HOPKINS, WILLIAM ROWLAND (26 July 1869-9 Feb. 1961), lawyer, industrial developer, and Cleveland’s first city manager, was born in Johnstown, Pa., to David J. and Mary Jeffreys Hopkins. The family came to Cleveland in 1874. At 13, Hopkins began working in the Cleveland Rolling Mills, using his earnings to attend Western Reserve Academy, graduating in 1892. He earned his A.B. (1896) and LL.B. (1899) at Western Reserve University, being elected to CLEVELAND CITY COUNCIL as a Republican (1897-99) while in law school. Hopkins laid out new industrial plant developments, and in 1905 promoted construction of the Cleveland Short Line Railroad, linking Cleveland’s major industrial sections. He gave up his law practice in 1906 to devote himself to business.
Hopkins became chairman of the Republican county committee and a member of the election board and, with the approval of both political parties, became Cleveland’s first city manager in 1924. Removed from partisan politics, he developed parks, improved welfare institutions, began PUBLIC AUDITORIUM, and developed Cleveland Municipal Airport. Although as city manager he was administrative head, he also took the lead in determining policy. City council felt he acquired too much control and removed him from office in Jan. 1930. In 1931 he became a member of council, unsuccessfully fighting for retention of the CITY MANAGER PLAN. In 1933 he returned to private life. The airport was named in his honor in 1951 (see CLEVELAND-HOPKINS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT). Hopkins married Ellen Louise Cozad in 1903; they had no children and divorced in 1926. He died in Cleveland and was buried in LAKE VIEW CEMETERY.
SETTLEMENT HOUSES. Cleveland, along with Chicago, Boston, and New York, was one of the centers of the U.S. settlement-house movement. Local settlement work began in the late 1890s, and within a decade a half-dozen settlements operated in Cleveland neighborhoods. Several of the city’s settlement houses achieved national recognition; for example, KARAMU HOUSE, one of the centers of African American theater in the U.S., and the CLEVELAND MUSIC SCHOOL SETTLEMENT, with its model music training programs. The settlement movement began in England in 1884 when a group of Oxford Univ. students established Toynbee Hall, a residence in a London slum. Sharing knowledge and skills with area residents, they strove to understand and solve urban problems. The urban village concept was foremost, attempting to replicate in city neighborhoods the network of mutual aid common to a small village. New York City’s Neighborhood Guild (1885) and Jane Addams’ Hull House (Chicago, 1888) marked the importation of settlement houses to the U.S.; over 100 existed in America by 1900. The settlement movement grew in response to the overcrowding, impoverishment, corruption, and disease caused by rapid industrialization and urbanization. One of the most enduring reform movements, it uniquely attempted to change problem neighborhoods from within.
Hiram House float in the 1919 Community Fund Parade. WRHS.
Social settlements addressed Progressive Era concerns: education (with adult classes, kindergartens, and vocational training); citizenship; recreation; health (with visiting-nurse networks and health inspections); labor, unions, and working standards; and living conditions (establishing housing codes). Many programs became standard to education and government. Early settlement house support came through an independent board of directors or a particular religious or educational affiliation. While supporters and settlement workers were generally native-born, Protestant and middle- or upper-middle-class, clients in the early years were mostly Catholic or Jewish working-class immigrants. This difference between the settlement worker and neighborhood resident clearly distinguished the American settlement movement.
Following World War I, the increased centralization of urban social work and PHILANTHROPY affected settlement houses. While they had previously enjoyed autonomy in fundraising and allocation, many settlements came to depend on centralized welfare campaigns by 1930. Funding agencies frequently dictated areas in which a settlement could spend monies received from general solicitations, often hampering program development. In Cleveland, the Federation for Charity and Philanthropy, and later the Welfare Federation (predecessors of UNITED WAY SERVICES), solicited and allocated charitable funds. Despite the loss of autonomy, the curtailment of immigration, and the general decline of urban populations, many settlement houses established during the Progressive Era endured in 1993, such as Alta House, Goodrich-Gannett, Karamu, and the Cleveland Music School Settlement. A new neighborhood emphasis by various city, state, and federal funding programs during the 1970s renewed vitality in some institutions.
John J. Grabowski
Western Reserve Historical Society
Bond, Robert L. Focus on Neighborhoods: A History of Responses by Cleveland’s Settlement Houses and Neighborhood Centers to Changing Human Needs (1990).
RAILROADS. While water traffic on both Lake Erie and the OHIO AND ERIE CANAL did much to develop Cleveland, it took the appearance of the railroad to make the community’s industrial takeoff a reality. From the 1860s to the 1960s, railroads served as the principal transporter of goods and people to and from the Forest City. Not long after the steam locomotive made its 1829 American debut, Clevelanders realized the potential for this novel transportation form.
