Hts121

It's out in Eastlake, but if Cleveland parents of young children have not found Zero Gravity yet, they really need to. $6 for each kid to play for 2 1/2 hours. Parents are free. http://gocitykids.parentsconnect.com/attraction/zero-gravity-and-party-extremes-34675-melinz-parkway-eastlake-oh-44095-us

You will probably find some useful information, discussion, links and articles in this thread, but most of that would involve consolidation on a much larger scale than I believe you are researching - http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,3595.0.html FWIW, Safety Forces (police, fire, EMT) use mutual aid contracts and you can look into the efficiencies of those. School Districts overlap. So do Sewer Districts. Cities will also "share" legal counsel by using private lawyers who specialize in municipal law as opposed to having in-house counsel stationed at City Hall. These lawyers are often considered employees and not officials. Good luck!

Downtown Medina is more "urban" than a lot of big cities these days. I raise my kid in the inner-ring in a fairly dense neighborhood. Does that count?

What would be a good idea is a "splash park" for downtown Cleveland (any downtown really). We have one around us where they filled in a public pool with concrete, put down a rubber mat and installed all different kinds of sprinkling devices the kids run through. That one is rather big. My Dad's neighborhood in Charlotte has a much smaller one, probably about 20x20, gated in and built in as part of a playground. But, for these to really work, there has to be a strict age limit of 10 or so. For Clevelanders, Children's Place at TC is not a bad place to shop for clothes. I have found the clothes to be pretty good quality. Much better than the stuff you will find at the big box stores IMO. Lots of sales.

Personally, I think we are better off for it. But I am not sure what the OP meant by "close". I can get to either 90 (E 152 or E 185) or 271 (Wilson Mills or Cedar-Brainard) from my area in about 10 minutes... 15 minutes tops.

:-o

Fans tend to only analyze how the Cavs played and ignore how well their opponents might have played. Without that Thorton guy last night, NO is not even close to being in that game. He was just flat out on fire. You run into those guys and performances like that from time to time. I would agree that Mo's return has not been good so far. I see his inclusion in the lineup and the adjustments we are making there as a bigger issue than the Jamison trade at the moment. EC - most fast food companies (which aren't going away anytime soon) could learn a thing or two from McDonald's in terms of making their menus healthier. McD's certainly has made a concerted effort to bring down the fat content and calories in its meals.

Sorry, have to disagree. Especially here in Cleveland. We have the double whammy of insanely passionate fans that let sports consume them and the worst luck, absolute heartbreak sports teams.

Seven responses and not one person has mentined the Bible. Bunch of Heathens, I tell you! Seriously though, why not go back in time a bit. John Locke's Treatises on Civil Government (especially the 2nd), Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America", Thomas Paine's "Common Sense", Thomas Hobbes' Leviathon, John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty", Karl Marx's "Das Kapital", and Thoreau's "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" are all worth a read at least once in your lifetime.

I am all for administrative consolidation, but I fear that and that alone would be like feeding a tic-tac to a whale. The schools would still lack anywhere near ideal funding.

NC uses county schools with some decent success, but their relatively "newer" cities don't have as much decay from within either so the disparity is not as great. In fact, the schools might get worse the farther you get away from the City center. I did not say that consilidation would "automatically" equate to demolition. Minimum student-teacher levels will not allow consolidation in most cases without expanding the building being consolidated into. But... when it CAN be done, it most likely will be done. Look, we can't pay our teachers any less than we already do. We already (hopefully) run a tight budget on textbooks and other supplies. And more and more districts are sadly going with a "pay to play" for athletics. No matter what system we go with, whether it be refining the current system, giving vouchers, or charter schools, the schools themselves need more $$$$$$$ and a lot more than getting rid of a few administrators will give them. Better parent involvement/interest would help, but if that is the solution, we will be waiting a long time to get this thing fixed.

Consolidation and demolition. Two words I hate to hear when talking about schools. We should be building schools, not tearing them down. We should have a goal of smaller classrooms, not larger ones. This problem certainly is not limited to Ohio. It is a national epidemic, especially in urban areas. I would love for my son to go to his neighborhood elementary school, but he won't and my retirement will consequently be delayed :(. It's not a safety issue for me. It is an overcrowding issue. I will suck up the cost of private school to get the teacher-student ratio down to 10 or below and to make sure he is surrounded by kids who have parents that similarly place such a high value on education. At his public school, his Kindergarten class would be 1:20! Seriously, how can one teacher effectively instruct twenty 5 year olds? Ohio is supposedly addressing the issue and will mandate that class sizes be no bigger than 1:15 by 2014, but my son starts in 2011 and I know how crucial those first few years can be. I would gladly have a massive tax increase to avoid the monumental costs of a decent private school, but I highly doubt anything substantial would pass by a vote of "the people". So, I am just going to have to suck it up for now. Honestly, I really don't have any choice in the matter since the "Higher Authority" is pretty firm in her stance. As you can see, he's mommy's little ham....

