Indomitable Don Plusquellic

Steve Love

Description

Until his resignation in May 2015, Don Plusquellic had been the mayor of Akron, Ohio, for twenty-eight years. When he took office in 1987, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, the average price for a car was a little over $10,000, and later that year the US stock market would drop over 22 percent in one day-at the time the sharpest market downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. This was a harbinger of things to come in Akron as the Rubber Capital of the World hemorrhaged jobs. In the 1980s, over 26,000 people were employed in the plastics and rubber product manufacturing industries in greater Akron. By 2007, the number had slipped to only 7,220. The loss of jobs coincided with greater suburbanization-a blow to the city's housing market. Plusquellic was challenged with rebuilding a transforming city.Using news sources and extensive interviews, Love has crafted a superb political biography of the person some have called Akron's Mayor for Life. Plusquellic reinvented his job, erasing the line between public and private efforts to provide employment in a reimagined downtown and innovative Joint Economic Development Districts beyond the city. He championed education for future workers.Don Plusquellic won fast friends and eager enemies with his silk-and-sandpaper personality. He became one of the longer-serving and most-honored mayors in America. His story is one of both place and person, the son of a rubber worker who restored Akron's spirit and belief in itself after the city lost its title of Rubber Capital of the World.

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• Region
• Administrative division
• Regional
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: University of Akron Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629220567
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE INDOMITABLE
DON PLUSQUELLIC
THE INDOMITABLE
DON PLUSQUELLIC

