Cleveland Heights neighborhoods, taxes, safety, schools & politics?

Clevelandjem, I would ask again for some specificity as to where you are looking.  In that area, there are a few streets I would avoid, mostly between Cain Park and the High School.  Not that they are "unsafe" however, but other factors such as lots of renters and some minor nuisances, like the kids from the HS crowding the street and parking on the curb during the day.

And I think that McCleveland's narrative about his friends is how a lot of residents feel about the City.  They don't live there for any white-picket fences, strip malls, or sodded front lawns.  They live there for the character, the location, the diversity (some of us find this to be a good thing), the tolerance (CH was first City in Ohio and one of the first in the country to have a domestic partnership registry), and what I would call a "real neighborhood". 

Another great thing is that most everybody gets along.  You don't have the racial and other tensions you find in areas that are newly diverse.  CH has been diverse since I was born and many people target that area for that reason, not to avoid such demographics. 

There is a sense of community that you will likely enjoy with your neighbors, regardless of their race, class, religion.  Drive through the neighborhood accross Taylor from where you are looking and you will find it to be filled with mostly blacks and orthodox jews, and they mix quite nicely. 

If only you could have known the City back in its "Mom and Pop Shop" heyday.  Our grocery store growing up was a little storefont on Noble Rd. smaller than a modern CVS!  We were on a first name basis with everybody that worked there and my mom kept a tab running that she paid at the end of every month.  Businesses like that have largely went the way of the dinosaur, but CH still has some semblence of that past left.  The Wal-Mart certainly didn't arrive without a fight that I am still bitter over losing.