Our Work Over the Past Nine Years

My goal during my tenure as Mayor for the past nine years, 2011-2019, was to address every issue and opportunity facing our community.  I sought to identify each issue and shape it for appropriate action to be taken in the best interest of our community. I was determined not to duck any issue that confronted our city. I knew from prior experiences that our community had to create a capacity for and become an investor in our own future.

When I arrived in this office I was confronted with the impact of the Great Recession on our housing and rental markets, the viability of our beloved but challenged community hospital, the threat of a longstanding civil rights case, the threat of federal action over our sewer system, faced up to the  opiate crisis that hit Lakewood hard, and the devastating impact of Governor Kasich’s 2011 budget cuts on Ohio’s cities, and numerous other issues.

Over the past nine years we invested $60 million, increasing the capture and treatment of all storm and sanitary waters from 79 percent in 2010 to 85 percent, and submitted an award winning fully integrated plan to the US EPA that will advance our capture and treatment to 95+ percent. We invested heavily in our drinking water infrastructure, street surface quality, introduced traffic calming designs to affect speeding, invested heavily in sidewalk quality, sustainable energy investments in Electric Vehicle charging, LED street lights, energy production in our Waste Water Treatment facility, installed fiber optic network for our schools, library, and city services including free wi-fi in our parks. This network “sets the table” for adding emerging smart city technology that is revolutionizing how cities of the future will be able serve their citizens.

We invested heavily in our public safety, added 70 public safety surveillance cameras to complement our safety forces, upgraded our public safety communications capability with state of the art technology and  provided training around individuals in a crisis. We added new housing at McKinley School site, Clifton Pointe on Sloane, the old Fairchild site on Detroit’s east end. We rehabbed or replaced over 50 homes to offer to income qualified new owners, on top of adding over 200 new housing units across the city. We welcomed over 100 new businesses and their jobs to our community, invested in new healthcare for our next century and set the stage for redevelopment of the six-acre site in place of Lakewood Hospital.

We invested heavily in all our parks and playgrounds, with the Solstice Steps as the crown jewel of these investments. These investments also included adding back four outdoor basketball courts. We worked hard to grow our economic base to support our schools and city government. We focused on our homes, initiating Lakewood’s Housing Forward program which resulted in the largest percentage recovery of housing values in our county and helped our city emerge as one of the only a few to fully recover from the great recession. We developed innovative  peer based counseling to help opiate overdose victims seek recovery, We set the stage for a world class multi-generational community center to address 21^st century human service needs.

We have held our municipal income tax level to 1.5 percent, emerging as one of a few to not raise our taxes in response to state cuts. We introduced Lean Six Sigma strategies to challenge our methods and processes to gain productivity to better serve our citizens. We responded to a plethora of animal safety issues that resulted in improved ordinances that secure more responsible dog ownership and address public safety.

We improved our ability to do our work with significant investments in equipment and upgraded technology in every department to improve the speed and quality of our work, as well as provide expanded data analysis for better effort ahead. These investments included videotaping of city council and boards and commission meetings to improve citizen access to their government. We installed state of the art fiber optic data network in partnership with our schools and libraries to provide essential connectivity for the 21st century information tools. These meetings, as well as city contracts, economic development and project documents, public records, and thousands of other government documents are available on the city’s web site; www.onelakewood.com.

We provided a strong voice in numerous regional governance and public policy discussions about the threat and economic implications of urban sprawl in a region that does not experience population growth.

I am proud to leave this city in the best financial shape in decades. Our organization is more productive with its existing resources and more nimble in addressing changing daily service requirements.

Our housing stock is receiving over ten million dollars of investments each of the last several years. Finally, we have created a culture of collaboration and alignment with our numerous partners: Board of Education, non-profit organizations, economic development organizations, and our private sector businesses. All of which expands our capacity to serve our citizens.

What a great personal challenge and honor to do all the above work on behalf of my hometown. I would not be interested in being mayor of any other city but Lakewood. Thank you, Lakewood citizens for this privilege.

Social Media and Government

Governments have always been challenged to communicate, explain, discuss, and connect to their constituents.

The advent of social media and demise of traditional print media have intensified this challenge. Not too many years ago, governments at all levels were served by professional journalists who roamed city hall looking for stories, investigating tips, studying, and then reporting on complex stories.  It is a rare event when I have an opportunity to engage one-on-one with a journalist, other than for a 30-second soundbite on whatever may be that day’s controversy.

So how can governments best harness the power of social media? The answer is emerging and changing by the week.  The aspect of social media I am most concerned about is the absence of facts. If so many people claim to get their news from social media, how are they to separate fact from opinion?

In Lakewood City Hall, increasing efforts are being made to monitor conversations and inject facts as we know them to improve the quality of discourse. City Hall managers—some more than others—keep a wary eye on some discussions. One public information officer spends a significant part of her time following and ensuring effective responses to social media posts. Judgments are made, as has always been the case in communications.

The City of Lakewood has its official social media vehicles — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram accounts. Others will emerge and the City will continue to utilize them.

I have grown very fond of the famous words of former New York Senator Patrick Moynihan. He said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.”  Those in City Hall’s leadership often take to social media to correct misunderstandings, misstatements, or erroneous “facts”, and I would always encourage them to do so.  When employees participate in these conversations, they participate as citizens who bring their own individual experiences and knowledge to bear on a conversation.  They do not convey any official or sponsored message of my administration.

To engage in social media, one has to keep an eye on it. This goes for those who present the City’s official social media messages, and it goes for employees who post as citizens. City Hall policies permit these reasonable efforts to communicate and I foresee that continuing well into the future.