The economic dislocations triggered by the Panic of 1837 initially prevented backers of the proposed Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati railroad, chartered in 1836, from turning their plans into reality. Eventually, though, a stronger economy led to line surveys, acquisition of rights-of-way, and actual construction of a railroad in the late 1840s. Cleveland’s railroad era officially began on 3 Nov. 1849 when the CC&C’s lone engine was coupled onto a string of flatcars near River St. The CLEVELAND HERALD commented, “The whistle of the locomotive will be as familiar to the ears of the Clevelander as the sound of church bells.” The CC&C opened its first segment, 36 mi. to Wellington, in July 1850 and completed the remaining line into Columbus the following February. Its first Cleveland depot stood on the lakefront near W. 9th St. That same month, the Cleveland & Pittsburgh, which traced its corporate origins back to the 1836 charter of the Cleveland, Warren & Pittsburgh, dispatched trains over its new 26-mi. line between Cleveland and Hudson. By 1853 that carrier had entered Pittsburgh. Also, a 62-mi. branch, initially organized in 1851 as the Cleveland, Mt. Vernon & Delaware Railroad, opened in 1852 between Hudson and Millersburg via Akron.
Railroad building in the Cleveland area continued at a brisk pace, but most of the early lines were under-capitalized and subject to the economic panics which occurred regularly during the 19th century. Falling into receivership, the lines often were consolidated, reorganized, and expanded after receiving new capital. This process eventually created the major rail lines that operated in the Cleveland area during the 20th century. In the early 1850s the developing network of independent roads from New York to Chicago touched Cleveland in the early 1850s. Using the 1848 charter of the Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula, Cleveland promoters laid tracks between the Forest City and the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line, reaching their destination in 1852. The next year the Cleveland & Toledo, an amalgamation of several “paper” companies that dated back to the mid-1840s, received permission to link these two Ohio communities, and soon the firm reached the west bank of the Cuyahoga River. In 1869 these separate companies, together with the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana and the Buffalo & Erie, became the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Co. Dominated by New York interests, the LS&MS provided single management control of passenger and freight operations between Buffalo and Chicago. The Cleveland & Mahoning Valley Railroad also was included in Cleveland’s first wave of steam railroad construction. Although chartered in 1848, sufficient backing was not forthcoming until Western Reserve promoters, led by Jacob Perkins, pledged their own fortunes to the scheme, and this future component of the Erie railroad took shape. By 1857 rails linked Cleveland with Warren and Youngstown. The C&MV not only gave Cleveland another railroad, it also opened up the rich Mahoning Valley coal fields to local industries and to the Great Lakes export trade.
The devastating impact of the Panic of 1857, coupled with the outbreak of the Civil War 4 years later, virtually halted railroad building in northeast Ohio. Even with peace in 1865 and a relatively healthy economy, railroad construction in the Cleveland area languished except for the 101-mi. Lake Shore & Tuscarawas Valley Railway. This predominantly coal-hauling line opened on 18 Aug. 1873, between Lorain and Uhrichsville. The LS&TV faced subsequent reorganizations and expansions until after the turn of the century, when it became the Cleveland, Lorain & Wheeling Railway and later, part of the Baltimore & Ohio system. The end of the Civil War also saw the opening of a new UNION DEPOT on the city’s lakefront near W. 9th St. Although the Panic of 1873 produced exceedingly difficult times for railroad expansion, an upturn in the economy after 1878 sparked a second wave of railroad building in both northeastern Ohio and the nation. Included in this second wave was the Valley Railroad begun on the eve of the Panic of 1873 by several Cleveland businessmen, including JEPTHA H. WADE† and NATHAN P. PAYNE†. This company had to wait out the depression but finally completed its Cleveland-to-Canton main line, via Akron; service commenced in 1880. Although the Valley Railroad transported quantities of coal as the result of its extension south of Canton, hard times brought on by the Panic of 1893 plunged it into receivership. Reorganization in late 1895 as the Cleveland Terminal & Valley Railroad brought new vitality. Like the Cleveland, Lorain and & Wheeling, the CT&V entered the orbit of the B&O.
Another second-wave road was the narrow gauge Cleveland, Canton & Southern, also a coal-hauler. An outgrowth of the Ohio & Toledo and the Youngstown & Connotton Valley railroad companies, this line reached Cleveland from Canton and Kent in Jan. 1882, under the flag of the Connotton Northern Railroad. Like the others, it was susceptible to economic downswings, and the recession of 1884-85 threw the Connotton Northern into a receivership that produced the Cleveland & Canton Railroad, a standard gauge carrier. The Panic of 1893 prompted further corporate reshaping when the Cleveland & Canton became the Cleveland, Canton & Southern. Ultimately, in 1899 the property, which gave Cleveland convenient access to east Ohio coal fields, found a financially healthy home within the Wheeling & Lake Erie system.
By far the most significant development of the second-wave period for Cleveland was the creation in 1881 of the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railway, better known as the NICKEL PLATE ROAD. Spearheaded by the Nickel Plate’s promoters, a combination of easterners and Ohioans, built a nearly 600-mi. road in less than 600 days. By 1882 the company connected Buffalo, NY, with Chicago, via Cleveland; in fact, the road’s officials selected Cleveland as its headquarters. Entry into the city from both the east and west involved the purchase of 2 independent short lines, the CLEVELAND, PAINESVILLE & ASHTABULA (Cleveland to COLLAMER) and the Rocky River Railroad (Cleveland to ROCKY RIVER). Within a week after the Nickel Plate’s official opening, its owners sold out to the Vanderbilts, a business family that controlled numerous railroads, including the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern. The Vanderbilts protected their position in the LS&MS at the expense of the Nickel Plate, which languished until the NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILROAD, successor to the Vanderbilt empire, sold it on the eve of World War I. The sale of the Nickel Plate was the preeminent example of how control of many local roads rapidly gravitated toward New York or other eastern corporate centers during the 19th century.