HOW A CONTROVERSIAL MAYOR QUARTERBACKED AKRON’S COMEBACK
Steve Love
Copyright © 2016 by The University of Akron Press
All rights reserved • First Edition 2016 • Manufactured in the United States of America •
All inquiries and permission requests should be addressed to the Publisher, The University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio 44325-1703.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Love, Steve, 1946–
Title: The indomitable Don Plusquellic : how a controversial mayor quarterbacked Akron’s comeback / Steve Love.
Description: Akron, Ohio : Ringtaw Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015049070 (print) | LCCN 2015049658 (ebook) | ISBN 9781935603627 (hardcover : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781629220567 (ePUB) | ISBN 9781629220550 (ePDF)
Subjects: LCSH: Plusquellic, Don, 1949– | Mayors—Ohio—Akron—Biography. | Akron (Ohio)—Politics and government. | Akron (Ohio)—Economic policy. | Akron (Ohio)—Social policy. | Urban renewal—Ohio—Akron—History. | Akron (Ohio)—Biography.
Classification: LCC F499.A3 L68 2016 (print) | LCC F499.A3 (ebook) | DDC 977.1/043092—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049070
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI z39.48–1984. ∞
Cover: Photo by Ken Love. Copyright 2015, reproduced with permission. Cover design by Tyler Krusinski.
The Indomitable Don Plusquellic was typeset in Stone Print with Helvetica display by Amy Freels with assistance from Tyler Krusinski, printed on sixty-pound natural, and bound by BookMasters of Ashland, Ohio.
The focus of this book may be Akron’s recent past and the man important to the latter, but it is dedicated to those who will be the city’s future, Don Plusquellic’s grandchildren:
Abigail, Alison, and Adam Zupanic & Anna, Evan, and Addison Plusquellic
Love and concern for the Kenmore community brought Don Plusquellic to city hall. Love and concern for his grandchildren and Akron’s other young people kept him there .
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Football: A Plan for a Lifetime
2. A Sense of His Place
3. The Council Years: Learning and Growing
4. A Sense of Himself
5. A Year of Firsts: Governing and Campaigning
6. Breathing New Life into Downtown
7. Water + Vision = JEDDs
8. Mayor versus Media
9. Leader or Bully? It’s Not That Simple
10. Staying Power
11. Chinks in the Armor
12. The Larger Stage
13. The Schooling of an Education Mayor
14. Recall and Rebellion
15. The Best of the Best
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Time can be the greatest gift of all. So many gave so freely of theirs that I am indebted beyond the book their gift has helped to create. Rather than repeat a list of names, however, let me refer you to the book’s bibliography. There, you will find a list not only of those interviewed, but also the publications, websites, news programs, journals, articles, speeches, and other books from which I have drawn (and cite in the book’s notes).
I wrote this as a work of history, of Don Plusquellic’s physical place and his place in time. Editing changed it, but I am still indebted to Akron authors, past and present. They include Stephen C. Brooks, Daniel J. Coffey, David B. Cohen, and John C. Green of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, Joyce Dyer, Hal Fry, Jack Gieck, W. A. Johnston and O. E. Olin, Frances McGovern, William V. Muse, Kenneth Nichols, Charles Whited (for his biography of John S. Knight), Craig Wilson (who indexed Fifty Years and Over of Akron and Summit County ), Abe Zaidan, and especially Akron’s preeminent historians through the years, Samuel A. Lane, Karl H. Grismer, and George Knepper. I would be remiss not to give thanks for being able to borrow from David Giffels’s The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt and, of course, from the book we co-wrote, Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron . David is the best writing partner a person could have. Finally, of particular value in appreciating just how good a mayor Plusquellic has been in comparison with other mayors of legacy cities was the work of Edward W. Hill, whose case study, “Does a Mayor Make a Difference in a City’s Economic Performance? The case of Akron, Ohio,” made a world of difference in supporting this book’s premise.
This book would not exist were it not for David Lieberth, former Akron deputy mayor for administration. He not only provided initial feedback about the idea but also greased the skids for Don Plusquellic’s acceptance of my project. Perhaps more important, Lieberth facilitated my interviews with his fellow cabinet members and others on the city hall staff and when he retired, Laurie Hoffman, his assistant in his law practice who moved to city hall with him as the mayor’s scheduler, took over. It was the invaluable Hoffman who, for instance, directed me to Claudia Burdge, a research analyst in the city planning department who played detective and helped me solve the mystery of Lucy Morrison. Likewise, Hoffman helped put me in touch with Brent Hendren, a development department specialist who rounded up the numbers that showed the ongoing tax value to the city of what is perhaps Plusquellic’s greatest idea—Joint Economic Development Districts. (Finance Director Diane Miller-Dawson and her staff helped me understand how those tax dollars were applied.) When Hoffman was unable to lend a hand, Teresa Lloyd did so with great competence and kindness.
As important as access to information and the people who have it can be, equally important is candor. Will people tell the truth as they know it—if not the whole truth—about Plusquellic? Cabinet members and other city staffers understood they had permission to talk freely with me; others needed to hear this from Plusquellic rather than accept my assurance that the mayor was cooperating in the process of this book and that he hoped others would as well. Even Ray Kapper, former council president and city service director, asked Plusquellic whether he should talk with me and, if so, how candidly? Just be Ray Kapper, Plusquellic told him. That signaled the green light to speak honestly about Plusquellic’s weaknesses, as well as his strengths. And Kapper, like so many, did.
While researching a book can be a mostly singular endeavor, it is facilitated by the knowledge and helpfulness of such people as Vic Fleischer, head of archival services at the University of Akron and archives staff members Craig Holbert and Mark Bloom, the special collections staff of the Akron-Summit County Library (not to mention the library’s electronic archive of the Akron Beacon Journal after 1986), and, of course, friend and former colleague Norma Hill, the Akron Beacon Journal librarian who kept me straight in the newspaper’s “morgue” of old clippings concerning Plusquellic’s football and council years.
Having access to the work of Beacon Journal staff members who have followed Plusquellic’s career closely over the years was priceless—particularly when many of them were my colleagues. I know how good they have been at their jobs, that the accuracy of their reporting and the intelligence of their opinions can be trusted.
Bruce Ford, city photographer for thirty years, provided the photos, including copies of those from Plusquellic’s early years. My son Ken Love, former award-winning Beacon Journal photojournalist, took the cover photo.
My first reader/editor/wife/best friend Jackie Love kept me on course, as always. My greatest regret is that this project took twice as long as I had hoped—four years instead of two—and not everyone who gave so generously of their time and knowledge of Don Plusquellic lived to see the result, among them, Bob Swain. Rest in peace Kenmore No. 77.
Introduction
Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic did not mince words. He never does. When he delivered his 2001 State of the City address to a packed hall at the Tangier Restaurant, an Akron landmark, Plusquellic plowed directly into what he deemed the failure of those in charge of the Akron Public Schools—administrators and board of education members alike—many who were in his audience. At least one, retiring superintendent Brian Williams, had been forewarned he might not want to hear what Plusquellic had to say.
Education and the struggling city in transition that Plusquellic inherited in 1987 were fused at the hip, parts of an economic skeletal system: education connected to workforce; workforce connected to attracting businesses; businesses and employees connected to city income tax; income tax connected to the city’s ability to provide a quality of life that once made the Rubber Capital of the World an economic engine, not one of the Midwest’s postindustrial legacy cities whose past looks better than its future.
So the confrontational Plusquellic looked the educators in the eye and hit them with his bottom line: they had been too timid in improving the schools for Akron’s children. The solution was simple. “Lead,” Plusquellic demanded, “or get the hell out of the way.…”
His prepared script did not include “hell.” Plusquellic added it not so much for effect as because that is who Akron’s fifty-ninth and longest-serving mayor is—a tough guy, his unapologetic bluntness stoked by passion for his city. Later, he said he was sorry he had added “hell” because his mother gives him heck for such things. That was the only thing he was sorry he had said in a statement interpreted as a threat to take over the Akron schools.
I was in the audience that day. I know Don Plusquellic. I know his history and the fire that burns in his belly and can scorch when it comes spewing out of his mouth. I would have been surp