Mayor Jackson’s State of the City Speech 2008

February 28th, 2008 · No Comments

One year ago I posted on Mayor Jackson’s state of the City address 2007 here. Today Mayor Jackson gave his 2008 Address. I’ll post a link later, I’m sure there will be a way to do that so you can all listen to it in it’s entirety.

A few comments on it after initially listening. I have so many things about Mayor Jackson that I like. I like the fact that we are potentially becoming more fiscally responsible as a City. He talked about the efficiency efforts that have been in place that sound like they are saving the City 26 million dollars. He plans to reinvest that money - a questioner asked if it was a one year savings and he said no and that efforts will continue to improve so that not only will there be $26 mil to reinvest next year but in his five year plan he is hoping for more each year.

I was impressed (especially after our last Mayor) that he seems to have a working handle on budgets and knows the inner workings of The City. We need that. However (yeah there is always a ‘but’), I still wish we had more creativity displayed and coming forward. He is after all our ’showcase’ and I’d love it if it sounded like he was as much a creative and ’show place’ figure as he is an administrator. I know, maybe it’s really hard to mix the two attributes. But certainly we can’t move forward in a fast enough manner without idea people.

Anyway, he had five areas he focused on but when questioned as to what area he was most passionate about (by Cool Cleveland’s Thomas Mulready, no less) he said education. He talked about the new science and technology magnet school that will be opening next Fall. He talked about safety issues and how Cleveland is working on a project called Operation Focus which is a partnership of mentors, educators, police and social services to improve safety combat crime. He also said that high school graduation rates went up to 50% this past year and the goal is to keep steadily increasing it each year. (As a former educator I get a tad cynical about graduation rates and their accuracy, but I hope this is true god knows we need this).

One questioner mentioned job creation which was on the top of the list for me; this is an area he did not mention in the original speech adequately, in my mind. To respond to the question he talked about the 730 billion dollars we have and that 80% of it will get reinvested into Cleveland’s infrastructure.

Now I get really agitated because the infrastructure work he focuses on is roads and bridges. Of course I am going to the railroads with this and please hear me out. He used an example of the German solar panel company coming here because of our ability to get goods and services out to other points within seven or eight hours - Cleveland being picked above other areas where laws and regulations are more favorable to private industry. If this is true (and I know it is) then just imagine how much more industry we could bring here if we had the 3C Corridor Ohio Hub in place. This is not pie in the sky, this is real folks. If we can reduce the time to 2 to 5 hours, just think how many more businesses would move here??? I heard nothing in the speech about rail transportation and no questions addressed it. I wish I knew when people were going to start seeing how we can not afford to NOT invest in this system. Sigh. And I am wondering how pro-active we are as a City in trying to play up this advantage? Now that it has happened with the German solar panel company I hope they see the light in both ways: promoting what we have and trying to get our high rail system up and running.

This may be one of the interesting points for me from questions and answers; an Akron woman asked how Mayor Jackson views regionalism, what does it mean to him? He said what he sees is NOT confrontational. That regionalism can’t be viewed as a ‘them’ or ‘us’ standoff. He said:

“….I am trying to help shape it [regionalism] in a way that is acceptable and not cause anxiety and fear. Regional cooperation, regional procurement, saving money regionally, regional service delivery, no fears needed. It is a homeless, public safety, education issue along with a money issue. [We need to] get past ourselves and our own self interests….”

He used an example that was already in my head (is it good I think like him on this? LOL). The foreclosure issue. It was local to so many. Doesn’t affect my own backyard. Then everyone came to find out how so many foreclosures in our urban area affect the core but also drastically affect the outer rings. Same thing with regionalism on other areas. I believe this one hundred percent. Lastly he hit on my key issue that was missing from the Obama/Clinton debate; rebuilding the urban core cities. He spoke rather eloquently about this and to me it is a primal concern. And a regional and National concern. Until we improve the core the rest suffer as well. And that was missing from debate questions.So that is my quick and dirty coverage of the State of the City report for Cleveland in 2008. I look forward to reading everyone’s coverage on this, I stuck with what struck me the most about the speech. The Q and A was almost better than the speech! But I was impressed with how he was able to answer most of the questions in a way that shows he is involved in all the issues. (The one exception was sustainability). Again I will post links to videos or transcripts as they become available.