Builders of the Nickel Plate Road had the good sense to recognize that by the 1880s the country’s railroad enterprise was headed in a new direction. Companies would be more than short lines such as the Lake Shore & Tuscarawas Valley or the Valley Railroad that wandered into the hinterlands; they would link large urban centers. This desire for regional “system building” led to the formation by 1900 of several powerful roads in Cleveland. The New York Central controlled 3 firms: the LS&MS, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway (the “Big 4,” including the former Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati), and the Nickel Plate Road; the B&O operated the Cleveland, Lorain & Wheeling and the Cleveland Terminal and Valley roads; the PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD dominated the Cleveland & Pittsburgh; and the Erie acquired what originally had been the Cleveland & Mahoning. Only the WHEELING & LAKE ERIE RAILROAD lacked the status of being a major regional concern. As noted above, ultimate control of all these roads was held outside of Cleveland.
Cleveland’s railroads reflected other national trends in the industry. As in virtually every large American city after 1900, the rapid increase of freight traffic led to expanded facilities, including belt and industrial switching lines to relieve congestion at the lakefront facilities. For example, between 1906-12 the New York Central built the 20-mi. Cleveland Short Line Railway–a beltline which carried freight south around the center of the city. Private manufacturers also owned and operated their own switching lines. The U.S. STEEL CORP., for instance, controlled the NEWBURGH & SOUTH SHORE RAILWAY, chartered in 1899, which consisted of 7 mi. of main line between Cleveland and NEWBURGH and numerous spurs and sidings.
In the 1920s and 1930s, control of several of the railroads began to come home to Cleveland as ORIS P. AND MANTIS J. VAN SWERINGEN† built their empire. These Clevelanders, who originally were not involved in railroads, had prospered as suburban land developers. Yet to ensure the fullest returns on its SHAKER HEIGHTS properties, the Van Sweringens wanted direct transit service into downtown Cleveland. Since the city’s streetcar system failed to satisfy their needs, they launched an interurban, the Cleveland & Youngstown Railroad, in the summer of 1911, to build initially from Shaker Hts. to downtown Cleveland. They acquired real estate along KINGSBURY RUN as part of their right-of-way into the city’s central business district. In order to obtain the Nickel Plate’s right-of-way from E. 34th St. into downtown, the Van Sweringens purchased the Nickel Plate Road from the New York Central in early 1916. In this highly leveraged buyout, the brothers benefited from the federal government’s desire to force the New York Central to divest itself of this potential competitor. Not only did they win access for their traction line (later the Cleveland Interurban Railway and then the SHAKER HEIGHTS RAPID TRANSIT) into Cleveland’s heart, but they also found themselves in control of a “Class 1” steam railroad.
The Van Sweringens upgraded the rather shabby Nickel Plate Road and soon turned a handsome profit from it. In the early 1920s, they won ICC approval to expand their railroad holdings, acquiring 2 midwestern roads, the Toledo, St. Louis & Western (“Clover Leaf”) and the Lake Erie & Western. Through holding companies, most notably the ALLEGHANY CORP., which was headquartered in Cleveland, they controlled 9 major roads, the Chesapeake & Ohio, Chicago & Eastern Illinois, Denver & Rio Grande Western, Erie, Missouri Pacific, Nickel Plate, Pere Marquette, Texas & Pacific, and Wheeling & Lake Erie. The 1929 stock market crash and the Depression led to the bankruptcy and breakup of their empire. The lasting legacy of the Van Sweringens to the city, however, was CLEVELAND UNION TERMINAL, begun in Sept. 1923 and opened in June 1930. (The Pennsylvania never joined and continued to operate out of the old Union Depot and eventually out of its station at E. 55th and Euclid, and the Erie did not enter the Terminal until after World War II.)
Cleveland Union Terminal helped to meet the extraordinary demands placed on the area’s railroads during World War II. Thousands of travelers poured through the structure, for more than 60 passenger trains paid daily calls, as did the cars of the Shaker Hts. Rapid line. In the postwar era, the popularity of intercity train travel waned as the automobile became the dominant form of ground transportation, speeding over a federally subsidized network of interstate highways. Rail carriers at first cut back their local runs, but by the late 1950s even name trains such as the MERCURY became only memories. While the diesel-powered streamliners of the New York Central, in particular, attracted patrons, increased automobile and air travel over-whelmed them. By the early 1970s, most of the nation’s railroads gladly turned over their remaining passenger trains to the federal government. A vastly pared-down intercity rail passenger network, Amtrak, debuted on 1 May 1971; Clevelanders were left with only 1 daily passenger train each way between New York and Chicago, and an independent (ERIE LACKAWANNA, INC.) commuter run to Youngstown, which lasted until 1978. The Amtrak trains left Union Terminal in 1972, and they then called at a temporary building, popularly dubbed “Amshack,” on the lakeshore, and after 1977 in a modern, albeit modest, permanent station at the same location which, ironically, was located within a mile of the site of the city’s first station.
