We will learn in November when Clevelanders go to the polls to vote on county government reform whether they care enough about change to vote for change.
I mention this because research done two years ago showed that the last thing Clevelanders wanted was change. Since this may come as a surprise to some of you, I will tell the rest of the story.
As you may remember, the impetus to change Cuyahoga County government this time around started with a talk given by Sam Miller, co-chairman of Forest City, to a crowd of 600 people in March 2007. At that event, Miller issued his rousing call to action: If we are ever going to improve life in Cleveland, we will have to change county government.
His talk attracted plenty of media coverage and plenty of volunteers who wanted to help — more than 250 of them.
A smaller group was formed, of which I was one, and we accepted the mission of laying the foundation for county reform. I was immediately assigned to do 10 personal interviews with a cross section of community leaders, as were four other volunteers. The goal was to meet with 50 individuals who would tell us what they thought about reform and how we should proceed.
We learned much in a short period. County government reform was an emotional issue people wanted to talk about. Surprisingly, I don’t remember anyone who was against reform. Yet when it came to what reforms they wanted and how they wanted to achieve them, there were as many ideas as there were interviewees.
The biggest surprise, however, came from what we were later to call among ourselves the “Paradox of Progress.” To understand how we came to call it that, I will share the points on which most interviewees agreed:
- They liked, if not loved, the city or suburb they lived in (some were from the city of Cleveland).
- They had chosen the community that fit their family’s needs the best — schools, houses, parks and recreations, shopping, taxes — and therefore believed they lived in the “best” community.
- They were all aware declining tax revenue was a serious problem for communities, including their own.
- They were sure some type of financial sharing among communities or between communities and the county was going to have to happen to maintain the quality of life they enjoyed.
- They were fairly confident their community would make it through hard times, and they would be opposed to sharing services with other communities.
So our Paradox of Progress grew out of one of the oldest human emotions: I know the world has to change, I just don’t want it to change in my backyard.
Maybe now you can understand my concern about the outcome of the government reform vote next month. I believe the Paradox of Progress is as true today as it was two years ago.
Unfortunately, what’s missing in the campaign to pass government reform this year — a victim of time more than anything else — is the linking of the benefits of sharing with the benefits each community would receive in return.
It was clear from our research that Shaker Heights wants to be Shaker Heights, and Cleveland Heights wants to be Cleveland Heights. Yet the truth of the matter is that if they shared police departments, fire departments and emergency services and saved money, they would be in a much stronger position financially to continue to make their cities the unique communities they are. To use the county’s financial resources to move the sharing process forward would just make the whole situation better.
I still have buried in the attic a poster from college that says: Progress is a winding stair. It is also, from what I can see, a paradox.