Votes For Cleveland Council Reduction, Pay Cut Won't Be Counted

Voters will no longer have the chance to cut Cleveland City Council’s membership and pay in the March 17 primary after the campaign behind the push formally withdrew its petitions Monday.

While Issues 3 and 4 will still appear on city ballots, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections won’t count the votes, according to a board spokesman.

“With Military and Overseas Voting already underway and the close proximity to Election Day, the issue language will appear on the physical ballots,” the board’s outreach manager, Mike West, wrote in a Tuesday press release. “All votes for the withdrawn issues are void and will not be counted.”

The board plans to post notices in Cleveland polling places and in absentee mailers advising voters of the change, West wrote.

Supporters of the pay cut and council reduction abruptly abandoned their campaign late last month, saying they would instead support a university study of council’s makeup. 

“We need to bypass the leadership, do the study and present it to the people and let's see what the people say,” Westlake restaurateur Tony George, who bankrolled the petition drive, said at the time.

Backers of the ballot issues portrayed them as tools to streamline local government. The issues would have cut the number of city council members from 17 to nine. Pay would have dropped from $83,370 to $58,000.

Council members vehemently opposed the effort. After the petition circulators submitted enough valid signatures to put the measures on the ballot, Council President Kevin Kelley pledged an “aggressive campaign” against them.

Seizing on the group’s failure to create a political action committee, Kelley and an aide filed paperwork to claim the campaign’s name, Clevelanders First, for themselves.

This was not George’s first attempt to shrink city council. In 2006, he pushed to cut the group from 21 to 11 members. Council’s then-president, Martin Sweeney, agreed to a compromise linking council’s size to Cleveland’s population.

Three other minor, technical charter amendments on Cleveland ballots this March remain valid. Issues 5, 6 and 7 grew out of city council’s charter review process and have no connection to the council reduction campaign.