"Grandest" City Corruption Scandal Ever?
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2015 11:20 am
From viewtopic.php?f=7&t=22267
This is potentially a VERY serious situation that needs to be sorted out. I will add to Brian’s timeline that then Mayor Ed FitzGerald encouraged me to advocate for a change regarding recreation back in 2009 during the Lakewood City Schools Phase III process. This was just months before pediatric and trauma services were transferred from Lakewood to Fairview in exchange for “Centers of Excellence” which were supposed to keep Lakewood Hospital strong. According to Mayor Summers recently, some of those didn’t work out.
Without a change of leadership we may never get to the bottom of all this. Please join me in voting for Michael J. Skindell for Lakewood Mayor and WITHHOLDING your votes from Board of Education Members, Linda Beebe, Tom Einhouse and Emma Petrie-Barcelona.
Brian Essi wrote:
Attached are public records obtained just last week, which coupled with other public records expose what a 37 year law enforcement and elected official, Ed Favre referred to as the "Grandest of All" "City corruption scandals." The timeline below shows that Summers orchestrated a series of backroom dealing and likely bid rigging at LHA that may violate the Clayton Act and Ohio law in an effort to divert public charitable money from LHA to his secret plans.
2010. Long-time school board member Linda Beebe proposed that the Grant Elementary property might better serve the community as a recreation center while explaining her 2010 vote to remove it from the master facilities plan.
2013: Then President of City Council, Brian Powers attempted to work with the President (Ed Favre) and Vice President of the School Board (Linda Beebe) in hopes of putting together a jointly-managed and separately funded approach to recreation that would have been financed with tax increases proposed by Mayor Summers. Favre was against the tax increase--Beebe would not speak with me despite repeated requests back in July. What is she hiding? Is she protecting Summers?
2013 LHA Trustees’ on the Select Committee (including Summers, Madigan and Bullock) formulated plans for a new foundation and “Potential development of additional health and wellness facilities” i.e. recreation center as part of a plan to demolish the hospital.
August 29, 2013, Long-time friend of Mayor Summers, Jay Foran, meets with School Superintendent Jeff Patterson and Favre to propose a dome (like CSU’s) over athletic fields across from Lakewood High School. He mentions the Cleveland Clinic as one of several potential “underwriters” of the project, i.e. funding by foundation money. Note: Mr. Foran is a Lakewood Hospital Foundation (LHF) trustee and his wife, Lynn Foran is employed by the Lakewood City Schools and serves as Summers’ mayoral campaign chairperson.
October 9, 2013 Summers’ secret “Select Committee” narrowed “strategic options” down to only three options. Family Health Campus tops the list and includes “discontinuing inpatient services…taking down the current hospital” and “Potential development of additional health and wellness facilities” i.e. the Community Recreation Center and “other attractive economic development elements.”
December 13, 2013: Mayor Summers and President Madigan supported the Council President Powers’ proposal for “The Lakewood Recreation Task Force" to discuss “forming a new Recreation Department as a joint venture between the City and School District.” Again, tax increases would finance this expansion.
February 18, 2014: Mayor Summers and Dru Siley attended a Lakewood Board of Education meeting and requested their discussions to be held in executive session i.e. secretly--that request was denied. The Mayor then discussed the possibility of a recreation center being built on the Lakewood Hospital site, an additional park property, and a property tax increase. This meeting is documented in the minutes of the Board of Education. Here are the minutes:
April 21, 2014: The Cleveland Clinic in collaboration with Summers issued a secret written plan to demolish Lakewood Hospital. The plan also included a Community Center to be funded through “residual resources of LHA and LHF” i.e. new foundation money. Mayor Summers, Council President Madigan and Councilman Bullock were involved in forming “the City of Lakewood’s stated goals to improve the health status of the Lakewood community” by tearing down the hospital.
April 30, 2014: Mayor Summers appoints Jay Foran to Recreation Task Force.
May 15, 2014: The Clinic’s April 21st collaboration with City Leaders is further documented and contains the following details:
1. A drawing of Community Center with pool/gym/fitness.
2. Affiliate Partners contemplated in the recreation center include--Lakewood City Schools; and Lakewood City Recreation Department.
January 14, 2015. Summers announces the Letter of Intent that includes his plan to close Lakewood Hospital and creation a new foundation.
