Ed FitzGerald proposes plan to make county services available to cities | News

Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald has a new plan make county services available to cities.

The Western Reserve Plan was announced Wednesday afternoon during the State of The County Address at Cleveland's City Club.

1. Implementing a practical strategy for creating a functioning, county-wide metropolitan government.
2. Establishing Greater Cleveland as a center of entrepreneurship and job growth.
3. Designing a place-based development strategy which recognizes the centrality of downtown Cleveland to the region as a whole.
4. Aligning and coordinating both public and private resources around our most pressing human service needs.
5. Identifying education, from early childhood forward, as the central factor in individual and community success.
6. Embracing a health and wellness culture which mirrors the excellence of our major medical institutions.
7. Incorporating economic inclusion as a guiding principle in our economic development strategy.
8. Branding our metropolitan area as an international city which harnesses the energy of our younger generations.
9. Adopting a collaborative approach to the foreclosure crisis- from prevention to restoration.
10. Honoring the service of our veterans by giving them priority in hiring, training and education.
11. Protecting our county by leading a county-wide public safety initiative.
12. Creating a culture within county government which implements nationally recognized good government practices and innovations.

Ed FitzGerald explains the county-wide metropolitan government below:

It’s time to be brutally honest about the discussion which has been taking place regarding the possibility that we will regionalize our services, our governments, or both.  First, the discussion has been going on for almost 100 years.  And that says it all. 

Although there have been examples of progress, and for the first time the county has assisted in those discussions, we are not on a trajectory to any serious form of shared services, strategies, or consolidated government.  We just aren’t, and it’s time to stop pretending that we are.  When this concept was first seriously proposed in the first half of the twentieth century, some of its proponents knew that time was of the essence.  At that time, about 80% of the population of the county was contained in the City of Cleveland, and they feared that as population inevitably migrated outwards, it would make it more and more difficult to create a regional approach to government.  They were right, and that’s exactly what happened.

So for 100 years, we have had an interesting philosophical discussion which gets us almost nowhere we haven’t already been.  The comparison of us to what other metropolitan areas have done are, frankly, usually ill-informed.  There is no place in the country which has our level of fragmentation, with home rule powers for cities, which has just spontaneously combined in any meaningful way.  Cities and counties, such as Indianapolis, that have merged usually consist of a central city surrounded by undeveloped and unincorporated areas.

But there is a way to get there.  And we can do it without forcing anything on any city.

Cities perform a myriad of services, ranging from street repair to garbage pickup to public safety.  And in this county, in general, those functions are performed by 59 different communities, with all of the attendant inefficiencies you can imagine.

Under my plan, each year, the county would seek to provide an additional municipal service, available to these cities on a contract basis, if they so choose.  Each year, the county can expand its menu of services, until someday a comprehensive set of municipal services can be provided by the county.

This concept is simple, and it is proven.  It has already worked in this county for things such as many of our social services, or the services provided by the county Board of Health.

It is also revolutionary.  Because for the first time cities will not have a monopoly on providing local services.  It actually introduces a competitive dynamic for the first time in local government.  It will be up to us to provide the service effectively and economically; the cities retain all of their rights and privileges.  If they are not convinced that we can perform as advertised, they can do things as they are now.  But the option will always be there.  And over time, for the first time, we will have the prospect of finally becoming a cohesive metropolitan area.  It is also our only real chance to reduce the size and cost of local government in a dramatic way.

We are already laying the groundwork for this revolutionary service delivery method.  Just last week, my Chief Information Officer met with Parma city officials about coordinating IT services.  Throughout the year, we will continue to develop our capacity to add municipal services to our capabilities. 

And no one should doubt that this is ultimately in our community’s best interest.  If we heard that one of the consolidated metropolitan areas we compete with was subdividing into 59 parts, would anyone actually believe they were becoming stronger?  Our cities have home rule powers, and nothing in my plan abridges those rights.  But cities and citizens will now have a choice as to what services they want to do locally, and what services they want to do regionally.  A 100 year circular conversation will be coming to an end, with the result being a real, practical option which will help us compete in the 21st century.

To read more about the Western Reserve Plan, click here