12/15/2009 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Mayor Thomas O'Grady, December 15, 2009 Final Report to City Council As I begin my comments, I must first offer my thanks to Administrative Assistant Annie Kilbane for her work in ensuring the success of our annual Christmas Tree lighting ceremony. She is a spectacular talent and we are indebted to her. Beyond that I have decided to forego my usual report regarding the happenings within our City to instead offer a reflection regarding the state of our government, and perhaps, based upon my 14 years of elected service to our citizens, I am entitled to that. My usual report has been transmitted to the Clerk of Council and I request that be attached to the minutes of this meeting. I offer my sincere appreciation to the Departmental Directors that served in my Cabinet. Kim Wenger, Duane Limpert, John Dailey, Cheryl Farver, and Lisa Thomas were the reasons that we have been able to accomplish so many great things for our citizens. As I promised in 2005, we have reshaped and reorganized our government to provide superior service at a greatly reduced cost to our taxpayers. During our first four years in office and prior to the international fiscal crisis of late 2008, we used intelligent reorganization to reduce our full-time staffing from over 300 employees to just over 200 employees, and we did so using normal attrition rather than layoffs. Our combined efforts at modernizing our government have led to a savings of about $3million a year for every year that we have been in office. As I promised in 2005, we have worked to rebuild our community. During this term we can cite the completion of five major road projects, to include the last new major roadway that will ever be built in Cuyahoga County, and all of these projects were done primarily using grant funds that greatly reduced the cost for our taxpayers. Clague Road; SR 252 and the Great Northern overpass at I-480; the new Crocker-Stearns roadway, Dover Center Road; and the Steams-Cook project with a new traffic signal at Dorchester. These new roadways have reshaped our City. Added to that is the first ever professional street study that removed the politics from the debate, and ensured that the neediest streets in our City were completed first. We had streets rated 1 or 2 in a 10-point scale when this administration took office. We now leave with most streets rated 5 or better. We have reshaped the physical structure in which we live and work. I stated that open government is good government, but our buildings were closed to some of our citizens. For the first time ever we now have ADA access at our Senior Center and City Hall, with a new modern Caucus Room that would not be there were in not for our vision and effort. We have ADA accessible playgrounds for the first time in our City's history, and other recreation assets that were improved every year. Working with our Law Director we have formalized previous `hand-shake' agreements and improved the ability of our government to more openly and efficiently serve our people. Working with of Finance Director we have reaped the benefit of the independent financial experts at Fitch and Moody's who looked in upon the leadership and fiscal oversight within our Administration and judged us to be superior in our care for the taxpayers' dollars. The upgrade of our bond rating early in this term and the reaffirmation of that bond rating earlier this year both cited management's reorganization efforts to control cost while instituting good financial controls.