By CARL E. FEATHER - Staff Writer - cfeather@starbeacon.com
Star Beacon

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April 28, 2009 07:58 pm

Northeast Ohio counties have been so busy competing against one another, they’ve lost sight of the larger battle with other regional economies and nations and they are losing, say steering committee chairmen of the Regional Prosperity Initiative.

Chairmen Bruce H. Akers and William A. Currin, who respectively are the mayors of Pepper Pike and Hudson, spoke to a gathering of local leaders at Kent State University-Ashtabula Tuesday morning regarding the need for collaboration among northeast Ohio’s 16 counties.

“We’re competing with each other, and we’re losing out,” said Akers as he rolled out the details of the Regional Prosperity Initiative (RPI), a collaborative effort jointly funded by the Northeast Ohio Mayors and City Managers Association (NEOM&CMA), Fund for Economic Future and other philanthropic groups. Ashtabula County contributed $100,000 to the Fund for Economic Future, said Ashtabula attorney Stuart Cordell, who along with Marta Stone of LEADERship Ashtabula helped bring the event to Ashtabula.

RPI came together two years ago and is on a fast track to have a proposal available by late summer and to implement it across the region Jan. 1, 2010.
The presenters frequently referred to the success of the Minneapolis-St. Paul and Allegheny County/ Pittsburgh regions in reinventing themselves through collaboration.

“Of every regional effort attempted in the United States, not one has failed,” Currin said. “Why can’t we step up to the plate and enjoy that success?”

The Northeast Ohio effort would be distinct from those other efforts yet borrow the best elements from them, say proponents of the plan.
Cordell said there is a standing mandate from Ashtabula County residents for greater collaboration among local governments and for long-range vision. Community forums in both 1993 and 2006-07 identified these as issues important to residents.

“We don’t do any comprehensive planning,” he said. “We are very reactive.”
The initiative, as proposed, takes a two-pronged approach to encouraging collaboration, efficiency and economic growth by establishing a new-growth revenue sharing plan and taking a regionwide approach to land use.
On the last issue, Akers pointed out that while the population of the 16-county region barely has inched upward from 1970 to 2000, there was a 60 percent increase in urbanization of the region’s land. This has resulted in a huge tax burden on residents, who must bear the cost of developing this infrastructure, both directly and indirectly.

He said providing coordinated regional land-use planning would direct development to areas where infrastructure already exists rather than continuing on the expensive and wasteful path of converting greenspace into urban landscape while existing infrastructure goes unused. The plan calls for replacing the fragmented approach to land-use planning with a regional framework that would guide development and infrastructure investment.
“Let’s work together so we can maintain as much greenspace as possible,” Akers said.

Currin presented the concept of regional new-growth revenue sharing, a concept already practiced in joint economic development districts. Under the plan, details of which will be unveiled in draft form Sept. 1, net new growth in property and income taxes would be shared within the region through a pool, reducing tax-revenue disparity in the region.

Thus, if Cleveland lands a new industrial or commercial development, Ashtabula City would share in a portion of the income and property taxes generated. At first, the effect would be small, but Currin said RIP has projected growth potential for the region of 2.5 to 5 percent annually by taking this approach. Ideally, Ashtabula eventually would attract new investment, as well, and share a portion of its new revenues with the region.

“This is going to take time,” Akers said. “But we got to start somewhere. We got to realize competition in other parts of the country and world dictate that.”
Akers and Currin stressed that no jurisdiction is going to lose anything it already has. The sharing would come only from new growth, and only a percentage of that growth would be shared. They pointed out that the region already is doing this through the large amount of employment-related commuting that occurs among the 16 counties. This proposal would eliminate the competition that goes on between the communities to attract those jobs.

Currin said the group wants to enact the plan from Columbus, through state government, so that each one of the 571 municipalities in the 16-county region would not have to sign on individually. The plan would not grow government; existing offices would handle the distribution of the growth revenue.

Cordell said county and municipal leaders need to hear from citizens about their feelings on the proposal, which will be available at www.neo-rpi.org. The Web site also presents the case for the need to change the region’s direction drastically.

“This is not easy, this is not simple, but it is a matter of survival,” Akers said.