Not only have there been spectacular changes in the overall nature of rail passenger travel, but the corporate structure of the railroad industry itself has also changed dramatically. The industry believed that consolidation was the best avenue to savings and long-term propriety, and during the 1960s every major Cleveland railroad participated in a corporate merger. The Erie and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western fused in 1960 to produce what became the ill-fated Erie-Lackawanna; the CHESAPEAKE & OHIO RAILROADacquired the BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD in 1963 (B&O-C&O); the Nickel Plate Road entered the Norfolk & Western’s system in 1964; and in the nation’s most spectacular union, the New York Central and the Pennsylvania united in 1968 to create the PENN CENTRAL TRANSPORTATION CO., a firm that collapsed within 2 years. While railroad officials may have had some misgivings about mergers, especially after the Penn Central bankruptcy, they turned to creating huge interregional systems, and all of Cleveland’s major railroads were involved. The ailing Penn Central became the quasi-public Consolidated Rail Corp (CONRAIL) in 1976. The federal government forced this new carrier to include the hapless Erie-Lackawanna. Then in 1980, the ICC gave the green light for the C&O-B&O, the “Chessie System,” and the Seaboard Coast Line to form CSX, and in 1982 regulators granted the Norfolk & Western permission to merge with the Southern, creating the NORFOLK SOUTHERN CORP. Thus, each of 3 giant railroads that dominated freight traffic east of the Mississippi River–Conrail, CSX, and Norfolk Southern–operate into Cleveland. Local railroads have gone through all the stages of growth–from their inception as puny pikes to their maturity as enormous entities.
CASE, LEONARD, JR. (27 Jan. 1820-6 Jan. 1880), a philanthropist who endowed Case School of Applied Science, was born to LEONARD CASE† in Cleveland and educated in law at Yale. Sickly all his life, he neither married nor practiced his profession, but devoted himself to scholarly pursuits. Along with his brother WM. CASE†, Leonard was an Arkite, a group of prominent Clevelanders who conversed about natural science in a small building (the Ark) filled with specimens they shot and mounted. Case helped form the CLEVELAND LIBRARY ASSN. (CLA) Inheriting $15 million in 1864, Case regarded his wealth as a trust to be used for good. In 1859, the Case brothers constructed Case Hall, a civic and cultural center which housed the CLEVELAND ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES, the Cleveland Library Assoc., and the Ark club, as well as theater productions and lectures. Case built the commercial Case Block in 1875.
Case anonymously gave $1 million to establish a technical school to teach pure science, an orientation that attracted support from local businesses, permitting the institution to become an important center for industrial research. To provide annual revenues, Case bequeathed the rental income from his downtown properties to the school. The Case School of Applied Science, as it became known, opened in 1881 on Rockwell Ave. and moved to UNIVERSITY CIRCLE in 1885. Case left the city 200 acres for industrial plants and railroad rights-of-way, which became the city’s first comprehensive industrial district. Other beneficiaries were the Old Stone Church, the Cleveland Orphan Asylum, the Industrial Aid Society, and the CLEVELAND FEMALE SEMINARY.
CLEAVELAND, MOSES (29 Jan. 1754-16 Nov. 1806), founder of the city of Cleveland, was born in Canterbury, Conn. In 1777, Cleaveland began service in the Revolutionary War in a Connecticut Continental Regiment, and graduated from Yale. Resigning his commission in 1781, he practiced law in Canterbury, and on 2 Mar. 1794 married Esther Champion and had four children. As one of 36 founders of the CONNECTICUT LAND CO. (investing $32,600), and one of 7 directors, in 1796 Cleaveland was sent to survey and map the company’s holdings.
When the party arrived at Buffalo Creek, N.Y., Cleaveland met in treaty with Red Jacket, Joseph Brant, Farmer’s Brother, and other Iroquois chiefs, and with gifts and persuasion convinced them their land had already been ceded through Gen. Anthony Wayne’s Treaty of Greenville. Although they had not signed the treaty, the Indians relinquished their claim to the land to the CUYAHOGA RIVER. At the mouth of Conneaut Creek, the party on 27 June 1796 negotiated with the MASSASAGOES tribe, who challenged their claim to their country. Cleaveland described his agreement with the Six Nations, promised not to disturb their people, and gave them trinkets, wampum, and whiskey in exchange for safety to explore to the Cuyahoga River. Cleaveland arrived at the mouth of the Cuyahoga on 22 July 1796, and believing that the location, where river, lake, low banks, dense forests, and high bluffs provided both protection and shipping access, was the ideal location for the “capital city” of the Connecticut WESTERN RESERVE, paced out a 10-acre New England-like Public Square. His surveyors plotted a town, naming it Cleaveland. In Oct. 1796, Cleaveland and most of his party returned to Connecticut, where he continued his law practice until his death, never returning to the Western Reserve. A memorial near his grave in Canterbury, Conn., erected 16 Nov. 1906 by the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, reads that Cleaveland was “a lawyer, a soldier, a legislator and a leader of men.”
