What could your community do with a “free” $1.675 million something or other?
According to AI, that’s what $100,000 a year in bond payments would pay for over thirty years at current interest rates. But to be “free,” your community would need to have a recurring revenue stream of $100,000 per year drop into its lap. How does that happen?
We could ask the voting members of the Cooperative Council of Governments (“CCOG”), a regional council of governments headquartered in Solon, Ohio. The CCOG website provides a nifty summary of what a regional council of governments is set up to do:
A regional council of governments is a type of public agency composed of local governments to facilitate cooperation, coordination, and planning among its members. These councils are created to address issues and challenges that require a collaborative approach, such as cooperative purchasing.
The current voting members of the CCOG are:
- The City of Solon,
- The Cleveland Public Library, and
- The Kenston Local Schools.
While definitive numbers are not yet available on the website for the entire year of 2025, distributions were $95,000 per voting member in 2024 (exceeding the budgeted amount of $78,000 per member). Budgeted distributions for 2025 were set at $33,000 per voting member per quarter for a budgeted annual amount of $132,000 for each voting member. Returning to the suggested “free something,” if $100,000 of revenues would pay off the debt for $1,675,000 something, the $132,000 of revenue would pay off a roughly $2,211,000 something.
To illustrate the practical ramifications, the Solon Finance Director who is on the CCOG board commented in the 2024 annual meeting minutes that their distribution was being used to offset a $136,000 annual maintenance cost of Solon’s Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) System. CCOG staff suggested a likely possibility that distributions in 2025 and beyond would fully cover those expenses. As an aside, I have connections in the tech industry. I am being told that the AI bloodletting is on its way. I am assuming that Solon’s ERP System maintenance will be dropping all by itself!
I say all of the above because I have been suggesting to certain Portage County political subdivisions that duplicating the efforts of CCOG should be pursued, but with some enhancements to supercharge the results and to assist members of the community as well. I have been too passive in my efforts and am looking to take these ideas to “the real bosses.”
Currently, the only Council of Governments headquartered in Portage County according to the Ohio Auditor’s website is the Portage Area School Consortium which operates two cooperative insurance pools. One is for health and welfare and the other is for property and casualty. These operations will figure prominently in future posts describing the “supercharging” potential mentioned in the previous paragraph that would enhance revenue streams for the public sector entities, and would also benefit residents.
Stay tuned!