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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The decision to group the Detroit Shoreway, and specifically Battery Park, into the new Ward 7, while carving out our immediate neighbors along W 74-W 78th Streets to the south makes no sense. It actually breaks an existing (and long-standing and active Block Club) into two separate wards. I can now walk to new Ward 11 residents by crossing the street, but to reach many of my new Ward 7 counterparts, I literally have to drive 30 minutes away.
Placing the 3 most active NWS neighborhoods (Ohio City, Tremont and Detroit-Shoreway) into a single ward also makes no sense as one councilmember will be hard-pressed to address the issues across all 3 of these actively evolving areas.
Carving the wards into North/South slices like a loaf of bread ignores the already established connections between neighbors across sections grouped more closely and with more common needs (schools, construction, roads, traffic, etc.).
For Ward 11, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to travel from the north end (Lake Erie) to the south end (basically Brooklyn) by car without LEAVING the Ward with the exception of Ridge Road (which appears to be the dividing line, so if you're driving in the southbound lanes - you might not be in the Ward ...).
The new Ward 11 suspiciously carves out current property - and land with first right of refusal - owned by one developer (JRoc) at the most northeastern end of the Ward - while placing IMMEDIATELY adjacent residents ACROSS the street in Ward 7, so any concerns about future development will need to be addressed to a Councilmember who has no accountability to some of the most impacted residents.
The pressure from City Planning to build high-rise, massed, market rate apartments on the lakefront appears to be well-supported by this new Ward structure, taking the north west section of Ward 15 and breaking it into Ward 11, where the new Councilmember will have to focus from Brooklyn to the Lake, while developers take over everything north of Lake from W 76th to Clifton.
These Wards appear to be designed to the advantage of some entity - because the re-structuring to north/south design is very clear - but it completely ignores the long-standing relationships neighbors have built within our communities - and breaks up vocal and active groups into small pieces falling under different Councilmembers and (in Ward 7) grouping neighborhoods with extremely different goals.
In the new Ward 7, our neighborhood (former Ward 15) has a high concentration of families with school age children (vs. Ohio City and Tremont), so our needs and goals as a community are very different from those neighborhoods. But that appears to not be taken into account by these new maps, either.
These maps do not represent how people in Cleveland live, interact and advocate.
They appear to be drawn to reduce the impact of existing vocal community groups and dilute opposition to goals clearly expressed by members of the current Bibb Administration.
These maps SHOULD NOT be implemented without community input and comment.
I am concerned that the new City Ward Map does not acknowledge and value the cohesiveness of neighborhoods. For instance, current Ward 15, except for the "Brady dogleg" that cuts through Cudell and Edgewater from Jefferson, makes a lot of sense. It consists primarily of three neighborhoods: Edgewater, Cudell and Detroit Shoreway. It is compact, cohesive, and shares common interests. Further, it has likely increased in population rather than decreased. The new ward map divides 15 into three pieces without regard to neighborhood boundaries and divvies them off in different directions. In particular, the new map divides three adjacent neighborhoods in half without necessity, namely Edgewater, Cudell and West Blvd., splitting them between two different new wards These neighborhoods could easily be kept together, and their neighborhood interests and character maintained, and properly represented.
While I don't have complete information regarding population and neighborhood boundaries, most of the maps on Council's website created by city residents look more neighborhood friendly and fairer to residents than the one presented to the public. Without having fully explored them all, I find Map 4 very promising in maintaining as many neighborhood boundaries as possible.
I do hope that the final map is more about residents and neighborhoods than politicians.
Thank you for your honest, fair minded and impartial consideration of this matter,
Chris Murray
Breaking up this neighborhood from north to south ignores how the residents have formed their own bonds through decades of change. We are strongly aligned as a community north of Detroit Avenue. Splitting us in two serves no purpose other than to reduce our interrelationship and silence our collective voice.
We ask that the planned split of Wards 7 and 11 be reviewed and our community remain intact.
Thank you.
Abbe DeMaio
Co-chair, Edgewater Hill Block Club
Use the Shoreway as a boundary and keep the park with the neighborhood in the new Ward 12. This in no way will alter the population numbers, not even by one single resident.
As it stands now, the new Ward 11 will have both Edgewater Park on the north and the Zoo on the south. Let Ward 11 have the Zoo. Let Ward 12…and the Edgewater Neighborhood…have Edgewater Park.
Also, the new Ward 7: Detroit-Shoreway, Ohio City, Tremont, the Flats East & West Bank, the Warehouse District and the entirety of the lakefront from Edgewater Yacht Club to the east end of Burke Lakefront Airport. That’s quite a ward. What happened here?? WOW!!!
The way Ward 11 is drawn is the opposite of Ward 7. There are no cohesive neighborhoods in this area as they relate more to the existing and established neighborhoods that are adjacent. There is little community and it is spread North to South, instead of East to West which is how most of the neighborhoods are oriented.