The WESTERN RESERVE encompassed approx. 3.3 million acres of land in what is now northeastern Ohio. Bounded on the north by Lake Erie, on the east by Pennsylvania, it extended 120 mi. westward. On the south, the Reserve’s line was set at 41 degrees north latitude, running just south of the present cities of Youngstown, Akron, and Willard. The state of Connecticut exempted the land from 41 degrees to as far north as 42 degrees 2 minutes (western extensions of its own boundaries) when it ceded its western claims to the U.S. in 1786. In its 1662 royal charter, Connecticut’s boundaries were established as extending “from sea-to-sea” across North America; royal grants also had created New York and Pennsylvania, both of which intruded on Connecticut’s lands. In the 1750s, a group of Connecticut speculators began to sell lands in the Wyoming Valley near present-day Wilkes-Barre, PA. In 1782, under the Articles of Confederation, a federal court determined that the Wyoming lands belonged to Pennsylvania. At the same time, Congress was encouraging states that claimed western lands to cede them so that it could regulate their sale and governance. Following the example of Virginia’s cession in 1784, which had exempted lands promised to war veterans, Connecticut reserved lands roughly equal in dimension to the Wyoming Valley lands from her cession. Congress took 2 years before reluctantly accepting the Connecticut cession, and then only because the Pennsylvania delegation championed Connecticut’s offer. It is assumed that threats to reopen the Wyoming Valley case motivated Pennsylvania’s support of Connecticut.
Connecticut ceded to the U.S. all her western lands claims, except the area of the Reserve, on 14 Sept. 1786. Indian title to the lands east of the CUYAHOGA RIVER was extinguished in the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. That same year, the State of Connecticut sold most of the reserved lands to the CONNECTICUT LAND CO., and established a school fund with the proceeds from the sale. The actual survey and division of the lands would be directed by the company. Connecticut had exempted the “Firelands,” some 500,000 acres in the western part of the Reserve, in order to compensate citizens whose property had been destroyed in British raids during the Revolutionary War. The year after the Connecticut cession, Congress created the Northwest Territory, but it was assumed that Connecticut, not the territory, was empowered to exercise political jurisdiction over the Reserve. The ambiguity lasted until 1800, when Congress passed the “Quieting Act”; Connecticut surrendered all governing authority and shortly thereafter Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, designated the Western Reserve as Trumbull County, fixing the county seat at Warren.
The CLEVELAND-HOPKINS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT is located 8 miles southwest of PUBLIC SQUARE at Brookpark Rd. and Riverside Dr. The airport, originally known as Cleveland Municipal, was renamed Cleveland-Hopkins Intl. Airport on 26 July 1951, to commemorate the 82nd birthday of WILLIAM R. HOPKINS†, who founded it. A municipal airport for the city was envisioned shortly after World War I, but the airfield did not became a reality until the federal government was satisfied that the city could provide an adequate facility for U.S. Air Mail planes stopping in Cleveland on their coast-to-coast flights. In 1925 City Manager William R. Hopkins obtained the city council’s agreement to issue bonds to build the airport on 1,040 acres of land at the Brookpark and Riverside intersection. Clearing and grading took place at record speed so that the U.S. Air Mail could inaugurate night flights on 1 July 1925. Its first terminal building, constructed in 1927, featured the world’s first airport control tower. Although the local news media criticized the airfield’s distant location, passengers were willing to make the long trek, as well as the general public, who curiously viewed activity at the field. The NATIONAL AIR RACES were first held in Cleveland in 1929 as part of the ceremonies dedicating Cleveland’s Municipal Airport.
Through the years, the city has expanded and modernized the facilities at Hopkins to meet increasing passenger demands. A new terminal building was built in 1956, and since then additional concourses and gates have been added–the South Concourse, opened in April 1968, and the North Concourse, opened in Aug. 1978. The baggage-handling and parking facilities also were enlarged and moving sidewalks and escalators were installed. On 15 Nov. 1968, direct rapid transit service to the airport began. The problems of jet noise and the need for more and longer runways have brought the city into conflict with the airport’s neighbors as it expanded into population centers adjacent to it. In the wake of airline deregulation in the 1970s, airlines established selected hubs from which to conduct their operations. As a result, United Airlines, once dominant at Hopkins, reduced its 110 daily flights from Cleveland in 1979 to just 13 in 1988. Hopkins enjoyed an increase in passenger traffic in the 1980s and early 1990s, attributed to an improved local economy and the ability of the airport to meet carrier needs quickly. In the interim, both Continental and USAir have increased their airport operations, with Continental using the airport as one of its national hubs. In 1995, based on hopes that Cleveland Hopkins Intl. Airport might become an international hub for the nation’s major airlines, expansion plans were well underway for lengthening the airport’s runways to accommodate the potential increase in air traffic.
