Continuing from the Cleveland Retail News thread, where the discussion had turned to the relationship between CDCs and City Hall.

 

CDC's don't get most of their funding from the city, especially the good ones.  I don't know all their balance sheets but I would say that if a CDC is getting most of their funding from the City they are not very viable or effective.

 

http://www.oldbrooklyn.com/FAQ.htm

 

Are you saying Old Brooklyn's CDC isn't a good one, because most of their funding comes through City Hall?  That's one of Cleveland's more affluent neighborhoods, so one might assume its CDC would be near the top in private donations.  And yet, per the CDC itself, 70% of its funding is public.

 

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More broadly, I'm not sure the current emphasis on CDCs is the right choice for Cleveland.  By spreading its development funds across dozens of tiny fiefdoms, the city hinders its ability to attack major problems with coordinated efforts and expenditures.  Instead of doing little bitty things for each neighborhood, we could be doing transformative things for the entire city. 

 

Then there's the too many cooks problem, in terms of actual planning.  Everyone is primarily concerned with their own constituency, leaving no one responsible for the ties that bind.  Just like our balkanized county map, this results in every neck-of-the-woods expecting to have its own separate everything.  So instead of 1-2 major parks, we get a bunch of dinky ones, and the same goes for retail.  The inefficiency and redundancy can be crippling.

 

Also, their "private corporation" status can be used to shield records that would normally be available under sunshine laws.  I'm not aware of any instances of this being used by CDCs but it is a general concern with the privitization movement that certainly applies to them. 

 

I said FROM the city and you originally said FROM the city. 

 

Now you are saying THROUGH the city.

 

So you are distorting the facts and being disingenuous. 

 

From your original post about Old Brooklyn: " In short, CDCs receive most of their funding from the City of Cleveland's Community Development Department and report to it regularly."

 

Pass through dollars does not equal funding source.

 

I'm out of this.  Thanks for the troll.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am doing nothing of the sort.  Most funding sources receive their funding from another source.  The feds receive their funding from taxes, does that mean they don't actually fund anything?  My heavens.  Cities have a degree of flexibility in how they spend their federal community development block grants.  That's what we're talking about here. 

 

And the quote you're bashing was practically lifted from the Old Brooklyn CDC's website.  I strongly encourage you to check out that link. 

 

Who is trolling?  Everything I've said is factual and backed up, while you're playing word games layered with insults.  "Pass through dollars does not equal funding source?"  Please explain that logic.  Does the city have to earn each dollar from a paper route before you can accept that they're spending it?  Seems like you're hanging your hat on a meaningless distinction.  CDCs receive most of their funding from the city, regardless of where the city gets its funding.  That is not an opinion. 

yes CDC's (at least the Cleveland CDC's, I'm not sure about others in OH) do receive most of their funding from the City, however, these are pass through dollars and a distinction definitely should be made that these dollars are separate from the City's General Fund coffers. CDBG is a City Department/Program that is HUD supported, when HUD cuts their CDBG allocation to the City, the City cuts their funding to the CDC's. The City General Fund's main source of income is income tax, if income tax receipts decrease this would not have an impact on CDC funding.

All of that is true, but it is tangential to this issue.  None of this has anything to do with the city's general fund.  At all.  But those pass-thru dollars are spent (within parameters) as the city wishes.  That is the whole concept behind block grants.  We're talking about block grants.

sooooo, what are you trying to argue then?

Thanks for asking.  I tried to make my case in the OP...  that more holistic alternatives should be considered.  I would be interested in hearing your opinion on that.

a little clarification please...the OP? Alternatives to what? 

OP refers to the Original Post in the thread.  Alternatives to the city's current utilization of CDCs for community development include include having less CDCs covering larger areas, establishing stronger coordination among CDCs, or maybe eliminating them and instead employing a citywide approach to community development.

Maybe because a city wide approach wouldn't qualify for the types of specialized grants and funding (NIDC?) which CDCs regularly obtain?  Nor could such a system be able to generate the dedication and investment of neighborhood reliant business and the larger corporations that use these donations for write offs?  Honestly just a guess.  Besides, aren't you always complaining about the gross incompetence at city hall? 

Thank you for the clarification. As far as the reduction in CDC’s, on the near west side we’ve  already begun to see this- Stockyards Clark Fulton Brooklyn Centre has merged with Detroit Shoreway, I would venture to guess Cudell and Tremont West could be the next CDC’s to merge with Detroit Shoreway. IMO it makes sense to have the smaller, perhaps not quite as well managed CDC join forces with a more productive CDC. Reason being- bigger pot of CDBG allocation to use for community development initiatives, also with the smaller CDC’s being absorbed by the bigger more productive CDC, the management staff, in theory, should be more competent and have less employees than the sum of all combined CDCs and their employees- thereby having more $ to spend on community development initiatives.  On the flip side, a larger CDC covering more neighborhoods would also have a bigger board of directors. Of course with that comes more personalities and ideas of where the money should go. Politics really comes into play at this extreme low level…the neighborhood level. That’d be another con. However, the benefits of a smaller CDC covering more geography outweighs the cons, imo.

Ah here we go, two very intriguing posts!  Hopefully many more, because I would love to hear what the entire UO-sphere has to say on this issue.  That's why I didn't put a city-specific heading. 

 

I guess I would rather try a bigger board of directors over the current quantity of boards.  Reason being, we already have a lot of different ideas in play, but these ideas rarely get the chance to meet.  Maybe an idea comes up in Old Brooklyn, and gets shouted down there, that would be perfect for Glenville.  But Glenville never gets to hear it, unless all these different boards have scouts at each others' meetings.  Or... maybe an idea would help everyone from Central through Woodhill tremendously, but never gets a shot because each board can always think of something better for its neighborhood alone, something the others may already have.

 

Besides, aren't you always complaining about the gross incompetence at city hall? 

 

 

I'm not blaming it on the building though.  Heck of a building.  What I'm suggesting does make that place more of a focal point, no doubt. 

 

As far as businesses contributing funds to their local development authorities, I'm not comfortable with that at all.  That gets into the core ethical dilemma of the whole public-private trend.  I mentioned the sunshine exemptions earlier, but then there's this, which creates a bright red flashing conflict of interest.  Remember, such businesses may or may not be locally owned, and may or may not have interests that align with those of residents.  Or residents who live across the CDC line.  I'm not saying anything improper has ever happened.  I'm saying we can't possibly know if it ever does, and I don't think there's a citable definition of conflict that wouldn't fit this situation. 

Increasing the number of members of the board of directors is a guaranteed way to increase bureaucracy, not efficiency. The CDCs should communicate more, absolutely. But what may work in Old Brooklyn may not work in Glenville. That's the point of the CDCs, to have a development plan tailored to the unique wants and needs of that area. A top down, city wide approach is the WRONG thing to do if that means the city dictating to the CDCs what to do. That doesn't work. If you mean a city wide plan in terms of all of the CDCs coming together and making a citywide plan that includes the things that each individual neighborhood needs, then I would support that. Yes, many CDCs don't do their job. But that's not because the system is broken. That particular CDC is.

 

And we do need some consolidation in some areas, but we don't have enough CDCs in others. The Shaker Square/Buckeye area has 2 or 3 CDCs on the one hand while on the other hand South Collinwood/Euclid-Green (where I'm from) has no CDC at all. (North Collinwood has two plus Arts Collinwood, none of whom serve South Collinwood or Euclid-Green) So you have to look at the whole picture from every angle before declaring what they all should do. (As you can probably tell, I've worked with many of these CDCs and understand their inner workings fairly well)