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Politics & Government

Roundtable Explores Problems That Suburbs Face

Suburban spread forces older suburbs to set new priorities, speaker says.

According to US Census Bureau data, Lakewood’s 2010 population of 52,131 was the lowest since before the Great Depression.

People continue to leave the city, moving outward as more and more suburbs spring up further and further from the city.

That lasting trend, and the difficulties resulting from it, was the focus of a roundtable discussion hosted by and sponsored by Building One America, a national community organizing group, at Tuesday. Mayors and other elected officials, nonprofit and business leaders and university professors from throughout the Cleveland’s west-side suburbs were in attendance.

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The reason for the discussion, Summers said, was to get community leaders in the region to come together to meet the challenges posed by not just a staggering economy and the foreclosure crisis, but the bigger trend of urban flight – now effecting suburbs.

“There isn’t a community in the US not thinking about these issues,” he said.

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The event included the screening of a two-part documentary, “The New Metropolis,” examining the effects of urban flight on first-ring suburbs, or the first suburbs outside the city, themselves born out of urban flight following World War II.

The movie – and several panelists afterwards – explained how government policies subsidizing the outward expansion of metropolitan areas are causing problems in first-ring suburbs usually seen struggling city centers:

  • population decline;
  • business decline;
  • increased infrastructure cost as more people drive when businesses move out of town;
  • property value decline;
  • tax-revenue decline.

Jim Rokakis, Director of the Thriving Communities Institute, said as people continue to migrate outward, inner-ring suburbs have to learn how to do more with less.

“The only good thing to come out of this is that it forced you to re-examine how you do business,” he said.

Bay Village Mayor Deborah Sutherland said the lost revenue her city has seen is “sobering.” Monday, she presented her budget to City Council, and said, after factoring in losses from property taxes, as well as cuts in state aid and the repeal of the estate tax, Bay Village will be $3.2 million in debt by 2015.

“I’m not going to be real diplomatic about this, but the state balanced its budget on our backs,” she said. “But let’s not raise taxes to make ends meet, so what are the alternatives?”

Mayor Summers said the purpose of the event was to “refocus and revamp” the Northeast Ohio First Suburbs Consortium (NOFSC), a group formed in 1996 that now consists of 17 developed communities in Cuyahoga County.

The group’s goal, according to its website, is “identifying federal, state and regional governmental practices that promote disinvestment in, and outmigration from, older suburbs.”

Mayor Summers said addressing these problems will take a collective effort.

“It’s about advancing the interests of the whole region,” he said.

Former Lakewood City Councilman Mike Dever, now at the Cuyahoga County Department of Public Works, said a new “unfunded mandate” from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency that bans releasing sewage in freshwater when there is a significant rain event will cost Lakewood alone nearly $300 million.

“There’s no way that the city of Lakewood can bare that kind of cost…on the backs of the 50,000 residents of this community,” he said.

The event also served as a call to action, Summers said, challenging the leaders to think of new ideas to bring to the NOFSC meeting of both east and west-side leaders in the spring.

“It isn’t about vulcanizing the west side or the east side,” Summers said. “It’s really about taking a geographic approach to building an intellectual base."

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