REGIONALISM

If we could it do all over again, would we do it the same way? That is a question we frequently ask ourselves as we get older and -hopefully- wiser. And almost always the answer is no! With the benefit of hindsight, we would have done a lot of things differently. But you can’t go back and undo all the things you have done; the things that now don’t look so smart. Nor should we be too harsh on ourselves: circumstances, information, technologies, norms and our own insights have all changed and it is not really very meaningful to judge our actions of the past with our current metrics.

Those thoughts go through my mind as I drive around town, through North Ridgeville, North Olmsted, Westlake, Rocky River, and Lakewood and back through Brooklyn, Middleburg Heights, Parma, Parma Heights, Brook Park, Berea and Olmsted Falls. What I’m thinking about, as I drive from one little community to the next, is all the duplication of effort and resources comprised in all these small communities, packed so closely together.

Cuyahoga County alone has 59 municipalities and the State of Ohio a grand total of 3,703 units of government. We are a nation of settlers and homesteaders and we revere self-government or –rather – we don’t trust anybody but ourselves to govern our affairs. But we also detest paying taxes and we constantly reject school levies and other tax impositions at the ballot box. Seemingly we are unable to make the connection between the type of self-government we want and the cost thereof.

I shudder to think about all the police departments and fire departments that need to be staffed and equipped by all these communities, all the town halls and city councils that need to be funded with tax payers’ money. All the public works departments these communities need to support. All the different zoning boards with inevitably diverging views of what the local landscape should look like. Do we get our money’s worth?

Most of us mistrust government and would much rather do with less than more government, but here we tolerate a layered cake of Federal, State, County and Municipal government each with their own costly bureaucracies. How well equipped are all these public workers to service us at modern day standards and how much does it cost us? We pay for these public workers with our hard earned money not only for as long as they are working for us, but also in retirement, mostly with defined benefit pension plans that have long been abandoned by the private world.

If we could do it all over again, for sure we would not come out with the current governance model.

We would create larger communities with a good balance between residential and commercial development creating a healthy sustainable tax base. We would create communities delineated by natural geographic boundaries that allow for each community to have its own distinct character. We would separate governance from operations so that we can set the rules locally but provide services in a larger context in combination with neighboring communities.

Following this concept we would retain the benefits of local self-government while controlling the cost of the services that communities need to provide by applying economies of scale. With fewer, larger and stronger communities we can afford to attract the best talent available to run the business of government both politically and operationally. And we can afford to build in NE Ohio a world class infrastructure to support our competitive position in the State, in the Nation and in the World.

We need the courage to let go of what we have accumulated over time and give ourselves a fresh start. We need Regionalism instead of Localism.

If only we could do it all over again! Well, can’t we?