being better. It's time for CH leaders to be proactive and make more decisions based on realism and less on idealism.

I don't think this is entirely true. My understanding is that Canton would have a very large stadium for high school and college football use regardless of whether or not the NFL ever decided to locate the Hall of Fame there. The original stadium was built, with public money, some two decades before the Hall of Fame even opened. The history of this stadium is rooted in high school football and I think there's good reason to believe that with or without the NFL, the McKinley Bulldogs would still be playing in one of the largest and nicest stadia in the state. Stark County is football crazy and while it's hard to make guesses about history, I suspect that the local community would have dug into their collective pockets over the years to fund renovations and maintenance for the place. And building on that point, the schools and state are still fronting about half of the money for these newer renovations, so I'm still not seeing the argument behind so nonchalantly discarding tradition.

In the early 1980s when the barriers were built, the NYT wrote a piece about the situation and as I recall from reading the archived version a few years back, my memory is that the implication was definitely that race was an issue. Edit: Here's the piece: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/27/us/fence-is-not-neighborly-in-a-suburb-of-cleveland.html I guess my memory was wrong. Race is more than "implied," and the piece was written in the late 1980s.

Of course I'm fully aware that Cleveland Heights shares a border with Cleveland. However that border is not the problem. How familiar are you with the area? CH's border with Cleveland includes Lake View Cemetery, Little Italy, Doan Brook, Ambler Park, and the eastern edge of University Circle. None of this area causes issues for Cleveland Heights, in fact CH's proximity to these things are assets. Who cares about that type of bad "PR"? Cleveland Heights gets pounded by the NEOMG on a near daily basis because of crime (occasionally serious, usually petty) that's overwhelmingly being committed by non-residents. I'm not a resident of CH, but I grew up next door, attended schools in the city, and care a lot about the city and its future. If that means that erecting barriers causes some bad PR but potentially makes policing certain parts of the city easier, than I'm all for it. "Inclusion" doesn't mean having to tolerate people who bring bad behavior with them. It's time for some other cities to participate in the "inclusion." Here's what this conversation comes down to for me: a) East Cleveland's blight has spilled over into northern Cleveland Heights and something must be done. Cleveland Heights is one of the region's true gems and this situation opens up some possibilities for Cleveland Heights to take control over what I believe is one of its big problems. b) I am not at all convinced that transferring East Cleveland to Cleveland will improve that area in any discernible way. c) I am convinced that Cleveland Heights would be a much better steward of the uphill areas of East Cleveland than Cleveland could, especially with Cleveland Heights' aggressive police force. d) The uphill areas of East Cleveland are where most of the city's assets are located, but in reality that area is much more similar geographically and architecturally (and likely demographically) with Cleveland Heights than the parts of Cleveland that border East Cleveland. e) Of course my interests in how this plays out are selfish as a Heights resident, but I believe that a lot of Cleveland residents have a pro-annexation stance that is quite selfish as well (i.e. the folks worried about getting Cleveland's population back above 400,000 which is mostly irrelevant) and aren't really taking into consideration Cleveland's inconsistent record of managing its own current assets. At the end of the day, though, as I mentioned above, I'm not sure there are any leaders in Cleveland Heights that see things this way. In all likelihood they'll let Cleveland take East Cleveland in its entirety and the rot in that area will continue unabated, causing endless problems for Cleveland Heights. I don't believe Cleveland Heights leadership has the foresight to see this as an opportunity to take the bull by the horns and proactively fix something that is bringing the city down.

I mean, Benson himself isn't even one of the league's most important owners/leaders.

As an Ohio high school football fan, the name change is ridiculous and kind of a slap in the face to the community. Why all the angst over a name change? Well, in my opinion, you're taking what has always been a local stadium named after a local athlete/leader and naming it after a person who is from Louisiana but simply plopped down several million dollars for the honor.

Yeah we've had this discussion before, and that's the most likely outcome I believe. I guess if it's an all-or-nothing proposition, as a resident of the Heights, I say give Cleveland all of East Cleveland and start putting up separation barriers because it's unlikely that Cleveland, with all of its own problems throughout its other 77.7 square miles, will be able to do much to really fix that area or keep it safe. And truthfully EC's few assets aren't all that great, certainly not worth the headaches that would come along with it.

As an Ohio high school football fan, the name change is ridiculous and kind of a slap in the face to the community.

Likewise, Cleveland has its own problems. I think that East Cleveland's assets--few as they may be--will continue to rot even if Cleveland takes over. If the discussion of annexation is held, Cleveland Heights leadership needs a seat at the table and even if CH doesn't end up with any part of EC, it needs to have a say in how that area is rehabilitated. Whatever happens, there needs to be more an uphill police/safety presence that EC clearly at the moment cannot accommodate. That said, I still think that at the very least the EC portion of the Superior Triangle needs to go to CH so that perhaps some sort of a master plan can be implemented to fix that neighborhood. Both cities have engaged in bulldozing many blighted homes around there, but I think that there needs to be a bigger plan, like perhaps extending Forest Hill Park further east or even building a northern extension of Coventry Road with some sort of mixed-use development that takes advantage of proximity to University Circle.