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Want to know what is on our minds? Find blog posts written here, by the City Club staff, members, and partners. Every week you can find a new edition of #FreeSpeech in the News — a collection of related stories, commentary, and opinions on free speech in the 21st century that’s making the news. You’ll also find takes on current events, past forums, and issues surrounding Northeast Ohio. Read on for all things City Club.

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Wednesday, August 01, 2018

Aggregating All the Things

Dan Moulthrop, Chief Executive Officer, The City Club of Cleveland

Over the last couple of months, there's been a lot of conversation about the state of our regional economy and what ought to be done about the challenges we face. As someone whose interests are basically many miles wide and about a half inch deep, I've noticed that most people aren't aware of the vast amount of work that has been done on economic development in recent years. Many people are discovering this issue for the first time, and so, the point of this post is to say, you're not alone--in fact, you're now part of a huge cadre of people who care about this and have been trying to make a difference. So, without further ado, here's a long, but in no way comprehensive or exhaustive, list of stuff you might want to read. If you know of something that ought to be on this list but isn't, add it in the comments, hit me up on Twitter or email me.

Chris Thompson has been working on these issues since 2010, if not before. When he was at the Fund for Our Economic Future, he spent many days organizing non-profits and government entities to collaborate. He would tell you that he bought the donuts for the meetings (or convinced someone else to do so). He still consults on collaborative enterprises, and the distillation of all of that work is in this op-ed he wrote for cleveland.com. It all comes down to his last paragraph: "Yes, we need alignment. Yes, we need audacious plans. But we cannot get either until leaders from within and across sectors spend more time and effort building trust."

(Sidebar: If Thompson's piece strikes a chord with you, I'd encourage you to grab a copy of Dan Coyle's very readable new book The Culture Code. Coyle, who lives in Cleveland Heights, looks at the culture of high performing organizations and finds that they all have places where people trust one another and leaders send signals of belonging to the people they work with. It just might be relevant here.)

Related to Thompson's piece is the most oft-cited recent literature in this space: The Two Tomorrows is a call to action disguised as a policy paper. Produced by the Fund for Our Economic Future in February, which lays out a stark picture of the choice in front of us--a status quo which includes continued stagnation and failure to keep pace with national economic growth or a future in which we become a truly extraordinary region, with an inclusive and strong economy in which everyone shares real access to the opportunity.

Part of the current conversation has been a call to better align the non-profits and public sector forces at work on economic development. To me, it has sounded a bit like an echo of the work of the Regional Economic Competitiveness Strategy, which many know by the acronym RECS. It called for bigger investments in fewer areas, increased attention on keeping and growing existing business (rather than attracting new ones), support for growing our start up ecosystem, and addressing pressing workforce needs (training, transportation, etc.). I expect by now, it sounds familiar. You might remember seeing the presentation.

RECS called for supporting the start-up ecosystem. If you're wondering how that's going, I recommend this sobering report by Chris Heivly. Heivly works for Tech Stars, one of the most heralded startup accelerators in the country, located in Boulder, CO. They consult to cities who want assessments and recommendations on the effectiveness of their own startup efforts. His analysis: we have everything we need in Greater Cleveland, but this is one of those weird cases where the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts. Click through to find out why. (If you guessed culture or trust, you wouldn't be wrong.)

In the entrepreneurship and startup sector, you'll also want to check out what JumpStart has been up to. One of the most important efforts is their current work with the Cleveland Foundation to raise a $35 million fund to support innovation, inclusion, startups and partnerships.

At our June 8th event, a couple of reports and efforts were mentioned. Vibrant NEO was an effort by the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium. Back when I was at Civic Commons, we did some engagement work with them. This may have been one of the most thorough and extensive efforts completed, covering 16 counties and making recommendations on everything from infrastructure to the environment, transportation planning to the economy, agriculture to culture. It’s 131 pages long. There's no executive summary. Still, it's worth at least looking at. Especially if you're already involved in these conversations.

Another ongoing analysis worth familiarizing yourself with is the quarterly economic report produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The Fed has some of the smartest economists and researchers in the region, and every three months, they put out an updated version of what they call the Beige Book. (Its name is not a long story) Team NEO does something similar, relying mostly on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their Quarterly Economic Reviews also do industry specific deep dives (hospitality, manufacturing, etc.).

Also mentioned (or at least implicitly acknowledged) was the Greater Cleveland Partnership's new Strategic Plan. With a four page summary, it's much more digestible, and its external goals focus on placemaking, talent development, and a policy environment that supports business growth.

While you're visiting with our regional chamber, you should also check in with the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, whose Research Foundation just last month released a new plan, Ohio Bold: A Blueprint for Accelerating the Innovation Economy. Its central recommendation calls for investing in statewide Innovation Hubs in four key investment areas--Next Gen Manufacturing, Future Health, Smart Infrastructure, and Data Analytics. Northeast Ohio boosters will immediately recognize that we've got core strengths in two of those (manufacturing and health) and emerging expertise in a third (big data). It also makes other recommendations (tax code revisions, a variety of entrepreneurial and start up support tools, and more investment in developing and retaining talent.

That word talent keeps coming up again and again, so here would be a good place to talk about what's being done in the world of workforce development. Four years ago, the Cleveland Foundation commissioned FutureWorks to produce Building Opportunities for Cleveland Residents, which analyzed existing conditions, labor trends, and future workforce needs. It called for systemic change. Four years later, that report and analysis have been translated beyond Cleveland to the region by Team NEO. Depressingly, the implications of the data are almost exactly the same. (Compare page 54 in the 2014 report and page 58 in the 2018 version.)

