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The South Euclid police/fire dispatch center in South Euclid City Hall. The Cleveland suburb's city council voted earlier this month to join Shaker Heights, University Heights and Cleveland Heights in a shared police/fire dispatch system.

(Jeff Piorkowski, Special to the Sun News)

Joseph Sierputowski is a student at St. Ignatius HS

Recent reports on state budget cuts have brought back to our attention the fiscal problems faced by our communities. With the negative effects these cuts will have on city budgets, now is the time to look at what we as citizens want from our cities, and what we are willing to pay.

At its base, the point of self-government is to shape government to the values that voters hold to be most important. It has been shown time and again that the values which voters prize most in local government are: safety, policy acumen, efficiency, and honesty. The current state of municipal government within Cuyahoga County fails the middle two of those tests outright, doesn't serve to promote the first, and threatens to violate the last.

But first we must examine the facts. As of 2014, the county had 59 municipalities for 1.25 million people, or 21,186 people per municipality. Leave out Cleveland and the problem becomes clearer: The average population of a suburb is only 14,800.

The number of people per municipal unit is smaller than you would assume, or prescribe if asked to design the system from scratch, given the population of comparable units like congressional districts. If an arrangement denies what would be logical, there must be some positive justification, and for this we look to those four values as the goalpost.

First, policy acumen: Because patterns of development are not beholden to city lines drawn long ago, problems abound when redundant local authorities split up units which should be whole. Witness the many commercially unified regions throughout Cleveland which are split by city lines, and thus are governed by very different policies.

For examples, look to the West 117th Street corridor (between Lakewood and Cleveland) or the area around University Circle (split by three cities). Both represent heavily interdependent regions whose institutions build on each other to form the local economy, but which are split by different regulatory codes and governments, to the effect that businesses next to each other cannot coordinate effectively on something as simple as zoning land for parking.

This Balkanization serves only to create confusion and dysfunction, dividing issues of planning which should be widely coordinated, and tasking their application to small local authorities ill-equipped to take into account the economic needs of a whole region, including those of other cities. This is the crux of the issue, a mismatch between planners and what is being planned.

This first issue plays into the second: the way our county's cities fail the test of efficiency. The repetition of bureaucracy and infrastructure is mind-boggling. Why must our county pay for 59 city governments, and nearly 59 boards of education and police chiefs?

This duplication of organizations serves only to splinter policy, which in this crucial time should be more, not less, concerted. For this region to blossom, each portion must do its part to foster the environment needed, and having 59 executives makes this cooperation unnecessarily difficult. And what in return? Higher tax bills, as citizens pay for what is essentially redundant bureaucracy.

If governments spend more under this system than a more consolidated one, surely there must be some boost to one of the four values? Unfortunately, no. The more money spent on administration, on politicians able to exploit their position, the more opportunities for abuse there are.

Surely safety is where this arrangement redeems itself? Again, no. The current system costs more than necessary while not providing better results. Having more police officers can increase safety, but the main effect of the police department surplus is an abundance of administrators, not officers.

Consolidation does not necessarily mean mass layoffs of safety workers, but it does mean fewer chiefs, safety directors, and secretaries; larger contract negotiations (entailing more leverage with resultantly better terms); in short, fewer administrative expenses. Is this really such a bad thing? Not many would claim that it is the many safety directors and secretaries keeping our county safe.

The obvious conclusion is that our county needs reform. It's time we cease to use tradition and status quo as a way of justifying bad policy. If we work toward consolidating the many cities in our region, we can cut costs, improve policymaking acumen, foster cooperation, and reduce inefficiency. In a region that needs all the money it can get, the risk is well worth the reward of better government.

Joseph Sierputowski of Rocky River is a public-policy enthusiast and rising senior at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland.