For the second consecutive year, East Cleveland Mayor Brewer met with Meet the Bloggers [1] today for a very candid and fascinating discussion recorded on audio for Meet the Bloggers podcast, and on video for other Internet release in the future. I was pleased to participate and found the discussion and Mayor Brewer's insights remarkable. I believe the other participants agreed. I'll post a comment here when the podcast is posted on Meet the Bloggers and you should be certain to listen! For now, some thoughts from this morning...
The discussion began with George questioning the Mayor on a Channel 5 "expose" on East Cleveland having traffic cameras around school zones. The Mayor gives the straight story on this - great stuff. Phillip developed the payment processing application for the ticket system.
The Mayor gives a pre state of the city overview, and discusses his process for educating residents on the city government, including holding weekly community forums and broadcasting those on the city cable channel. We discussed putting those online at eastcleveland.org, as well (7gen hosts that city website).
Mayor Brewer discusses city council and the upcoming elections, and his expectations for the future of the city. He also discusses significant development plans, including for an advanced technology power generation plant and developing more retail on Euclid.
He shared very blunt opinions on the Plain Dealer and why they have not covered good developments in East Cleveland, and he shared some success stories working with the mayors of Cleveland and Cleveland Heights, who he consider friends.
All in all, one of the most interesting discussions I can recall, which is always the case with Mayor Brewer. More to come.