Brent Larking is at it again.

[Bill Call]

If you are interested see it here:

https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2019/ ... arkin.html

I sent him this email which he probably won't read and certainly won't respond to:


While am not opposed to merging the communities of Cuyahoga County I am unimpressed with your arguments in favor of such a plan.

1. You mention Minneapolis/St. Paul, Indianapolis and Nashville as examples of cities to emulate. They are all capital cities. Capital Cities like Columbus, Ohio are large and prosperous because they are capital cities and not because of their policies on consolidation. If Columbus was not the capital of Ohio it would still be a cow town. If Cleveland was the capital of Ohio we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
2. Your article assumed operational efficiencies and cost savings but offered no evidence that we would get those efficiencies.
3. You assume that if local cities no longer existed the local school districts could still exist. That would never happen. If the cities merge then their school districts must merge. The voters would never approve of that so even discussing the issue is a waste of time.
4. You ignore how the policies of Cuyahoga County government and its institutions exacerbate the problem of urban sprawl.

Here are some examples of how our existing County government feeds urban sprawl:

1. NOCCA seems eager to widen freeways and offer subsidies to Crocker Park in the form of highway improvements. For some reason they approved the expenditure of hundreds of millions to expand I-90 to Mentor into eight lanes to make it easier for people to leave town.
2. The Port Authority approved special bonds for the construction of Crocker Park. Crocker Park did not add one job to Cuyahoga County. It just moved them around.
3. Cuyahoga County government concentrates all of its development efforts in a small area of downtown. That policy assumes that encouraging people to move from Seven Hills to Battery Park adds something to the economic strength of the area.
4. Tri-C has a campus in Medina County. It’s campus in Westlake is on the borders of Lorain County and is more accurately called the Lorain County Campus. I know someone who works there and they are very happy to be able to be able to move to North Ridgeville and still be close to work.
5. The Cleveland Clinic is still pushing its “string of pearls strategy”. They are eliminating facilities in Cuyahoga County and expanding in areas outside of Cuyahoga County. The last time I needed a specialist I was told that if I drove to Lorain County I could see someone that day. If I wanted to see someone in Lakewood it would take six weeks. Does that make sense?
6. Last but not least is the County’s assistance in the sabotage and destruction of Lakewood Hospital. The County lost 1,500 high paying medical jobs. $65 million in cash and investments was transferred to regional foundations and the City is set to donate 6 acres of land to Ed Fitzgerald’s friends at Carnegie Development. Does that make any sense?

Cleveland’s decline has nothing to do with the fact that the people of Fairview Park manage their own affairs or because the people of Lakewood like their library.

Look to the corruption of County government and the corruption of public institutions. Not the bags of cash kind of corruption but the corruption that causes the misallocation of resources.

Look to the past and how the people of the City treated major corporations like BP or financial institutions like Cleveland Trust.

[Bill Call]

Just in case anyone is interested:

gerund or present participle: larking
enjoy oneself by behaving in a playful and mischievous way.
"he jumped the fence to go larking the rest of the day"
synonyms: fool about/around, play tricks, indulge in horseplay, make mischief, monkey about/around, footle about/around, clown about/around, have fun, cavort, caper, romp, frolic, skylark; informalmess about/around, play up, act the (giddy) goat; informalmuck about/around, fanny about/around; vulgar slangbugger about/around, piss about/around, arse about/around; archaicdisport oneself
"he's always joking and larking about"