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 21st
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.
