TELL ME I'M NOT READING WHAT I'M READING

The impoverished City of Cleveland – with all its problems – is giving Howard Hanna (Smyth Cramer) $250,000 to renovate the offices downtown that the realtor bought last October, the Plain Dealer recently reported.

“I want to thank the mayor because this was not a done deal. This was a deal where we had to go on the offense,” said downtown Councilman Joe Cimperman to the Plain Dealer.

Well, it sure is offensive to me.

The $250,000 supposedly is a loan to bring 100 employees from Seven Hills to Cleveland. But the loan, if the realtor stays five years, doesn’t have to be paid back.

So it’s a gift.

I thought Mayor Frank Jackson was against raiding another city. I thought he was for regionalism. (Actually, I don’t think he raided Seven Hills. I believe Hanna had made a decision to move employees downtown where others exist and found a way to pick up $250,000.)

Of course, the people brought to Cleveland will still be in the region. There is no advance in economic activity regionally.

This continues the now totally acceptable gift-giving to big business that has become in essence bribery. I’m not sure which the bribee and which is the briber.

The give-away policy stinks.

The $250,000 will come – if Council agrees and that’s not even a question to ask, they will – UDAG (Urban Development Action Grants) repayments. The UDAG program was based on Cleveland’s blight and poured federal funds here in the 1980s. Ironically, though it had to do with blight, most of the money went to downtown developers and mostly at a zero interest rate.

So it’s appropriate, one guesses, that the money finally paid off on these UDAGs - often of 20 year duration - be given to a real estate firm.