Meet The Bloggers podcast: Mayor Eric Brewer

6 Comments »

1. Mayor Brewer’s podcast was informative. He is an excellent communicator, but he is less than honest when he refers to overtime abuse in the safety forces. The East Cleveland safety forces are the lowest paid, professional safety forces in the state of Ohio. Both departments have serious personnel retention issues. The Fire Dept has a minimum safety manning clause in their collective bargaining agreement that is the “engine” for all overtime on that department. The hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime that Brewer notes was all paid in compliance with that legally binding collective bargaining agreement. There was no abuse at the rank and file level.

   Mayor Brewer is correct that the Mayor’s sister in law (a hairdresser by trade) was not a good personnel director by any stretch of the imagination. The disgraced Onunwor and his sister in law should have recruited and appointed more full time police and firefighters to counteract the need to supplement shift strength with overtime personnel. They failed miserably in that task.

   Mayor Brewer has taken the proper step in convening “mid term” bargaining to address the fire dept’s minimum manning requirement, but the collective bargaining process for police and fire is BINDING ARBITRATION. In the past, arbitrators have sided with the unions in safety manning issues.

   So, on the one hand, Brewer should be commended for his collective bargaining but he should be called to task for his mischaracterization of the overtime expenditures as an abuse.

   Comment by Jack Savine — March 23, 2006 @ 6:56 am

2. Let me clarify part of the above posting. I mentioned that there was no overtime abuse at the rank and file level. Let me add that there was no abuse or mismanagement by the Fire Dept administration either. The Fire Chief(s) and the senior officers acted in compliance with the union contract. To do otherwise would have been a violation of contract and law. The only administrative failure was from Onunwor, Calhoun and Goggins, who failed to act to replenish the complement of full time firefighters needed to staff the department.

   Comment by Jack Savine — March 23, 2006 @ 12:21 pm

3. Am I the only one in the Cleveland area that actually listened to Brewer’s podcast?

   Comment by Jack Savine — March 28, 2006 @ 7:01 am

4. I find Eric very refreshing, as do you, and look for great things from the City of East Cleveland. I think a lot of us out here will be helping him succeed; if East Cleveland wins, we all win. It’s time we all linked arms in the struggle to take back our cities and our governments.

   Comment by Tim Ferris — April 6, 2006 @ 11:35 am

5. I am a recent resident of East Cleveland. I fell in love with the city for historical reasons and to let that die off as a non-essential part of “Cleveland” would be a shame. The reason this area of Northeast Ohio is even on the map is because of it’s founder J.D.Rockefeller and the “Robber Barons”, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Jay Gould. Perhaps the children of these founders are to embarrassed to acknowlege East Cleveland and surrounding communities, because we as Clevelanders and East Clevelanders fail to acknowledge our illustrious heritage! I say be proud of our community, its’ rich and should be the forefront of REAL society as it was in it’s hay-day.

   Thank you
   Regina
   East Cleveland Resident

   Comment by regina hairston — April 12, 2007 @ 5:23 pm

6. I would also, like to say if it wasn’t for the “Millionaires Row” would there even be a “Euclid Corridor”?

   Thank You Again
   Regina

   Comment by regina hairston — April 12, 2007 @ 5:27 pm

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