The answer to that is yes, and it might be easier than you think. But, as always, there would be obstacles, naysayers and the like.
We’ve heard the mantra. “Cleveland is a mid-market city.” “Cleveland is a secondary market.” “Cleveland is shrinking.” “Cleveland is no longer the largest city in Ohio.”
Now we are actually starting to believe it. Yet if you ask major media buyers, Northeast Ohio is still the largest market in our state and one of the largest markets in the country.
So, how do we communicate that we are a top 10 market to decision makers who might impact our future economy and growth? It turns out, we might be able to accomplish the task by redefining Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. We simply amend our new county charter to make the county a municipal corporation. And, under the Ohio Constitution, a municipality with more than 5,000 residents is recognized as a city.
Once you are a city, the Census Bureau has to recognize you as such. By that definition, we would become the 10th largest city in the United States, virtually overnight. We are currently ranked 52nd among America’s cities. A hundred years ago, in 1920, we were the fifth-largest city in the nation, with a population at the time just shy of 800,000.
The move would put us just ahead of San Jose, California, Austin, Texas, and our neighbor to the south Columbus, which encompasses 218.5 square miles compared to our current 77.7 square miles.
“Everybody likes to talk about how big Columbus is,” says Joe Roman, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. “But if you took that same geographic area and were to overlay it on our area, we’re just as big, if not bigger, in terms of population. The problem is, we have 59 municipalities inside of one county. Franklin County doesn’t have that.”
The benefits to such a transformation are obvious and numerous. As a top 10 city, we would attract more national and international events to downtown. We would signal that we are an international destination and could attract more air traffic at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. We could consolidate services such as fire and police departments, increasing efficiencies and saving money. We could also qualify for more federal and state funds, increasing resources to build needed infrastructure.
By spreading our borders to include the county, Fortune 500companies such as Eaton would still call Cleveland home. And, if Sherwin-Williams were to locate to Beachwood or Westlake, it would be like it had never left.
Being included among the top 10 cities in the country would also be a boon for civic pride. And, the timing couldn’t be better. In the 1970s, when we were being called “the mistake on the lake,” people moved away to the suburbs, and didn’t want to be associated with our city.
Today, there is a growing sense of civic pride. Being from Cleveland no longer carries the same stigma while traveling. Indeed, many people in Northeast Ohio now identify as being Clevelanders.
Linking to city and county is certainly not a new idea. It’s called UniGov, and it’s been used by other cities like Nashville, Tennessee, and Jacksonville, Florida, to bolster populations and economic standings. It’s also been done in cities like Indianapolis and Louisville, Kentucky, the latter leapfrogging over Cleveland in 2003 to become the 29th largest city in the United States almost instantaneously.
But insiders know better.
Robert C. Smith, a partner in Cerity Partners and the market leader of its Cleveland Office, serves on boards and investment committees of corporations and nonprofit organizations. Elected officials have also named Smith to the boards of public entities such as the Port of Cleveland and the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. Gov. Mike DeWine also named Smith chairman of the board of Jobs Ohio.
Smith, who was chairman of Greater Cleveland Growth Association in 2003, led a group from Leadership Cleveland to Louisville to see how it incorporated city and county governments.
“One of the takeaways we learned was that it was a 75-year process,” says Smith. “It failed several times because they ran into issues like disenfranchisement of voters, who overwhelmingly said that they didn’t want their right to vote taken away from them.
“If you talk with the African American community which is heavily concentrated in the city of Cleveland, and ask them if they are willing to become a part of a county-wide proposition, the answer would be overwhelmingly ‘No.’”
Smith found that it actually took a concentrated effort by a diverse group of political leaders to accomplish the task in Louisville. UniGov measures have already failed in other cities.
But we could have an edge, especially if becoming a top 10 city is a matter of amending our county charter. The question of whether we need an extensive political campaign is still unresolved. However, if we just amend the county charter, it might look like a simple marketing gimmick. There are those who would want more substantive change, and we should listen to them.
Transferring the responsibility for air pollution control from the Cleveland Department of Health to the county makes sense because air pollution doesn’t, by its nature, respect city boundaries. Another area that could be consolidated under county rule might be emergency dispatch systems.
Then, there also is the matter of law enforcement and incarceration. Reducing the population incarcerated at the Justice Center from its current level of approximately 2,200 inmates to 1,600 could cut construction costs of a new facility by as much as $100 million, says Jeff Applebaum, who is chairman and a partner of the construction practice group at Thompson Hine. It would also bring down operating costs by $24 to $25 million annually.
Reducing the county’s prison population by that much would require substantial bail and law enforcement reforms, which might be addressed by unifying the county and city governments.
However, Applebaum doubts that such cooperation and collaboration is possible through UniGov. People with jobs and political clout are naturally reluctant to change, especially if they might lose their jobs. And, we might be able to address problems without redefining our city and county.
“Look at Houston,” Applebaum says. “The city and county got together by consent decree, and now all entities work in concert. They now have centralized booking and work together. They have dramatically reduced their costs in terms of efficiencies and better outcomes for justice.”
The real problem with UniGov is that Cuyahoga County is just too vulcanized politically.
“In theory, the idea of UniGov makes absolute sense,” Applebaum says. “And in the long term the outcome could be extraordinary.
“But the resources it would take and the political will to do it might not make it practical in the short term.”
On the other hand, we have already done a lot of the heavy political lifting, especially with the adoption of our new Cuyahoga County charter. With the consent of the electorate and the stroke of a pen, we rocket into the top 10.
