The Plain Dealer has uncovered more details of misspent funds in the Cuyahoga County Government. It is clear; the FBI is looking into the Juvenile Justice Center and Jimmy Dimora’s, as well as County Democrat’s role in this expensive project. Yet, Jimmy Dimora is still able to cast his vote on major public works projects, including the Juvenile Justice Center.
See RPCC Press Release on the Juvenile Justice Center
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(Plain Dealer) Cuyahoga County Commissioners celebrated as they signed a $2.75 million deal to buy land from Sunrise Land Co., a subsidiary of Forest City Enterprises, Inc. That deal ended a more than 14-year battle to find a home for a much-needed county juvenile detention center. There were lengthy speeches, applause and even jokes, according to a tape of that Feb. 29, 2000, meeting.
Commissioner Jane Campbell introduced her newest colleague, Jimmy Dimora, quipping that after "14 years of sturm und drang ... you come here and in one year it got fixed. Want to, like, enlighten us?"
"It's being Italian," Dimora wisecracked. "You make people an offer they can't refuse."
Everyone laughed.
But the deal really wasn't funny. Just seven months earlier, the county could have saved taxpayers more than $2 million by snatching up the property itself up before the land was sold to Sunrise...
When the county first started looking at the land at East 93rd Street and Quincy Avenue, the property was in foreclosure. During that time most of the property was ordered to be sold at a public auction.
But the county didn't bid on the land.
Instead, on July 13, 1999, Sunrise bought most of the land at a County Auditor's sale for about $400,000, then sold it back to the county within months for a more than 500 percent return on its investment.
Today, county officials are at a loss to explain why they weren't better stewards of the taxpayers' money in purchasing the property that former Mayor Michael White once called "the worst environmental hazard in the city" -- two years before he recommended it as a site for the juvenile center.
Ultimately, the county had to pay at least another $10 million to study and remove contaminated soil and other debris on the largest portion of the property.
That same property was in the news again last month, when federal agents raided the offices and homes of county officials, specifically seeking documents about the juvenile justice complex.
Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, who is being investigated by federal agents, is the only one of the three commissioners who signed off on the sale to be still in office. Auditor Frank Russo, whose home and office were raided by FBI and IRS agents, was serving his first elected term when the land was sold by his office.
Neither Dimora nor Russo responded to interview requests.
And now the $160 million juvenile justice complex is rising on that land at the corner of Quincy Avenue and East 93rd Street. The buildings there will be visited by everyone from suburban kids with traffic tickets to parents with custody disputes. It will also house the county's most dangerous delinquents...
The deal the county commissioners signed at their Feb. 29, 2000 meeting, amid applause and laughter, worked out to $170,807 an acre, only 19 days after Sunrise had bought the final parcels of the land.
When White first proposed the site in a letter, Dimora had argued against it.
"That isn't worth the paper it's written on," he said.
But after the agreement was signed, Dimora commended White for recommending the site and being "very helpful in putting this project together..."
Before the purchase was finalized, though, contingencies had to be met, including an environmental assessment of the land.
As the county began its assessment, officials worried that Forest City's Sam Miller was growing impatient.
On June 14, four months after the purchase agreement was signed, Miller called county administrator Tom Hayes. "He stated that he was being pressured by his partners and needed to close escrow on or before June 30th," according to a memo Hayes wrote the commissioners. "After that date they would be compelled to consider other offers for the property."
Miller did not respond this week to a request for an interview. He let Monchein speak for the company.
On Aug. 23, the commissioners sealed the deal, paying Sunrise $2,750,000 for 16.1 acres of land after determining the property could be cleaned up for an estimated $3.5 million.
Sara Harper, a retired judge, sat on one of the site-selection committees as a representative of the NAACP. She was furious when the Quincy site surfaced because it was not one that committee members had visited or considered.
She filed a complaint in October 2000 with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that county officials had violated the Civil Rights Act when they approved construction of a juvenile facility on a chemically contaminated site.
The EPA referred the complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice, which finally decided in 2004 not to take action.
Meanwhile, the county discovered that the Quincy site clean-up was going to be a lot more complicated and expensive than commissioners originally thought.
Independence Excavating, which initially bid $3.8 million for the clean-up, found its costs soaring. It requested at least an additional $5.5 million between November 2003 and March 2004. Independence has continued to receive additional contracts for work there.
A county memo noted that "widespread PCB contamination was encountered despite US EPA certification . . . that the PCBs were confined to one, deep spot."
Finally in May 2006, the county received notice from the state indicating that the cleanup passed Ohio EPA muster. The property met the standards for commercial and industrial land use as well as certain restricted residential land uses. But there were certain restrictions, including "Residential uses are restricted to occupancy [of] residents 9 years of age or older for a duration not to exceed 9 years."
Bill Edwards, acting U.S. Attorney in Cleveland, refused to comment on the scope of the public corruption investigation regarding the juvenile justice complex. But if federal agents are digging into the Quincy land deal, it would make Sara Harper smile.
"This is a deal that should never have happened," she said.
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