Councilperson Nelson Cintron, Jr. shares ideas on how he will represent Ward 14
What follows is a portion of an interview conducted by the Plain Press editorial Board with Councilperson Nelson Cintron, Jr. on February 11th. Individual board members, representing various parts of the Plain Press coverage area, each asked questions of the new councilperson. Cintron's assistant, Rick Nagin, was also in attendance.
Editorial Board: Now that you are in office, are resources more limited than you thought they would be? What's the general sense about what's available?
Councilperson Nelson Cintron, Jr.: The major concern that I'm targeting is making sure that the residential people I represent get a call back and their needs are being taken care of. That's the number one resource. Then I'm meeting with different groups, visiting Community Development Corporations, attending neighborhood block club meetings and listening to their concerns. I recall one of the Tremont meetings we had a concern about graffiti on a bridge. "Can you have the graffiti removed?" they asked. We were able accomplish that in about two days, a crew came out and painted over the graffiti. There are a lot of things, a lot of complaints in the past people have been saying, Nelson, we have complaints that have never been taken care of, you're doing it. A fine example is as soon as I took office we had a complaint at W. 30th and Train Avenue.
Editorial Board: Board member shows large pictures of abandoned cars, taken on Train Avenue and notes that the mess was cleaned up after contacting the Councilperson Cintron. Another board member said another junk car was abandoned in front of another junk yard. The owner called Clark Metro to complain because she didn't put it there. A staff person at Clark Metro called the councilperson's office Friday morning and the problem was taken care of Friday afternoon. The owner of the business was happy that they got out there. In addition to towing the vehicle, they had cleaned up debris that she had complained to the city about five times in the last five or six months and no one came out to do anything. They had front end loaders and dump trucks out there. They cleaned up more than just that area.
Councilperson Cintron: Another thing, at that place there were no lights on the poles, everything was all burned out. Someone called in, that same week everything was taken care of. These are things that are going on throughout the whole entire ward. You know, I'm just human, I'm trying to do as much as I possibly can, working almost around the clock. Thanks to some of my aides that are assisting me at this, because I think I'm one of the busiest Councilpersons - besides answering complaints from Ward !4, also by being Latino, I'm receiving calls from all over the city of Cleveland. The number of calls I receive is enormous. It is like I'm a little mayor to the Hispanic community, but in general I'm a Ward Representative to Ward 14.
Editorial Board: The amount of calls -- how did you set up your structure? One of the problems we've seen earlier is the amount of calls city councilpeople actually receive to the point where the number of calls prohibit you from doing certain other things or even addressing certain calls. What is your system to handle those things?
Councilperson Cintron: If X person calls me, we get the name, the phone number and their complaint on the complaint sheet. Rick Nagin (Cintron's assistant) will receive the phone call. I hired another assistant (Georgia Semary) to help me out because I knew as soon as I came on to the job I was going to get bombed by phone calls from the whole city. They make the first call. I will make the second call and follow up on it. Or else during the night I go out there personally. At ten o'clock at night, sometimes I'm on my cellular phone calling the neighbors "Will you please show me the complaint?" I just went out to Trowbridge and 34th where a water line broke. There was a concerned resident. I wanted to see where the line was broken. There was another concern on Hyde and 46th and a fire hydrant. I went out there at 11 at night as soon as I got out of City Hall, and wanted to know it was taken care of.
If a neighbor tells you "Nelson I have a pole with no light." As soon as I get that complaint I make sure that I tour the ward and make sure that pole is lit. I told my campaign manager, now that the campaign is over I want you to start taking poles. "Polls for what, Nelson, you won't be up for election for another four years?" Yeah, but not those type of polls, get the numbers of the poles with no lights on them.
Board: How do you see the relationship so far between yourself and new councilpeople coming in and the City of Cleveland Department Directors you will actually be working with?
Councilman Cintron: I've been meeting with all the directors. All the directors are very supportive of the new councilpeople coming in. There are three new Councilpeople: Joe Cimperman, Joe Jones and myself. Everytime there is something new they will call us and try to get our input. The one thing is that I'm still at City Hall. Every day I go down to City Hall. My aides are working at City Hall because we want to know the whole process -- how City Hall runs. Where can we get the best services to people out in the community? As soon as we establish a real strong grasp of what goes down in City Hall then we will open a Ward Office. It is meaningless for me to go open a Ward Office down here to work on complaints when I don't know how the system is operating at City Hall.
Rick Nagin: We are getting orientation sessions. A lot of the directors are taking us in.
Councilman Cintron: Very Successful. Here is another complaint. Wadworth, where Cleveland Public Power station is in the residential area. The road was so dark. I went out there and met with the director and said look at this. I went out there two days ago -- wow it is all lit up, it looked like a baseball field. These are the things. You if you take the time and you work with them, they are willing to assist you.
Board: You are in a unique position, you have three development groups (Ohio City Near West Development Corporation, Clark Metro Development Corporation and Tremont West Development Corporation) that are dependent on block grant funding and every year at this time set a budget. I'm wondering since a lot of the time some of the long term planning, neighborhood plans, initiatives are developed at the development group level, how are you going to allocate time and resources among groups in the ward. Are you still going to have three development corporations that you are going to support? Or something else?
