|
As Spruce explained,
during a press conference he held at The Truth Art Gallery,
while he was working for Ford, as manager of Business
Retention/Expansion in the City Department of Economic &
Community Development, he was asked by the mayor to do some
business “reconnaissance work on behalf of his
administration.”
As a result of his
reconnaissance, Spruce compiled a report for the mayor
concluding that businesses were abandoning Toledo for the
suburbs for a variety of reasons: abundant real estate, a
more upscale environment, proximity to customers, additional
financial assistance, better telephone/internet capacity,
better public safety and the inattentiveness of City of
Toledo officials.
That report, said Spruce
at his conference, was never publicly revealed – a “secret”
for the past 14 years.
“The city of Toledo was a
major city when I was growing up … there were six Fortune
500 companies within the boundaries when I was growing up in
the 50’s,” he said as he began detailing the downward spiral
that Toledo has undergone in population and relative wealth
that began in the latter half of the 20th
century. “Toledo has lost one third of its population – it
has been declining.”
Spruce, an educator and
political scientist, had been living in Atlanta when Ford
became mayor. He had relocated there in the early 1990s when
he was accepted into the PhD program at Clark Atlanta
University. Over the course of that decade, he would work
his way up the educational ladder – assistant professor,
associate professor and then, a professor with tenure. Ford,
he said, lured him back to his hometown in 2002, at the
start of his term in office.
In 2004, however, after
Spruce had completed his report, he was involved in a
domestic dispute with his then wife. He was arrested and
held on domestic violence, assault charges as he attempted
to protect the report he had compiled from being destroyed
during the altercation.
In more recent times,
Spruce has written a book, soon to be released, titled I
Apologize.
“I want to apologize to my
wife, to Jack Ford, to the City of Toledo,” he said. “I
never reached my potential here. I have not fulfilled the
potential that God has instilled in me. My aspiration was to
be the first black mayor of the City of Toledo.
Spruce, however, did make
note of some of the accomplishments here in Toledo that he
is proud of. Former Mayor Donna Owens appointed to her
administration; he was named in 1984 as the Lucas County
co-chairman of the Jesse Jackson campaign for president; his
work in this area has been cited by two other academicians
in their books. Now, upon his return, he is donating all his
personal, professional and political papers for safekeeping
to the Toledo Lucas County Public Library.
Spruce is now president of
UMOJA Publishing & Speechmaking Company, in which he serves
as a literary agent, writing consultant and financial
assistant.
|
