I don’t remember the identity of the first person who came to me this year to ask that cleveland.com put its advocacy muscle into pushing for a countywide, consolidated city of Cleveland, but I do remember what I said.

No way.

We climbed that mountain 15 years ago when I was metro editor at The Plain Dealer, with a challenging project we called A Region Divided. We showed in so many ways why a huge, united city of Cleveland would be better for all. But people wanted nothing to do with the idea. We eventually moved on.

After I rejected the idea of going down this road again earlier this year, though, it kept coming back, and from different directions. Separately and organically, people have been reaching the conclusion that divided as we are, we fail. Conversations keep bubbling up about creating what Columbus, Indianapolis, Nashville, Louisville and so many others have: size, influence, pride and swagger.

So, at cleveland.com, 2019 is the year we climb the mountain anew, with a series we think we will call, We Are Cleveland. We plan to dig back into the cost of our Balkanization, the advantages of being a large city, the steps needed to ensure that all populations have the chance to win elected office and the power we might have if, overnight, we became one of the biggest city economies in the nation.

We are doing this under the banner of Cleveland Connects, the civic dialogue series sponsored by PNC Bank since 2012. The series has tackled education, transportation, economic development, the needs of children in the first 2,000 days of life and many other vital topics. We’re grateful that PNC supports this important work.

Cleveland Connects also involves forums we produce in partnership with ideastream, the public broadcasting entity that includes WVIZ/PBS Channel 25, WCPN FM/90.3 and WCLV FM/104.9. PNC sponsors the forums.

Reporter Pete Krouse will kick off the latest effort next month with a series examining what’s happening in St. Louis, which is heading to a vote on combining dozens of municipalities into a single city. St. Louis is not the first to go down this road, but examining how it is tackling the challenges could help focus the conversation in Northeast Ohio.

In the following months, Pete will revisit some of the topics we covered 15 years ago – including the cost savings to taxpayers -- as well as some new ones, such as the pride the region might feel or the influence a much larger city of Cleveland might have when competing in economic development circles.

And we will again partner with ideastream, with sponsorship from PNC, on a forum or forum series, to bring this message to as many people as we can.

Before we get going, though, we thought we should bring back some of the work we did 15 years ago for review. Below is a roadmap to the first five installments of A Region Divided. In putting them together, we were struck anew by how relevant they remain 15 years later.

A Region Divided.

Part 1 was An introduction to regional government and what Northeast Ohio might be like if we had it. This was the story that started it all. Doug Clifton, then editor of The Plain Dealer, wrote a column about his hopes for the series. And we published a full page look at various forms of regional government.

Part 2 examined firefighting as a microcosm of what is wrong with our Balkanized region. The main story looked at the overall costs and inefficiencies. Separately, we looked at the cost of equipping firefighters, and perhaps most interesting, we mapped out every fire house in the county to show their overlap. The map included a university student’s study of the ridiculous inefficiency inherent in a handful of tiny municipalities having their own fire departments.

Part 3 tackled the racial issues inherent in regionalism and methods that can be used to guarantee that all populations are represented in fair elections. This installment also looked at a century of efforts to build a bigger Cleveland.

Part 4 considered the efficiencies that could be gained and the money that could be saved by combining the special units associated with police departments and creating a countywide detectives bureau.

Part 5 took a deep dive on the regional tax-sharing practices in Minneapolis, Minn, and showed how school districts in Northeast Ohio would have fared over the decades if the same practices had been used here.