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Where Am I: Resources / Public Comment

Making a Public Comment

Council welcomes public comment before regular council meetings. Fill out the online form below for your chance to make a public comment at the next regular Monday Council meeting.  Please read the revised rules and procedures. 

Registrations can also be submitted:

* In person at Cleveland City Hall, Room 220, 601 Lakeside Ave. NE. Paper forms are available to register.

* If you don't want to fill out the online form below, you can download this form and fill it out, and email it to publiccomment@clevelandcitycouncil.gov or drop it off at Council offices. (Parking at City Hall on the upper lot is free on Mondays after 5 pm when Council is meeting.) If you need assistance, language, or disability, go here to make a request (at least 3 days in advance.) 

Make a Comment in Person

Registrations to speak up to 3 minutes at a regular council meeting can be submitted between noon Wednesday and 2 pm on the Monday before a regular 7 pm council meeting. (Early, incomplete and false registrations are not accepted.) Only the first 10 are accepted.  


Make a Comment Online

If you don't want to speak at a Council meeting, please submit your written comments below. 


Public Comments

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Resolution about WCSB/CSU/Ideastream
For many years I was the Student Media Specialist at Cleveland State. The recent decision by CSU to yank radio station WCSB from the students and hand over control to Ideastream is a travesty, and a terrible loss to the students and to the community in general. The experience and confidence that students gain from involvement in student media and other extracurricular activities is very important to their development. I have seen dozens of former student organization members go on to become outstanding members of the community. I hope you thoughtfully discuss and pass this resolution. The city of Cleveland and the community at large will benefit of control of WCSB goes back to the students.
Jim Szatkowski
Transfer of WCSB programming from student run community radio to Ideastream
I have been a listener of WCSB since its inception nearly 50 years ago. As a student run, community oriented station I’ve had many opportunities to listen to diverse programming from artists and communities spanning the globe and spanning many genres of music I have not heard anyplace else. The value of such programming is inestimable and is in my opinion a tremendous loss to the cultural and artistic diversity of Cleveland and a profound loss to me personally. Please consider re-instating the station as a student run community station.
Jim Richards
WCSB-FM, Ideastream Public Media & Cleveland State University
I strongly urge Cleveland City Council to do what it can to return Cleveland State University students and community programmers to the airwaves on WCSB 89.3FM. Greater Cleveland is suffering an insurmountable loss at the hands of Laura Bloomberg and Kevin Martin. The decision to automate programming on the campus radio signal will have a measurable impact on already marginalized communities across our city, in addition to undue harm to arts & culture programming and, of course, the economics surrounding it. Our namesake public university and local public media are meant to operate in the interest of the greater good of the community in which they serve, and what Ideastream and CSU have done with WCSB-FM, a volunteer-run public service, is reprehensible.
Aaron Terkel
WCSB Cleveland State University radio
Please adopt this resolution in support of CSU's students and community-based public media. I grew up in Cleveland listening to college radio, and I'm a long-time supporter of WCSB, listening online even after I moved away. It's not just the underhanded way that CSU treated the students and other DJs, dangling vague promises of future benefits. It's the careless destruction of nearly 50 years of community. It's not just a radio station -- it's a cultural institution. Return WCSB to the students and the people of Cleveland!
Lisa Orange
WCSB's Hijacking by Ideastream
The senseless loss of the nearly 50-year-old student-run version of WCSB is an incredible loss to both the local and international culture of Cleveland, Ohio that I have to believe neither the selfishly-scheming president of Cleveland State University nor the greedy conglomeration of corporate, albeit "nonprofit", management of Ideastream had any awareness of or concern for.

If either institution had even bothered to do a quick local survey about what WCSB meant to its community, I have to think that they would have been delighted to see how well-respected and beloved WCSB has become to music lovers of all ages and demographics throughout Northeast Ohio and beyond.

I personally had been a regular listener (and regular donor to their annual Radiothon fundraiser) since first moving into the Northeast Ohio area to go to college in the early 1980s. The existence of WCSB and other Cleveland college radio stations was very much one of the deciding factors that led me to choose to stay in the Cleveland area instead of moving elsewhere in the world. WCSB brought a culturally rich tapestry of music to our local airwaves and throughout the world via its internet transmissions, bringing the world of music to Cleveland, and bringing the world of Cleveland music to the rest of the world. Human-curated music programming.

