Of all that Don Plusquellic accomplished as mayor, the Joint Economic Development District was the most broadly recognized and praised. JEDDs did not happen by chance and sprang from the city’s water history. The following is from Chapter Seven: “Water + Vision = JEDDs.”
By the time he was guiding the council’s annexation considerations in 1979, Don Plusquellic realized Ohio’s changeable laws would continue to complicate annexation and the ensuing fights often did irreparable damage to relationships between neighbors.
As an example, Northampton Township Trustee Joan Henrick claimed Plusquellic intimidated those involved in a petition drive seeking to have Akron voters decide the annexation of a 257-acre parcel in her township, the largest of five Northampton parcels Akron annexed in February 1979.
Henrick’s accusation stemmed from a radio broadcast of city council’s debate of the issue. Her assertion shocked Plusquellic.
During a session of council, Plusquellic had addressed Henrick’s petition drive by urging Akron residents not to sign. She claimed this violated state law prohibiting making threats toward or intimidating anyone circulating a petition. Around this brouhaha Plusquellic had proposed the city meet with township officials to discuss their differences and suggested the city might explore sharing tax revenues with townships that lose land through annexation, a twist on the tax-sharing idea that led to JEDDs.
Plusquellic ultimately concluded some people, including Henrick, did not want to “get together and seek some middle ground” and “if that’s the way we’ve got to play, that’s the way we’ll play.” Is that a threat?
Beacon Journal Associate Editor David Cooper castigated Henrick and Plusquellic for “useless political rhetoric that merely fan[ned] flames of regional antagonism.” But a week later he admitted he “overstated Mr. Plusquellic’s role in adding to regional antagonism.”
What Cooper recognized and supported was the idea Plusquellic had broached regarding tax sharing. “It is an idea,” Cooper wrote, “worthy of further examination by thoughtful public officials, both in the Akron area and in the legislature in Columbus.”
Plusquellic proved to be among the most thoughtful and innovative of public officials when it came to tax sharing. By the time he inherited the mayor’s office and won his first full term, he had turned the tax-sharing idea around and stood it on its head.
In April 1988, a group of Ohio legislators visiting cities to obtain views on annexation stopped in Akron at the Ocasek State Government Building. Those who favored and opposed annexation constantly lobbied all levels of Ohio government — local, county, and state — to gain an advantage.
The Don Plusquellic who strolled across the street to the meeting with some of his staff was one of “a new breed of mayors and governors” who were “taking over city halls and state houses” and “directly facing” the challenges of making “government more efficient and effective along with the rest of the American economy and labor force.”
In Akron and surrounding communities, Plusquellic has affected how people think about one another. He has accomplished this, according to his first chief of staff, Tony O’Leary, because while Plusquellic jokes about being a “dumb jock,” he is, in fact, “a very intelligent … and … very analytical person. He undersells himself in that regard. He really is a big-idea person.”
In lasting effect, O’Leary ranks “the JEDD legislation as the single most important accomplishment” of Plusquellic’s mayoral career.
Communications Director Bill Jasso will never forget “the night the JEDDs were born.” He and Deputy Mayor Jim Phelps accompanied Plusquellic to the meeting. “Don hated those hearings,” Jasso said. “This was one of those times when he didn’t seem to want to fight. He thought there was a better way.”
The Ocasek auditorium was crowded. As Plusquellic surveyed the room he said, “This doesn’t have to be this way.” Jasso remembers a long pause, and then Plusquellic said, “For example, why don’t we trade water for taxes … taxes for services? We don’t want the land. We want the benefit of the land” — the potential for economic development that meant jobs and increased city revenue from income taxes.
The idea was new to Jasso but obviously not to Phelps. “I could tell [Plusquellic] and Jim had had these kinds of discussions,” Jasso said, “that the two of them were on the same page.” To Jasso it was a revelation.
Springfield Township Trustee Al Schrader had spoken against annexation and mentioned revenue sharing between Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Plusquellic put flesh on the concept.
“Not the JEDD yet,” Schrader recalled, “but a much more fleshed out idea of how we could preserve local governments that people seemed to want to preserve but at the same time share the cost of development as well as the benefits of development.”
One of those who spoke after Plusquellic was Coventry Township Trustee Val Sawhill. He recognized the game-changing possibility of Plusquellic’s idea.
“Hey,” Sawhill said, “anytime the mayor wants to sit down to do this, I’m willing to do it.”
After the hearing, Plusquellic approached Sawhill. “I heard what you said,” Plusquellic told him, “and I am serious about it.” Sawhill grabbed Schrader, and Schrader told the mayor he, too, would like to work on tax-sharing.
Plusquellic’s words and those of Sawhill, Schrader, and others “were the seeds for the future of the Joint Economic Development District.”
The JEDDs proved a point of convergence in Plusquellic’s life. As he explained in a chapter about the Joint Economic Development Districts in The New Public Management: Lessons from Innovating Governors and Mayors, though he would have liked to annex as much, if not more, land than [Columbus Mayor Jack] Sensenbrenner, he was “troubled by the intensity of the opposition and the no-win conflict that ensued.”
The counterproductive nature of these annexation fights, a zero-sum game that Plusquellic usually relishes, caused him to rethink the conflict and how to alter it.
“From my days as a high school and college quarterback,” he wrote in The New Public Management, “I knew how to lead. Football taught me the value of teamwork and competition, and my education in law along with my political experience instilled in me a love for negotiations. All of it taught me to change strategy when the game plan wasn’t executing properly. By the 1980s, I began to ponder strategies for a win-win solution.”