Working Together and Ignoring Borders

How are suburban budget cuts and regional planning related?

As you can see in this story, lots of the region's suburbs are faced with tough financial times as tax revenues no longer match expenses.

"In my 20 years in politics, this year is the greatest challenge for cities," said Parma Heights Mayor Martin Zanotti, who chairs the Cuyahoga County Mayors and City Managers Association.

The story noted that even cities with "balanced budgets" expect revenues to drop this year. Suburbs are facing tough financial times because the region's economy isn't growing. Indeed, some mayors are beginning to argue, quite convincingly, that one of the reasons the economy isn't growing is that their communities are too busy fighting over economic growth rather than planning for it.

Northeast Ohio has a handful of Municipal Planning Organizations (MPOs) responsible for transportation planning, which could become more collaborative and have influence over planning for economic development. Such an idea of the work being led by the Northeast Ohio Mayors and City Managers Association that is looking at revenue sharing and regional planning. You can learn more at www.revenuestudy.org.

The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA), one of the MPOs in Northeast Ohio, appears to be ready to take the lead on this issue by exploring how to expand into the area of economic development. Read more about in this Plain Dealer article. However, NOACA only covers five counties in Northeast Ohio -- Cuyahoga, Lorain, Lake, Medina and Geauga. To be effective, planning must happen across the region.

It is interesting that Summit and Medina counties work very well together on issues related to workforce development. The two counties partner to run a Workforce Investment Board that gets high marks from employers. But the transportation infrastructure required to move workers between the counties is planned by two different agencies: NOACA and AMATS, which serves Summit and Portage counties.

There are a lot of old borders in Northeast Ohio that no longer apply in a global economy. That doesn't mean we have to erase the borders and merge everyone together, but we do have to begin to act like they are invisible. Implementing regional planning across all or most of Northeast Ohio's 16 counties would be a good start.