ONEKAMA VILLAGE, Mich.—Michigan has 1,773 municipalities, 609 school districts, 1,071 fire departments and 608 police departments. Gov. Rick Snyder wants some of them to disappear.
The governor is taking steps to bring about the consolidation of municipal services, even whole municipalities, in order to cut budgets and eliminate redundant local bureaucracies. His blueprint, which relies on legal changes and financial incentives, calls for a “metropolitan model” of government that would combine resources across cities and their suburbs.
In doing so, Mr. Snyder, a Republican, is taking aim at that twig of American government so cherished by many citizens—the town hall. The long national tradition of hyperlocal government prevails in much of the Northeast and Midwest, with their crazy quilts of cities, towns, villages and townships.
“You do have to ask: ‘Boy, do we really need 1,800 units of government?'” says Mr. Snyder’s budget director, John Nixon. “Everybody likes their independence, and that’s nice to have. But if you’re not careful, it can cost you a lot more money.”
Around the country public officials are asking themselves similar questions. Plunging property-tax receipts and rising pension and health-care costs have pushed many municipalities to the brink of financial collapse. The idea is that local governments can operate with fewer workers and smaller budgets if they do things like combine fire departments, create regional waste authorities and fold towns and cities into counties.
But selling the notion in small communities like Onekama is no easy job. Public officials have floated a proposal to merge this village of 1,500 along Lake Michigan into the township that encircles it. Some residents worry that a leaner government risks becoming a less responsive one.
Snow plowing already has emerged as a potential sticking point. If the merger passes a vote later this year, Manistee County would take over snow removal, and Onekama’s quiet streets would be among the last sections cleared.
Bonnie Miller, a village resident for 43 years who emerged as an early opponent of the merger, doesn’t want anyone to mess with the current plowing schedule. “At five in the morning, you can hear the plow truck is already out,” she says.
Over the years, consolidation proposals haven’t fared well with voters. Of the 105 referendums on city-county mergers since 1902, only 27 have passed, the most recent in 2000, when Louisville, Ky., merged into Jefferson County, according to David Rusk, a Democratic ex-mayor of Albuquerque and a proponent of consolidation. Last year, voters vetoed a merger of Memphis, Tenn., with Shelby County. In March, Memphis voters approved a merger of the city and county school systems, over strong suburban opposition. The county board of education has sued to block the merger.
Proponents of consolidation come from both ends of the political spectrum. Some conservatives argue that having fewer layers and divisions of government is cost-efficient and improves the economic climate by streamlining regulation and taxation. Some liberals support eliminating local-government boundaries that they say have cemented economic and racial disparities between cities and surrounding towns.
Researchers, however, have raised questions about whether such consolidation actually delivers significant savings. Typically, they say, only a few administrative positions overlap between jurisdictions, and further savings can’t be realized without compromising service. Public-safety agencies, for example, need a certain staff level to ensure the response times that residents demand.
A 2004 study by Indiana University’s Center for Urban Policy and the Environment found that costs creep back in, partly because bigger pools of employees can negotiate for better wages, offsetting the savings of job cuts. Academic studies of Jacksonville, Fla.’s combination with Duval County, and Miami’s merger with Dade County found that costs actually rose post-merger as new bureaucracies emerged.
In a study of Wheeling, W.Va.’s proposed merger with surrounding Ohio County, Mr. Rusk, the ex-mayor of Albuquerque, estimated that the potential cost savings would be barely 2% of the combined budget, because the overlap of services wouldn’t be as extensive as expected.
Mr. Rusk says the benefits of consolidation don’t necessarily come from cost savings. Fragmentation retards economic growth, he says, “not so much because of waste and duplication of services as an inability to unify a region’s resources” in everything from business development to road repair.
ENLARGE
Various state legislatures are moving to spur consolidation. New Jersey, which has 566 municipalities, recently made it easier for communities to pursue mergers, and several are contemplating it. In New York state, which has more than 1,547 overlapping local governments—a system Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo once called “a ramshackle mess”—the Senate passed a bill in 2009 that gave voters the power to consolidate local municipalities and services. In Indiana, which has 1,008 townships, a legislative panel this year unanimously backed offering financial incentives to local governments that seek efficiencies through consolidation.
Michigan’s laws make municipal mergers difficult. Minimum-staffing requirements and prevailing-wage laws protect public employees and make it hard to cut payroll costs. Thus far, only two mergers have occurred: The city and township of Battle Creek, and two cities and a village in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula.
Gov. Snyder has pushed legislators to dismantle those barriers. The Legislature earlier this year strengthened the state’s powers to take control of the finances of failing cities, empowering so-called emergency financial managers to void contracts, sidestep elected officials and dissolve municipalities.
While the governor can’t force consolidations, he is trying to coax financially troubled municipalities to pursue them. He is withholding about $200 million of funds for cities in need, making that aid contingent on evidence of consolidation of services such as fire departments and trash collections. His budget sets aside $5 million in transition aid for communities seeking mergers.
Similar incentives are being offered to school districts to share services such as busing, or to merge altogether. In addition, the governor has proposed a new policy that would in effect blur the existing school-district boundary lines.
