Regional Planning

Tonight I had dinner with about 65 city council members from the Northeast Ohio City Council Association and roughly 5 suburban mayors, Cleveland's Chief of Staff,  a few government employees and some folks from the media.  We sat down together for a family style dinner at a long-standing Cleveland restaurant and we made friends.  It was the Northeast Ohio City Council Association's quarterly meeting and their focus was regional economic development, specifically the Northeast Ohio Mayors and City Manager's Regional Land Use Planning and Revenue Sharing initiative.

After the presentation the audience engaged in dialogue.  Their comments and questions sounded like, "what can we do to support the idea - we need to do it" and "the data is undoubtedly compelling, how can we get involved" and "its time for us to act now, we cannot wait".  Their vote from the floor to support development of a regional a smart growth initiative passed unanimously.

As this story by the Plain Dealer's Tom Breckenridge points out, sharing among communities isn't always easy.

The community of Macedonia is losing a major employer (Norandex) to Hudson. Since Hudson Mayor Bill Currin is a leader in an effort to bring regional planning and revenue sharing to Northeast Ohio, the mayor of Macedonia was hoping to arrange a revenue sharing deal with Hudson. And as demonstrated here, Hudson has used revenue sharing to facilitate economic development projects.

But on the Norandex project a deal wasn't worked out. This incident points out that negotiating deals one at a time that involve revenue sharing is very challenging and doesn't present a long-term solution.

Summit County Executive Russell Pry said the tension over Norandex "is why we need to get municipalities to agree that competing amongst ourselves is not the best thing for the region."

The region's mayors and city managers will meet on May 15 to consider supporting an effort to implement region-wide planning and revenue sharing that could ease the intramural competition. Such broader approaches are needed if the region is going to begin to compete against our global competitors rather than against ourselves.

Congratulations to officials in Stow, Hudson and Cuyahoga Falls for collaborating together to secure a 100-bed hospital in northern Summit County.

The deal is an example of the success generated when communities collaborate rather than compete for projects.

''We will share in the investments, the risk and we will also share in the benefits,'' Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don L. Robart said according to this story in the Akron Beacon Journal.

This collaboration provides an example of the benefits of broader regional collaboration and planning that is envisioned by the Regional Economic Revenue Study. When our communities plan together for regional growth rather than competing over it, good things happen.

This is the second great example of regional collaboration by governments recently. Read about how communities are working together in Lake County to spur economic growth.

Getting communities to collaborate and share is very challenging work. Everyone involved needs to see the benefits of working together.

Efforts to build stronger ties between Boardman and Youngstown failed, at least for now, because Boardman officials didn't see the benefits.

Here's a report from Denise Dick of the Youngstown Vindicator:

BOARDMAN — Township trustees reject Youngstown’s joint economic development plan and want to research the costs and procedures of becoming a city, but a second levy attempt appears unlikely before November.

At a meeting Wednesday, the panel asked Administrator Jason Loree to send a letter to Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams rejecting the Joint Economic Development District proposal as written.

The proposal called for an income tax on some township businesses and residents that would be shared by the township and city in exchange for lower water rates for city water customers who live in the township.

“I see no advantages to Boardman in it,” said Robyn Gallitto, trustees chairwoman.

Boardman officials said they want to continue ways to consider how it can work with surrounding communities on economic development.

Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams has been a strong advocate of collaboration and sharing. While this attempt didn't succeed, I expect there will be more tries in the future.

Building support for new ways of planning for and sharing the benefits of economic growth in Northeast Ohio will undoubtedly be very difficult. As comments on a region's newspapers message board highlight,  there are strong views on both sides of the issue of whether regional planning and revenue sharing makes sense for Northeast Ohio.

The Northeast Ohio Mayors and City Managers Association will vote on May 15 whether to advocate that the region pursue a system of regional planning and revenue sharing designed to accelerate economic growth. You can learn more about the effort at www.revenuestudy.org.

Rick Armon of the Akron Beacon Journal published a story today that looked at the effort. Here's part of the story:

The idea deserves to be studied, said Chuck Keiper, a Portage County commissioner and member of the Regional Economic Revenue Study group.

''For Northeast Ohio to be competitive, we have to think outside of our provincial boxes and we have to find ways to work together,'' Keiper said. ''To compete with Japan, China, Germany and others trying to clean our clocks, we're going to have to do it together.''

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