Councilman Cintron: What I have requested, as a new councilman, is the track record of ever Community Development Corporation (CDC) that I represent. I want to see their performance how they did in terms of spending our tax dollars -- and exercise that. It is very important everytime we use public money, we want to know -- I want to know, as a life long resident living this area for 27 years I want to know how my taxes were spent five years ago. Determine the performance of certain CDCs and strengthen that.
Board: What do you think of Community Development Corporations in general?
Councilman Cintron: CDCs are good as long as they get community people involved. You have to get residential people involved. Those are their tax dollars.
Board: What do you mean about having residential people involved? Most Community Development Corporations are required to have a certain number of residents on their boards.
Councilman Cintron: Let me show you a good example. I became really amazed at one of the CDCs - Tremont West Development Corporation has kept me on my toes. Four strong neighborhood block club meetings. That really surprised me. Because if anything the residential people are the eyes and ears for each councilperson. That was how I was able to find out that that Bridge had graffiti on it and I was able to address it and pinpoint that. That's how I know that street wasn't taken care of, services are not being delivered. How you do it is to organize neighborhood meetings and report back to the councilperson. If our tax dollars are not being used properly then have to take some action.
Board: How are you going to identify if tax dollars are not being used properly? For example, there is an organization called Neighborhood Progress Inc which is a major funder of the community groups also. More and more over the last five or ten years they have insisted that community groups become more business oriented and focus on development and they want to see return on the dollar. Often times many people feel that is at the expense of the block clubs, of the neighborhood watch, of the safety programs that previously existed when the neighborhoods came up from a grass roots level. However, block watches, block clubs -- there is no return on the dollar -- so how are you going to evaluate them?
Councilman Cintron: I have been a business person since an early age. I was brought into the market in broadcasting. I had to plan to market and sell the product. It takes good business people and good neighborhood people to join and make a neighborhood. It is through strong neighborhood CDCs that you as a business person will come into an area, understand the needs of those people, and together they will come and patronize your business. Hand by hand -this is joint work. Find out what are your needs? What are your residential needs? It is Safety? - Fine, how are we going to target safety? Let's have a study. Let's get the CDC people together and my part and make sure that's the problem. Regardless the problem, it takes two people -- I think the business people -- the Mom and Pop stores that have been around for many years and the residential people.
Board: As far as the basis of the residential block clubs, again the focus of many of the Community Development Corporations, not in the case of Tremont West where they have strong block clubs, but you don't always see strong block clubs, where previously you did.
Councilperson Cintron: I will encourage any CDCs, you know we have a prime example in how Tremont is doing it, to make contact. How are you organizing your neighborhood block clubs? What is making it successful? How can we implement that into our CDC?
Board: Clark Metro, being an original Development Corporation, up until three years ago only served commercial businesses. When it merged with Housing and Neighborhood Development Services it retained a few of the residential members. When the groups merged their services many residents felt the development corporation wouldn't service them because of its commercial origins. The development corporation had to convince residents they could do both -- service the businesses and the residents. Clark Metro is the only CDC in the ward to handle a weatherization program, also along with Tremont West Clark Metro has a paint program. Still it is very hard for the organization to retain residential members. What can an organization like Clark Metro do to get more residents involved?
Councilperson Cintron: I asked the director, why isn't there more participation of neighborhood residents? One thing is that there are precinct committee people out there who do volunteer. The Republicans have their precinct committee people and the Democratic Party has precinct committee people. These are the strong neighborhood block club leaders. You have the San Lorenzo Club members who meet in that area. What I proposed to the director -- and it is her homework, not my homework -- You're getting funded. It is your homework to do and show me this is what you are doing for our tax dollars. You have a portion of Ward 14, you look on the map, you find out which precincts you represent. You find the precinct captains - those are your activists. These are the people you have to get involved.
Board: John Boreko used to be able to get residents of Clark Fulton area to meetings. He supplied pizza and beer at the neighborhood meetings. In Detroit Shoreway they have paid organizers to help organize block clubs. What about paid organizers? How many of the Community Development Corporations have paid organizers like Detroit Shoreway has?
Councilperson Cintron: I can't make any commitments. I guess I have met with people in all the areas to see what money is available to give out in Community Development Block Grant funds. I can't commit that till I see what is available. If I say I'm going to give everybody money, then it comes back you promised to give me money. Well, guess what, I got cut. That's not good politics. That's not a good councilperson.
Board: More than anything else, walking into Ohio City or Tremont you start looking at avenues in which neighborhoods can quickly improve themselves. I personally view Community Development Corporations as the one means of grass roots involvement -- with the ability to have , regardless of what they are doing now -- the one avenue that any individual citizen can become totally involved in the operation, the true guts -- the nuts and bolts of how his or her neighborhood operates, is through a CDC program. I don't see any other means available to individual residents to do so.
Councilperson Cintron: You are right, CDC's are very important. One thing that I pledged when I was running for office was that as soon as I was able I was going to get all three directors to sit down and do brainstorming. What can we do for Ward 14? Right now I wish I could do that right away, but I'm still learning the process of how our government works. I can't sit down with all three of them and they say Nelson how will you...? Then another thing I'm going to end up doing as soon as I get abreast of things at City Hall is have a breakfast with Nelson. Get neighborhood people coming down and talking. Get our three directors together to solve the problems.