Break out your crayons, pencils and creativity. Cuyahoga County needs a new map.

I've already drawn one here. And we want to see yours, too.

But first, let's talk about why we need a new map. The bottom line is pretty simple:

It's the bottom line.

We can't afford the luxury of 38 cities, 19 villages and two townships any longer. There are too many chiefs, directors, department heads, deputy commissioners and special assistants on those 59 organiza- tional charts. Too much equipment that sits idle too often. Too many mayors and councils to sign off on development deals. In short, too much government in a county that's lost 26 percent of its population since 1970.

For a long time, the financial costs of these redundancies were masked by money from the state. But when the Kasich administration and a Republican-run General Assembly faced an $8 billion shortfall last year, they took a knife to the Local Government Fund and other revenue streams that fed municipalities.

Draw your own map

The impact on local governments -- already hit by declining income- and property-tax collections -- has been severe. Public employees have been laid off and services have been curtailed. In Richmond Heights last year, cash reserves were so depleted that city officials said they were one blizzard away from insolvency. This month, voters in Shaker Heights agreed to a 28.5 percent income tax increase to raise $6 million and preserve city services. And we're not even getting into the money issues facing public schools.

"In the face of reductions imposed by Columbus, which have been devastating to our community, our citizens have stood up and fought successfully to preserve their quality of life," Shaker Heights Mayor Earl Leiken said after the vote had been tallied.

Leiken's affluent constituents can pony up, but how many times can he go to the well? And in how many communities is even one trip to the well a nonstarter?

Every mayor in Cuyahoga County is asking those questions, at least in private.

They have to. This era of austerity isn't going away. Even when the Great Recession ends, local tax revenues won't rebound overnight. Nor is state aid likely to be restored in full, even if Democrats capture the Statehouse. The state has lots of unmet needs.

George Voinovich used to talk about doing more with less and about working harder and smarter.

One way to do that is to find economies of scale -- and that brings us to the map.

Cuyahoga County's Balkanization got the green light in 1912 when Ohio's new constitution -- at the behest of big-city mayors led by the great Newton D. Baker of Cleveland -- included strong home-rule language.

Smart developers such as the Van Sweringen brothers used that Progressive Era ideal to create suburban communities they could market as havens from the problems of urban life.

Unlike their counterparts in Columbus -- who faced their onslaught of suburbanization a generation later -- Cleveland's leaders did not try to stem the movement outward by forcing developers to make new territory part of the city if they wanted to tap its water system. Instead, Cleveland saw all those new suburbs as more customers for water. Only after World War II did the city's decision-makers realize they were encircled by a crazy-quilt of suburbs.

That patchwork might be sustainable if the county were growing. But it isn't. The census counted 1.72 million people in Cuyahoga County in 1970 and 1.28 million in 2010. But there are still 59 municipal governments. Those legacy costs have to be reined in.

People are trying. Around the county there are discussions and more than a few experiments aimed at shared services and purchasing. Under Executive Ed FitzGerald and his regionalism guru, Ed Jerse, the new Cuyahoga County government is developing a menu of services it hopes will help communities contain costs and see the benefits of cooperation. For more than a year, leaders of four communities carved out of old Orange Township have been discussing how they might form a single municipality; they say it's harder than they imagined.

That's surely true. I've been on The Plain Dealer's editorial board since 2001 and have participated in scores of meetings with suburban mayors -- some very smart and capable. But ask about merging governments, and the answer usually goes something like this:

When my constituents call the police, they want to see a cruiser with the name of our town on the side.

Doubtful. They want to see a police car -- or a fire truck or an ambulance -- show up lickety-split. They wouldn't care if it said "Pittsburgh" on the side. They want their trash picked up efficiently, potholes filled, snow plowed. And they'd like to pay less for it all.

So it's time to stop giving high-fives for buying road salt together and start redrawing lines.

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Oct. 14, 2011:

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June 22, 2011:

To start the conversation, take a look at my map. It's not as radical as it should be. Ideally, it would be one color and we'd all be Clevelanders. But that's not realistic. Not yet. Nor, in the short run, would it be feasible to square off the city's boundaries at, say, the Rocky River, SOM Center Road and Interstate 480. Do that and Cleveland's not poor anymore.

I would extend Cleveland's city limits to annex two villages -- Bratenahl and Linndale -- and two suburbs -- East Cleveland and Brooklyn. You could make a good case for including Newburgh Heights and Cuyahoga Heights, too, but I opted to put them in a South Side supersuburb anchored by Independence.

All in all, I envision 13 suburbs. Each would be large enough to produce economies of scale; all would be small enough to deliver services efficiently. Three would have at least 100,000 people, which would amplify their voices in Columbus and their eligibility for federal dollars. In many cases, I tried to keep multi-community school districts intact because people in those districts are used to working across city lines, and a merger will seem a lot less jarring.

Schools obviously have to be part of this discussion. Cuyahoga County has 31 districts. That's too much overhead, so those lines need to be redrawn, too. And reimagined city governments need to align more closely with schools, sharing professional services and purchasing where possible, as well as tradesmen and maintenance crews, even headquarters space.

We invite your ideas and suggestions. You can cut out the map on the front of today's Forum section in print, color it in and mail it to us. Or scan and email it. Or you can draw your map online here. Feel free to explain your choices in a comment. We'll share some of the most provocative and representative maps in the coming weeks.

Coloring a map is easy. But change never is. Some communities, especially small ones, will lose their identities, no question about it; the names of some of today's cities and villages will be the names of tomorrow's suburban neighborhoods -- just as once-independent Ohio City and Collinwood are within Cleveland. There will be costs, too, to study the mechanics of consolidation and to buy out employees. The state is offering some grants and loans for that, but more front-end investment by Columbus will hasten moves to save money down the line.

In 2009, faced with a culture of corruption impossible to ignore, residents of Cuyahoga County voted overwhelmingly to blow up a 200-year-old government structure and start anew. The results, so far, are promising: more accountability, fewer silos, lower cost. The next step is to be as daring at the community level.

Show us how you'd do it.