I strongly urge Cleveland City Council to do what they can to rectify this situation. We do not need a growing NPR monopoly of our limited airwaves in Cleveland. We desperately need the kind of community music and arts programming, that helps to support an even wider community of musicians, artists, and venues throughout the city. Bring back the real WCSB!

Thank you.
Jeff Curtis
WCSB
To whom it concerns,

For the last 30 years of my life, WCSB has been an inspiration. Some have been inspired by it longer, some shorter, but the reality still exists- it is an institution that defined our city and gave a voice to so many within our communities. In our current day and age, independent media is becoming increasingly important, offering a place for people without financial clout and leverage to exchange ideas, open new worlds, and simply play really, really great music. WCSB represented a wide swath of our community, offering a glimpse into worlds where one may never have had the exposure. This type of discovery is what made WCSB so important. The ability to share, search for, and find new things, is enriching and rewarding to everyone involved. Sharing of knowledge is power. That platform is now gone, and the rich stories and art which were beamed to our radios 24 hours a day have been silenced. For that, we are undoubtedly worse off as a community, and our ability to learn from one another has been taken down several immesurable pegs. I ask that anyone that has an actual vested interest in the health and vibrancy of our wonderful city to reconsider this decision, and recognize the damage that has been done.

Respectfully,
Adam Jaenke
Adam
resolution 1324-2025 in support of WCSB
WCSB has been playing music, sharing cultures and building communities for 50 or so years. To watch this institution be stolen from the cleveland landscape in the dead of night is beyond alarming … that institutions that speak of community and diversity closed a radio station that not only mouths those values but has been instrumental in building and bridging the gaps between communities 24 hours a day for many, many decades. Shame on you Ideastream and shame on you CSU.
Kiely Cronin
The broadcast frequency transferred to ideastream
The process of ideastream Public Media taking over the programming of 89.3FM came as a shock to the student/community members who were running the station as student organization on the campus of Cleveland State University (CSU). Since 1976, this station served as an alternative to other radio stations in the Cleveland area. The station was unique because it was “Freeform Radio” in its purest form. There were dozens of different music genres and ethnic programming (German, Polish, Arabic — to name a few) that graced the airwaves.
On the morning of October 3, 2025, the current CSU President, Claire Bloomberg, announced to the staff of WCSB during a zoom meeting that the station’s programming was going to be handed over to the ideastream. As the meeting took place the programming was changed to a jazz format controlled by ideastream.
The takeover was done without warning and disregard to the executive staff, listeners and members of WCSB.
As days passed, evidence was leaked out that the CSU President agreed to this deal with the CEO/President of ideastream, Kevin Martin, for a seat for Bloomberg on ideastream’s board, and 1,000 underwriting announcements to promote CSU’s courses and educational programs. CSU will retain the FCC license and ideastream will program the station under a

There is an interview with Martin, Bloomberg, the most recent student General Manager, Alison Baumgardner, and former General Manager, Lawrence Caswell on the ideastream daily, locally produced program “The Sound of Ideas”. You can listen to the program via this link:
https://www.ideastream.org/show/sound-of-ideas/2025-10-14/csu-ideastream-leaders-address-controversy-over-switch-from-student-run-wcsb-to-jazzneo

This is a bad PR nightmare for both CSU and ideastream. It is a travesty and disservice to the Cleveland community not to mention those folks who donated to WCSB during their yearly radiothon when they ask for donations for station upkeep. That money is being kept by CSU and that in itself is a crime because the money will not be used as per the original intention of the donors to support WCSB.
If the city can help reverse this decision, that would be incredible.
Joe Sweeny
WCSB
These 2 weeks without WCSB made me realize how important the station was to me, being a listener for almost 40 years. It was my link to pretty much everything happening in the city, and to the outside world as well. I can't count the amount of music and ideas I that was given to me over the years. The one thing I have realized these 2 weeks is listening to WCSB was an active experience - unlike the bland stations across the dial - WCSB engaged me, even if it was background music at work, it stimulated a part of my brain that i now sorely miss.
Brent Collins
WCSB
The sudden and callous closure of CSU's radio station, WCSB 89.3fm, was a detrimental mistake to the greater culture of Cleveland, and the decision should be reversed immediately. This not only affects the opportunities for students, but will have a negative impact on CSU's reputation, and for the music economy for Cleveland as a whole. So many diverse creative and cultural communities depended on WCSB for many reasons.
Max Hyde-Perry