“It is an evolutionary process, starting with service consolidation.” Gov. Snyder said in an interview.
The Detroit suburb of Hazel Park, in Oakland County, is considering merging its fire department with neighboring Ferndale’s. North of Hazel Park, the suburb of Pleasant Ridge is discussing sharing police and fire services with two of its neighbors.
“The economic reality has come home to roost,” said L. Brooks Patterson, county executive of Oakland County. “They are going to have to consolidate or find themselves in the cold grip of an emergency financial manager.”
ENLARGE
Village President Bob BlackmoreKATE LINEBAUGH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Gov. Snyder plans to introduce legislation to ease city-county mergers and allow for the creation of metropolitan zones to coordinate services and economic-development efforts. His hope is for affluent suburbs to share resources with fiscally strapped cities. Such an effort is already under way for Grand Rapids and Kent County.
Today’s fragmented governments grew out of voter demands for home rule and tighter control over local resources such as emergency services and schools. Voters tend to protect those resources, even if it means paying more for them. “Local voters almost never approve voluntary mergers,” says Mr. Rusk.
Earlier this year, half a dozen struggling communities in Oakland County held votes on property-tax increases to avoid consolidation of services with neighboring towns or the county. All but one of the increases passed comfortably.
In Hazel Park, one of the county’s poorest communities, residents voted overwhelmingly for a five-year tax increase to avert deep cuts to the police and fire departments, whose costs, including retiree benefits, account for 64% of the city’s $13.7 million budget.
Larry Wallace, a 46-year-old father of six, stood up at a public meeting to endorse the higher tax. He said he moved to Hazel Park two decades ago after he was robbed in his house in Detroit and a gun was held to his five-year-old daughter’s head. He said he had waited eight hours for Detroit police, but they never showed. “I will pay whatever to live somewhere safe for me and my family,” he said.
In Onekama, two governments—the village’s and the township’s—operate out of single-story buildings half a block apart on Main Street. Each employs a clerk and a treasurer. Each has an elected board of trustees. The village has a president to run its affairs; the township, a supervisor.
Many residents like it that way. Township residents pay lower taxes in return for a mostly hands-off administration that controls public access to Portage Lake. Village residents pay higher taxes for services that include maintaining a park on the lake and the early-morning snow plowing.
Several years ago, the two governments came together over a shared interest: the health of the lake. Concerns about aging septic systems in lake-side cottages spurred the passage of a new septic ordinance for both areas.
ENLARGE
Township Supervisor David MeisterKATE LINEBAUGH/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The village and township then began cooperating on a plan to protect the lake. In 2009, both the village and township approved a special tax to help protect the watershed—a vote described by local officials as a turning point.
Next came a joint master plan, and late last year, Village President Bob Blackmore, a retired auto executive, and Township Supervisor David Meister, a farmer and muscle-car enthusiast, began discussing an outright merger. Their goal was to avoid duplication of services and to jointly seek resources.
Under the proposal they are considering, the village government would be dissolved and the township would take over. Village residents would see their tax bills shrink, and township residents would see them stay the same. A couple of part-time administrative jobs would be eliminated. State funds to facilitate the transition could sweeten the deal.
But some village residents worry the plan will somehow change the character of their community, that a township government will not value what the village does.
Ms. Miller, who runs a summer fruit stand in the village, initially called the proposed merger a “hostile takeover” by the township.
Some township residents also are wary. Jim Trout, a retiree from Grand Rapids who recently moved from the village to the township, says he fears a merger with the village, whose voters he says are more politically active, will bring more demands, and costs, for municipal services.
“If they demand amenities, they can go down and live in urbanland,” said Mr. Trout. “I chose to live here.”
Public meetings that began in February raised a host of questions, recalls Mr. Meister, the township supervisor: “What’s going to happen to their streets? Is the park system going to change? Will we have a new form of government? Who is going to lose their jobs?”
Mr. Meister is trying to work out a way for villagers to pay more to retain services such as early plowing.
Another public meeting is slated for Wednesday to include summer residents. Officials plan to address concerns raised at earlier meetings and to outline what the new government would look like. Residents will vote later this year.
“It will happen either now or later,” says Mr. Blackmore, the village president. “It is going to happen.”
Ms. Miller, who says she’s beginning to soften her opposition, doubts the merger would be the end of the consolidation process. She sees Onekama ultimately being swallowed up by the county. “You can’t stand in the way of progress forever,” she says. “But sometimes you do like to see the little Norman Rockwell image of a quaint village.”
Read The Plain Dealer’s original 2004 series on how Cuyahoga County and its surrounding communities might benefit from consolidating governments and city services
Part 1: Is there a better way?
A new Cleveland without borders?
Sunday, January 25, 2004
By Robert L. Smith
Plain Dealer Reporter
Corrections and clarifications: The following published correction appeared on January 29, 2004:Because of a reporter’s error, a story on Sunday’s Page One incorrectly ranked the population of Louisville, Ky. Upon merging with its home county last January, Louisville became America’s 16th most populous city.
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A REGION DIVIDED / Is there a better way?
