He’ll only be here for a few hours, but President Obama will be in Columbus today to attend the private graduation ceremony for a number of police recruits that would not have a job were it not for the stimulus package.
The Washington Post has full coverage of the Columbus cadets, and wonders if Columbus will be able to continue paying their salary after the stimulus money has run out, and looks into the broader situation for Columbus, a bellwether for the rest of the nation.
But Coleman — who in recent years has announced a series of ambitious building projects, from downtown to the depressed east side — is under no illusion about what lies ahead. “This is new for us, even traumatic,” he says of the city’s economic situation.
Like other big-city mayors, he faces a bewildering matrix of challenges in restoring his city’s economic health. Just days ago, for instance, a company on the city’s west side — White Electronic Designs — announced it would lay off 56 workers next month.
Many here realize the situation could be much worse, as it is 3 1/2 hours away in southern Michigan, where the auto industry dominates the local economy. In Columbus, “there hasn’t been that one dominant company that has hurt the local economy as a whole,” says Keith Ewald, chief of the Ohio Bureau of Labor Market Information. “The city tends to weather downturns better than most because we have Ohio State University, the state government and research institutions.”
Still, the local unemployment rate hovers at 7.6 percent, and according to Ewald, it hasn’t been that bad since 1984. Statewide, the jobless number is 9.7 percent.
The Post goes on to outline many of the plans Coleman has for Columbus, and much of the spending he has encouraged in areas like downtown housing, the renovation of the Lincoln Theatre, the Scioto Mile, the Short North, the Arena District and the Columbus Clippers’ new stadium. The question is then: what will happen next to Ohio’s capital city, which is typically so immune to downward economic trends?
