Emmy Award-winning Feagler & Friends is a lively, weekly half-hour television discussion of local and national issues impacting lives in Northeast Ohio. Hosted by award-winning journalist and former Plain Dealer columnist, Dick Feagler, Feagler & Friends explores the various issues behind today's news. With a changing ensemble of "friends" ranging from journalists to community and political leaders, Feagler & Friends takes on issues from many different perspectives. Always entertaining and never boring, Feagler & Friends is the program for people "in the know" in Northeast Ohio.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Jim Rokakis, Cuyahoga County Treasurer; Anthony Brancatelli, Cleveland City Council member, Ward 12.

Whether the foreclosure crisis has bottomed out nationwide is a moot question in greater Cleveland where the crisis is very much alive. Cuyahoga County still averages 1200 foreclosures each month. As a result, neighborhoods sink further into decline as abandoned homes proliferate, stripped by thieves of copper and other materials of value. Rokakis and Brancatelli have long waged visible battles against the effect of the crisis. Rokakis was the driving force behind the county’s foreclosure prevention program and is in the process of setting up a county land bank with the aim of returning foreclosed properties to productive use. Brancatelli’s Slavic Village Ward was the area that felt the greatest impact of the foreclosure crisis. Brancatelli has championed legislation making it easier for the city to maintain abandoned properties and assist residents seeking to avoid foreclosure.

They’ll talk with Mr. Feagler about their plans for combating the crisis in the future and about the prospects for a turnaround.

Finally, we meet local artist Amy Casey, winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize as the year’s most promising emerging artist. Casey, a painter, uses the foreclosure crisis as her motif and her palette.