Welcome to the city of Metro Cleveland. We’re new, but we suspect you’ve heard of us.
We’re the largest city in Ohio, by far. With 1.3 million residents, we’re the sixth-largest city in America. Right back in the Top 10.
Our freshly consolidated city covers 459 square miles on the Lake Erie shore. Our economic development authority, enriched through regional cooperation, wields the power to borrow a whopping $500 million.
So, yes, America, we have a few plans.
How do you like us now?
Merging Cleveland and Cuyahoga County into a single super-city is only one example of “new regionalism” being discussed across the country. In fact, it illustrates one of the most aggressive and seldom-used strategies to revive a metropolitan area by eliminating duplicated services, sharing tax dollars across political boundaries and planning with a regional view.
At the other end of the spectrum stand places like present-day Cleveland, a tired city with rigid boundaries watching helplessly as its wealth and jobs drain away.
In between are dozens of regions where city and suburbs agreed to plan new industries, or began sharing taxes, or staked out “green lines” to slow sprawl and encourage investment in urban areas, cooperative strategies aimed at lifting the whole region.
Some dreams came true and others did not. Regional government does not solve every problem or achieve overnight success, experts caution. But the evidence suggests it allows cities like Cleveland to do something not dared here in a long time. It allows them to dream.
Dream big.
“Regional government would let Cleveland compete in the new economy,” said Bruce Katz, a specialist in metropolitan planning for the Brookings Institution.
“Overnight, we’d become a national player,” said Mark Rosentraub, dean of the College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.
“These ideas are not crazy,” insists Myron Orfield, a Minnesota state senator and one of the nation’s best-known proponents of regional planning. “Regionalism is centrist. It’s happening. Ohio is one of the few industrialized states that has not done anything.”
Orfield is often credited with popularizing new regionalism through his 1997 book, “Metropolitics.” It details regional partnerships he fostered in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, strategies like tax sharing.
In 1969, the seven counties surrounding the Twin Cities began sharing taxes from new business and industry, pooling the money and giving it to the communities that needed it most.
Designed to revive the cities, the plan worked so well that Minneapolis now sends taxes to its suburbs.
(SEE CORRECTION NOTE) These days, a newer model of regionalism is drawing policy planners and mayors to northern Kentucky. Louisville merged with its home county last year to form the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government, becoming America’s 23rd-largest city as Cleveland slipped to 34th.
Much of the messy work of merging city and county departments remains, but Louisville Mayor Jerry E. Abramson said his community is already enjoying cost savings and something more: rising self-esteem.
Louisville residents had brooded as civic rivals Nashville and Indianapolis used regional cooperation to lure jobs, people and major-league sports teams. Fearful of being left forever behind, voters approved a dramatic merger that had been rejected twice before.
“I think people saw that those cities were moving ahead more quickly,” Abramson said. “We decided we would do better speaking with one voice for economic growth.”
History suggests such unity would not come easy to Northeast Ohio. Look at a detailed map of Ohio’s most populous county, Cuyahoga, and you’ll see a kaleidoscope of governments: one county, 38 cities, 19 villages, two townships, 33 school districts, and dozens of single-minded taxing authorities.
The idea of huddling them behind a single quarterback is not new. At least six times since 1917, voters rejected plans for regional government, spurning the most recent reform plan in 1980.
“You know why? People like small-town atmosphere,” said Faith Corrigan, a Willoughby historian who raised her family in Cleveland Heights. “It’s been said Cleveland is the largest collection of small towns in the world.”
Any effort at civic consensus in Northeast Ohio also means bridging a racial divide, which helped to defeat the last three reform efforts. Black civic leaders suspected a larger, whiter city would dilute their hard-won influence and political power. Those sentiments remain.
“Yes, we’re fearful of less representation,” said Sabra Pierce Scott, a Cleveland City councilwoman who represents the Glenville neighborhood, which is mostly black. “It’s taken us a long time to get here.”
Meanwhile, residents of wealthy suburbs may see little to gain by sharing taxes with Cleveland, let alone giving up the village council.
“I think it’s almost a fool’s dream to think you could even accomplish it,” said Medina County Commissioner Steve Hambley.
Yet opposition to regional government is softening. Recently, Urban League director Myron Robinson told his board members that regional cooperation could give black children access to better schools and should be discussed.
Mayors of older suburbs, facing their own budget woes, are questioning the wisdom of paying for services that might be efficiently shared, like fire protection and trash collection.
And Cleveland business leaders, many of whom live in the suburbs, are emerging as some of the strongest supporters of regional sharing and planning. They say a strong city is essential to the region’s prosperity and that Cleveland cannot rise alone.
For models of what might work, they look to any one of a dozen metropolitan areas that forged regional partnerships in recent decades; and to a few impassioned local believers.
“If I were God for a day,” CSU’s Rosentraub declares, he would simply merge the city and county bonding powers behind a planning agency with teeth. He would create a $500 million revolving development fund, big enough to launch the kinds of projects that change skylines.
That kind of cooperation, Rosentraub said, would also send a message across the land. We’re big. We’re regional. We’re working together.
