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County Exec Ed FitzGerald announced this morning, along with the mayors of Moreland Hills, Orange, Pepper Pike and Woodmere, that the four richy-rich eastern suburbs are discussing a possible merger.

“Time for leaders in smaller communities to try to come together,” Woodmere Mayor Smith said, according to Cleveland Magazine. According to the PD’s Laura Johnston, “Residents would have to vote in 2012 for formal study. Then, vote on whether to merge in 2013.”

“Chagrin Hills” has been bandied about as a possible name for the merged burb if voters like the idea, which is boring but still has a better ring to it than MoreOrangeWoodPepper. Actually, we like our idea better. Sounds like a fancy ingredient Giada would toss in a Tuscan salad or something.

Sharing services and expenses in a quintessentially “regionalism” effort would make sense for the four tiny suburbs, but we also hear Moreland Hills, Orange, and Pepper Pike agreed to the move mainly because they thought they got 10% off at Eton, which is categorically false.

This article appears in Jun 22-28, 2011.

Vince Grzegorek has been with Scene since 2007 and editor-in-chief since 2012. He previously worked at Discount Drug Mart and Texas Roadhouse.

4 replies on “Four Suburbs Consider Merging”

  1. Forget about ORANGE in the equation – and call the new “town” PEPPERWOOD HILLS…

  2. Call me crazy…but the small cities could keep their names and still be linked together economically and politically.

  4. Actually, this makes sense because these towns, along with Hunting Valley, once formed a single entity, Orange Township. In addition, they already have one of the big stumbling blocks out of the way – they share a school system. They also in various combinations share other services. In fact, the communities will be doing a lot of work, with some resource assistance providing by the county, in the next year prior to the ballot vote to establish a formal commission (Gosh, I wish we had used such a public process to get our new county government but oh well). Mayor Bruce Akers of Pepper Pike will be gone at the end of the year (he’s not standing for re-election) but a potential replacement, Rick Taft, who has already announced his candidacy, was in the audience supporting the move in this direction. One aspect of this I thought was interesting and discouraging was that the relevant county council people — Ellen Connally and Jack Schram — were not informed of the press conference. Ellen happened to be walking by and saw it going on; Schram was elsewhere. if we want a more open process and more collaboration, it seems to me the council reps should have been invited too.

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