(Mostly irrelevant sidebar: I want to take a moment and remind writers of reports that the foreword is the introductory material that provides context for what you're writing and the word forward means to move in the direction you're facing.)

So, if we're going to get systemic change, let's hope it might be informed by Work Advance a national effort being tested in Northeast Ohio, New York, and Tulsa, Oklahoma to bring into the workforce individuals from traditionally disadvantaged populations by targeting specific sectors. Seems obvious, I guess, but often workforce development has been done by spreading services out across the whole economy. The good news: it's working. This success is informing the next stage in comprehensive planning for restructuring our systems of workforce development, a form of cross-organizational collaboration often referred to as "sector partnerships." The Cleveland Fed has some pretty great case studies of how this works in practice. The collaborative group of workforce development funders have coalesced around this idea, which seems like a good foundation. Undoubtedly, they'll need a lot of private sector collaborators to make this work, but it's in the best interests of the private sector to make sure that public and philanthropic dollars are invested in training people for the existing jobs.

You've made it this far, and you're amazing. You deserve some optimism. Cleveland State University's Richey Piiparinen brings a little more silver lining than cloud in his recent piece for cleveland.com. The upshot of his piece is essentially that another way to see the bad news about the economy is that we're in the middle of a massive economic restructuring. He points to a way forward through focus on the health care sector, specifically learning how to use data analytics, health care delivery, and innovative interventions to reduce health disparities, which, if successful would not only improve conditions for residents of the region but would also create an export product for solving some of our nation's most intractable public health ills.

Right now, you might be thinking, wow, that's a lot of non-profit dollars expended. What's the public sector up to? Glad you asked. Cuyahoga County recently released a Five Year Economic Development Plan which, happily, is more or less aligned with the other plans. I have not uncovered a similar effort by the City of Cleveland. If you know of one, please add a link in the comments below.

Also in the public sector is our metropolitan planning organization, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency. NOACA, as it is known, recently planted its flag in the "let's do more than build highways" camp with its 2040 plan that puts bicycles, pedestrians, and public transit right next to automobiles and the like. It's worth spending some time with. (Thanks to Chris Thompson for bringing this to my attention after this was originally posted.)

I’m not exactly sure how to end this, but when I look at all this work, I think about what was going on when I moved here in 2005. The Plain Dealer had done a huge series of stories and panel conversations about our struggling economy called “The Quiet Crisis.” It was perspective altering for a lot of people. In response to that, the region had just begun a huge, comprehensive civic engagement initiative, called Voices and Choices, which laid a lot of the groundwork for much of the research above. I’m no expert in this sort of thing, but I don’t think we suffer from a lack of planning or thinking or civic engagement. We have the plans. I wonder, though, if we have enough people working alongside one another to execute the plans.

UPDATE 8/2/2018: Several readers reached out on social media to suggest adding some resources from local think tank Policy Matters Ohio. Earlier this year they released a compendium of policy recommendations to support working people. Many of these have to do with protecting workers on the job and lifting their wages. Another recent report focuses on the manufacturing sector (still more than 16 percent of the state's economy and a sector in which the average annual income is $59,000) and suggests the state and region would reap significant rewards by leaning in to growth there (as opposed to hospitality or other sectors). Also, be on the lookout for their annual Labor Day report, on the state of, um, labor. (Can't wait? Here's last year's.)

UPDATE 8/7/2018: City Club member Grant Goodrich suggested we add the Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools, also known as the Transformation Plan. That plan initially took us to 2016, but it's still in effect. Connected to that plan is the Cleveland Transformation Alliance, a giant city-wide collaborative tasked with ensuring the district's fidelity to the plan and providing families with information to help them make decisions about school placement for their children.

Grant's suggestion reminds me that without great schools producing great graduates, no plan or program will matter. We have a horrific lead poisoning problem among children in our city and inner ring suburbs right now. Our region's inability to solve this problem means that a significant portion of the children entering kindergarten in our public schools will be unable to learn at the level we want them to. Many of them will be unable to graduate and may ultimately wind up unemployable. Here's what the City of Cleveland is doing. I haven't heard any one say that it's sufficient. But doing economic development, education reform, and workforce development reform without dealing with the lead crisis is like repainting a house being devoured by termites. Or replacing the tube in your bike tire without making sure there isn't still glass inside the tire. Or all sorts of metaphors. You get it. It's a foundational problem that needs fixing or we will be in the same spot twenty years from now, wondering why so many people from poor neighborhoods are still poor.

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Laura McShane - August 02, 2018

Thank you for trying to articulate all of the good intentions in Northeast Ohio. But, non-profits are not the answer - especially Vibrant NEO and Fund for our Economic Future. There has to be open and transparent government and real jobs (not puffed up non-profit jobs). For too long, NEO has milked federal dollars, instead of taking care of our own with the funds raised locally through income and property tax. Local governments should explore ways to run more efficiently through "regional" sharing - but in the meantime - ACCOUNT for every dollars spent in each municipality. Ohio's Open Checkbook is a start - but municipalities can implement the open government on their own. I recommend Responsive City https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/item/show/8822509081_the_responsive_city There is no trust in NEO- we need TRUST and TRUTH.

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