Mondays

^What the F happened to Cleveland.bomb! The comments (at least at the moment) are like a lovefest of C-town over there. Is it opposite day or something? My favorite comment - "living in the cleveland area is like having a cheap date with all the romance of an expensive one......you have got to love it."

Does the West Wing have a green light for sure or is there still fundraising that needs to be done to reach that goal?

Big Zoup fan here. I have my wife drive out to Solon on her way home from work every now and then to grap some soup and wraps from that place. Should be a good addition to the lunch menu downtown.

As long as "the people" keep voting down tax levies and ignoring the fact that local governments, just like most ventures these days, have decreased revenue + increased costs, the States/Counties and Cities/Villages/Townships are gonig to be in trouble financially, the schools are going to consequently get worse and infrastructure will go unmaintained. People don't want to pay now, so the costs will be shifted to a future generation. These expenses don't go away by ignoring them.

^To make way for the homeless transitional housing development?

Anybody know of any short and concise publication on how a voucher system works in practice? Are there any examples of such a system being implemented in other states/districts?

I think it would be more dramatic than that. Take South Euclid - Lyndhurst school district for instance. They wanted to save money, so they closed 3 of the 6 elementary schools. The students from three that closed were consolidated into the other schools. The poverty level for one of those schools jumped from below 5% to nearly half due to the specific neighborhood near the Cleveland border (lots of Section 8 ) that was consolidated. I am sure we would see quite a bit of that if districts started consolidating. There are serious savings that can be achieved when the district has to heat, cool and maintain less facilities, enlarge the classroom size to the max allowable under state law and employ less teachers.

It sounds real good on paper. But there will be some very upset parents if it goes through. Combining districts would not only involve combining resources and supposedly saving some money, but it would necessarily involve combining some undesirable school districts with desirable districts. How do you think it woudl play out if Wickliffe and Euclid were combined for example? What about SE-L with Beachwood? EC with CH and SH?

The "stronger" resistance is and will always be in the suburbs. The farther out you go, the stronger it probably gets. It might be overreaching a bit to try and regionalize the entire county anyways. But I don't think we have to by any means. What if, and I KNOW this is a big IF, the following more "inner ring" cities could regionalize with Cleveland proper: East Cleveland Euclid South Euclid Lyndhurst Richmond Heights Cleveland Heights University Heights Shaker Heights Warrensville Garfield Heights Maple Heights Brooklyn Heights Seven Hills Parma Parma Heights Brook Park Berea Fairview Park Lakewood Rocky River That would be roughly a 200 sq. mile region and over 800,000 pop. I left out Bratenahl and Lindale for obvious reasons. Cities like Mayfield and Beachwood that are flush with cash (relatively speaking of course) due to strong corporate presence will be near impossible to get on board. And places like Pepper Pike, Strongsville, and Bay Village just like being suburbs IMO so we can forget about them.

IMO, you are toast Mr. Polensek. If the City has really crumbled so much under your watch, maybe it is time to let someone else have a turn. Just this past year, I was at my friend's house in Collinwood when Polensek came around campaigning. Since he was there, we showed him a hole right on the curb of the street that is big enough for an adult to fall in, not to mention the numerous children who play on that street. Someone had dug it out at one point and never filled it in. It is clearly a hazard. He seemed shocked and promised to address the issue the following business day. He didn't follow through. I can appreciate the effectiveness of a good scare tactic and strongly support regionalization, but the above quotes just go too far and are not accurate predictions IMO. Regardless of whatever numbers the census shows, I will be much more interested in the poverty index than the overall population numbers.

People should take a good look at the Port's land with a satellite image. Think about the current prospects for a complete development of the FEB and then compare the size of that land to the size of the Port's land. Look at the size of the WHD parking lot's and do the same comparison. I think you would conclude that Mr. Mayor's "at least" 15 year estimate is optimistic at best. That is, unless any of you have a couple billion dollars to lend to a developer willing to roll the dice. While I was originally opposed to the E 55th proposal, I have grown to appreciate the reasons why it makes such sense given our desire to become a "container" port. That access to rail and road can't be beat from that spot. And the Shoreway effectively blocks any meaningful development in that area anyway. Sorry Quay 55 folks... love what you did with that "shell" of a building, but it is what it is. But given the current issues that seem to be possibly blocking the 55 site, which to my understanding is funding for the new dike... why again can't we use Dike 14? Is it solely environmental concerns due to migratory bird paths?

Controlling is heating/cooling costs is a constant battle for any homeowner. Like KJP was saying though, there are ways to effectively do so. Here are some things that I have done: 1. Installed a solid door on the fireplace (Busy Bear is the place to go for these!) and a new flu in the chimney 2. New front door and new sliding glass back door 3. Glass block windows in the basement, and I try to keep that door shut in the winter and open in the summer 4. Close off the guest room and close the vents in that room and the basement. I use a space heater in the basement over the winter in my rec room. 5. Seal all air leaks around window sills (there is a good tool you can buy to detect where you are losing the most heat). 6. Installed a 3 second rule with my cat and dog - if they don't come inside in 3 seconds of me opening the door, they don't come in for another 5 minutes (sounds silly, but they learn).