January 24, 2015 Foran accuses Superintendent Patterson and BOE member Ed Favre of “Propagating Falsehoods” about the new foundation money and Foran’s August 2013 idea for a dome over athletic fields. Foran is outraged that public officials would make hi dome idea public even though he presented his idea in a public building, with public officials, for a public project on public property.
January 25, 2015, Favre responds to Foran’s accusations by outlining much of the timeline above concerning Summers’ requests for tax increases associated with the proposed recreation center at the hospital site. Favre, a former Lakewood policeman and detective for 37 years refers to “something going on behind the scenes” that was confirmed by the hospital closure announcement and his having been witness to another “City corruption scandal” but the lack of transparency and corruption on hospital debacle was “the grandest of them all.”
February 3, 2015 Mayor Summers attends an Active Living and Recreation Task Force meeting and referred to the proposed new foundation money and said “we need to start thinking about the best way to using this funding” Summers showed the task force members a map of the Lakewood Hospital site with the proposed CCF Family Health Center and a big chunk of green space. So while the loss of the hospital is a pending calamity on City finances and a healthcare crisis for the underserved and many others in our community, Summers is eager to start spending hospital money on a "BIG DREAM" involving recreation. To top that off he wants to use the Jacobs money he has squirreled away in the "Land Acquisition Fund" on recreation. And this guy calls himself a Democrat?
June 1, 2015, Beebe, Einhouse and Shaughnessy all sign a letter to City Council signing on to the Summers plan to demolish the hospital
June, 2015. Build Lakewood is formed with Beebe as a founding member.
On June 15, 2015, Mr. Foran told City Council and the public in a recorded statement: “I know there is a rumor out there about a recreation center or something like that and I just would say to that we talked about that at the outset of our effort long before a mention of a Lakewood Hospital” Note: the proposal to demolish the hospital and build a Recreation Center predated the creation of the Recreation Task Force. Councilman Nowlin asked Foran about the City taking over recreation Mr. Foran answered: “Within our committee, at the outset there was some discussion about that, but it was only because there was a rumor again floating that was the intention from the formation our organization. Again, the Recreation Task Force was first proposed in December, 2013 and supported by Mayor Summers and Ms. Madigan to discuss “forming a new Recreation Department as a joint venture between the City and School District” and associated tax increase.
October 26, 2015 Einhouse authors an article about himself that is published in a fake newspaper designed to promote Summers, LHA Trustees, CCF and the closing of Lakewood Hospital.
Council and the public while attempting to obtain a decision from us to approve to tear down Lakewood Hospital using hospital money and create a new foundation with hospital money. Information concealed and suppressed relates how they planned to divert, control and use the It is now clear that Mayor Summers has intentionally concealed material information from City hospital money and land to build a Community Recreation Center and increase taxes.
Here are the legal definitions of Fraud and Fraudulent Inducement
Fraud: An intentional perversion of the truth for the purpose of inducing another in reliance upon it to part with some valuable thing belonging to him or surrender a legal right. A false representation of a material fact by concealment of that which should have been disclosed, which deceives and is intended to deceive another so that he shall act upon it to his legal injury. The employment of artifice planned to prevent inquiry or escape investigation and to mislead or hinder the acquisition of information. Black’s Law Dictionary.
Fraudulent Inducement: The hiding or suppression of a material fact or circumstance which the party is legally or morally bound to disclose. Black’s Law Dictionary.
Conspiracy: a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.
So now it seems clear that there has been a longstanding and ongoing fraudulent conspiracy with Summers as the ringleader perpetrated on various members of City Council and the citizens of Lakewood.
Can we afford four more years of this corruption and scandal destroying our City, the Hospital and other institutions?
This is potentially a VERY serious situation that needs to be sorted out. I will add to Brian’s timeline that then Mayor Ed FitzGerald encouraged me to advocate for a change regarding recreation back in 2009 during the Lakewood City Schools Phase III process. This was just months before pediatric and trauma services were transferred from Lakewood to Fairview in exchange for “Centers of Excellence” which were supposed to keep Lakewood Hospital strong. According to Mayor Summers recently, some of those didn’t work out.
Without a change of leadership we may never get to the bottom of all this. Please join me in voting for Michael J. Skindell for Lakewood Mayor and WITHHOLDING your votes from Board of Education Members, Linda Beebe, Tom Einhouse and Emma Petrie-Barcelona.