Henry Gomez: Ward 15 residents angry about City Council redistricting have many questions, few answers - Inside Cleveland City Hall

Sometimes, I wonder if all this furor, this hubbub about redrawing the ward lines, is worth the attention it gets. Regardless of where we draw the lines, we get the same insipid governance from the mayor and a challenged, albeit smaller, city council; the subset of problems remains the same; the scenery really doesn't change that much at all; the service doesn't get much worse, because it can't, in this Midwestern equivalent of a third-world country, our beloved banana republic with a side of pierogis. Henry here recounts how more of the chickens are coming home to roost as Brian Cummins, last year's avid supporter of Council reduction, gets himself reduced into oblivion, and Callahan reminds us all of the way things were, from his unique inside perspective.

. . . And we still don't know what will happen on the East Side, where another council member is expected to lose most of his political base and be pitted against a colleague.

Despite all of this instant drama, local blogger Bill Callahan reminds everyone that this had to have been expected - most of all, perhaps, by Cummins. Cummins, as I should have noted in this weekend's stories, advocated an even deeper council downsizing. He felt the cuts favored by Sweeney and suburban businessmen were not enough at a time when Cleveland was bleeding population.

Callahan had a front-row seat to Cummins' proposal. He was a member of the Charter Review Commission that studied various downsizing plans and ultimately backed the one pushed by Sweeney - but not until 2013, when hard Census numbers would be available.

The ballot initiative ultimately passed by council called for the redistricting to take effect this year. And city voters approved the plan last November by a wide margin.

Nowhere in the charter amendment did it say that existing neighborhood boundaries had to be protected. It didn't even say the council would try to make such accommodations.

Now, people are angry because they see the effects of this amendment coming to life. To those in Brooklyn Centre, take a look at Ohio City. Since the last redistricting earlier this decade, Ohio City has been shared by three council members. . .

Ward 15 residents angry about City Council redistricting have many questions, few answers - Inside Cleveland City Hall - cleveland.com

not paying attention to detail, Tubbs overflows

For at least the last half year, I've been getting this email reply from Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones "official" mailbox (stephanie.tubbs.jones@mail.house.gov):

Your message

To: Tubbs Jones, Stephanie
Subject: going tactical
Sent: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:21:53 -0400

did not reach the following recipient(s):

Tubbs Jones, Stephanie on Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:27:28 -0400
The message could not be delivered because the recipient's mailbox is full.
HRM07.US.House.gov 5.2.2

I'm removing her from my information lists, as of now. I guess she feels that what she doesn't know won't hurt her, but what about the rest of us?

How can she present herself as a representative of this region if her lines of communication are always down?

if I ran the city, the series, #10: show us your guns

Cleveland files suit to uphold right to pass its own gun laws -- Good grief! I can't even get through a workday without having to stop to write about something inane going on in the city government. Here's Frank Jackson, again, making a big to-do about home rule, and how we in the CleveCentric universe can do just about anything we please, like continue to try to subvert the state and federal constitutions (instead of coming to grips with the real issues, the ones that call for tough solutions). He wants to dog-paddle against the current again and put us at further competitive disadvantage, and I just have one question: If we're such shit-hot home-rulers around here, then why are things so stalled out these past 15 years or so? What other cities have home rule? Do they lean on it so as a solution to a questionable yet authoritarian leadership style of "my way or the highway" or "it's my city, and I'll do with it as I please, because I'm in charge, and I can"?

I find Steve Leavitt's story about the Swiss more to the point in a community discussion (we need to have one here) about who will have guns, and who won't, and what kind of guns they will be, as well. It's stuck in the middle of chapter 4 of Freakonomics ("Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?"), around page 131. What it relates is that male Swiss of age to serve in the SwissMilitia are issued assault rifles and allowed to keep them at home. Switzerland has more firearms per capita than just about any other country, yet it's one of the safest places in the world--ample argument for the position that guns don't cause crime. Outsiders think Switzerland is safe, too, in a lot of ways, and entrust the Swiss with the custodial duty of safe-keeping lots of money there.

So, as counterpoint to the doofy idea of stripping us of still more of our protections, I want to suggest that we use our home rule to establish a city militia, issue each of our militia an assault rifle, and allow them to keep their rifles at the house. If I ran the city, this would be one of the first things I'd do, right after I scrapped all the traffic-camera equipment and sold it at pennies on the dollar to another, dumber emerging third-world country, if I could find one that retarded.

not easily intimidated

The Courier News :: News :: Elderly tourist slays mugger with bare hands--Here's a heartening tale of stand-up conduct.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- An American senior citizen killed an alleged mugger with his bare hands, and his traveling companions aboard a tour bus fended off two other assailants in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, police said.
The American, who is about 70 years old and retired from the military, put the 20-year-old in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the suspect and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 80 miles east of San Jose. The suspect, Warner Segura, later was declared dead, apparently from asphyxiation.
The two other men fled when the 12 senior citizens started defending themselves during the Wednesday attack.
Afterward, the tourists drove Segura to the Red Cross, where he was declared dead. The Red Cross also treated one of the tourists for an anxiety attack, Hernandez said Thursday.
The tourists left on their Carnival cruise ship after the incident, and Hernandez said authorities do not plan to press charges against them.
"They were in their right to defend themselves after being held up," he said.

PD starting to call it like it is

Refinance, Subject to Oversight--This reporting and editorializing the PD is doing on the bond job and the cozy arrangements is what we need more of in this town. We could also use even more numbers, less speculation, to see how this might actually benefit the public.

Avoiding the appearance of impropriety is what is called for, and we don't really have that in this situation. A school superintendent at Sanders' level should have enough common sense not to present such a lucrative target for criticism. What we do have, unfortunately, is a lot of the hired help telling us what they have to and don't have to do, and this doesn't sit well in a city that's continually conned by it's employees. We already have another embarrassment, regardless of how the deal eventually goes down.

It's time to shuck the third-world-country image and get on with ethical business practices.