Public Comment

Thank you to City Council, Council President Blaine Griffin and Councilwoman Santana for their diligent work over the past 8 years to make Centro Villa 25 a reality. A special shoutout to Jeniece Contreras, her board and staff , and community residents. State your name, affiliation and note that you are a Cleveland resident Acknowledge the historical nature of tonight and 2023 City Council’s leadership and role in the realization of CentroVilla25, a long time vision of the Hispanic residents of Cleveland Directly thank Council President Blaine Griffin and Councilwoman Jasmin Santana Recognize City Council members (as a group not by name) for sending a clear message to the Hispanic community members in the City and region that nuestra gente están presente and add your eloquent comments Tonight City Council stands as partners with a broad array of individuals and institutions who have embraced and invested in CentroVilla25. These include but are not limited to: Hispanics and host committee members who have contributed time, talent and treasure; corporations that have donated; other public sector entities such as County Council representative who contributed; a nonprofit that invested and challenged others to participate; and philanthropic entities that stepped up to recognize the local and regional benefits and wealth creation opportunities brought forth by CV25 through culture, community and commerce. Gracias for … add your closing A ve

I am providing public comment to urge City Council to maintain its focus on Community Benefits legislation that benefits all Clevelanders in the face of intense lobbying pressure, hysterical scare tactics and predictions of economic gloom and doom from the business and property development communities, if all Clevelanders should actually come to benefit from property and economic development in this City. Their influence is considerable, especially given their significant campaign contributions and philanthropic donations to gargantuan non-profit institutions that benefit mightily from incessant growth and development. But always we must ask these questions of their positions: Who benefits? And who pays? This much we know: the cosmic lie of “trickle-down” economic development decisions the last 50 years here is one very good reason why Cleveland remains one of the poorest big cities in the United States, with underfunded public schools, a devastated urban tree canopy, high rates of urban infant mortality, deep racial segregation and discrimination, crumbling infrastructure in certain neglected neighborhoods, a lack of living wage jobs, many dangerous streets, declining population and an affordable housing crisis. If the business and property development community’s approach to economic development had worked, we would have made much more progress on these intractable problems the last 50 years. They have held considerable sway and dictated their policies and preferences to the Mayor’s administration and City Council for decades, and look at the results. Why would we listen to them yet again and expect different outcomes? The people that live in Cleveland can no longer allow private interests to continue to gorge themselves at the overflowing trough of public money while poor people remain poor and the middle class in this City can’t catch an even break. City Council needs to stand its ground and promote economic and property development that benefits ALL Clevelanders, not just the region’s posh, powerful and privileged. Thank you.

Greetings, While I know there are numerous issues that the city faces I am writing about one that affects me daily. The public health crisis of noise pollution. Specifically the noise coming from the park behind my home. I know it may not be a concern to many who don't have the same issue. Believe me I could not fathom it before I had to live this nightmare. I live on Reservoir Place Drive behind Luke Easter Park and year after year as the weather warms up the car stereos and bass systems get louder and louder. My windows and glass table have actually vibrated from the sound. They park right behind my house and turn it up as loud as they can. Even if they are further away at the rec center the bass carries to my house. It is truly distressing. I cannot concentrate, I have migraine headaches and find myself being nervous and on edge due to lack of rest and just anticipating the noise. The park is not even a safe or welcoming place for the children and families it is intended for as adults take over and blast music with explicit lyrics that can be heard far and wide right near the playground portion. These persons have no concern for the obvious disruption to the people living in the homes that are clearly visible to them and just feet away. The police do not respond to the phone call complaints of the noise. They simply do not come. I have to endure it until they decide to leave the area. I've heard it even while the little league teams play their games back there. They stay even after the dark, after 9:00pm when the park closes with the noise blaring. I need help and am asking for a reprieve from this torture. If there's something I can do short of approaching one of them again please let me know. I don't have peace in my own home. I plan to move soon, but of course the elevated interest rates and inflated housing prices make it a poor financial decision and a tough time to do so and it's sad that I am being forced out. I cannot understand why this type of behavior is acceptable.

Mayor Bibb and Cleveland City Council Members, We, the undersigned organizations, ask for your support for an ordinance that ends the sale of all flavored tobacco products including menthol and establishes a Tobacco Retail License (TRL) in the City of Cleveland. For decades, the tobacco industry has targeted communities of color with flavored tobacco products. Products such as menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars were intentionally developed to mask the harsh taste of tobacco, allowing more frequent use, and resulting in higher addiction rates. The industry’s predatory behavior has had a devastating impact. Black communities suffer the greatest burden of tobacco-related death, with black adults 32% more likely to die from heart disease and 45% more likely to die from stroke. Now the tobacco industry is using the same tactics to addict our children. Kid-friendly flavors like gummy bear, grape crush and cotton candy, often used in non-combustible “e-cigarettes,” are designed to hook a new generation of tobacco users. Nearly all (97%) youth e-cigarette users report using flavored products, and the overwhelming majority point to flavored products as their starting point. In addition to ending the sale of flavored products, the City of Cleveland needs better tools to enforce existing tobacco laws. While the minimum age for tobacco sales was raised to 21 in 2015, enforcement efforts continue to be inadequate in deterring sales to underage youth. In 2019, only 28% (176) of Cleveland’s 618 tobacco retailers received a compliance check. Of the 176 inspections performed, 66 or 38% failed inspection. And of the tobacco retailers that failed inspection, 78% received only a warning letter. A comprehensive Flavored Tobacco and Tobacco Retail License ordinance is needed to: • End the sale of all flavored tobacco products, including but not limited to menthol cigarettes, flavored cigars/cigarillos, flavored e-cigarettes, flavored smokeless tobacco, flavored shisha/hookah, etc. • Require every tobacco retailer in Cleveland to get a license and renew annually so the city can know how many tobacco retailers are operating in the city and more effectively enforce local, state, and federal tobacco laws. • Use the annual tobacco retail license fee to fund robust enforcement efforts, including at a minimum one compliance check per retailer per year. • Hold retailers accountable for unlawful sales to youth through graduated penalties and license suspension or revocation for repeated violations. Ending the sale of flavored products addresses decades of predatory marketing on behalf of the tobacco industry directed towards communities of color, as well as recent efforts to hook a generation of youth users with flavored e-cigarettes. Establishing a Tobacco Retail License will allow the City to better enforce laws that keep tobacco products out of the hands of youth. Taken together, these policies give the City the tools needed to lower Cleveland’s startling high smoking rate of 35.2% (a rate significantly higher than state and national averages), prevent future tobacco addiction and tobacco-related health outcomes including heart disease, lung cancer and stroke, and reduce the health disparities that confront Cleveland’s Black and Brown communities as a result of decades of racial targeting. Please put the health of our kids and community first by passing a comprehensive Flavored Tobacco and Tobacco Retail license ordinance that ends the sale of ALL flavored tobacco products in Cleveland and ensures tobacco retailers aren’t selling to underage customers. This policy will go a long way toward addressing racism as a public health crisis in the City of Cleveland. Sincerely, American Cancer Society - Cancer Action Network American Heart Association American Lung Association A Vision of Change Better Health Partnership Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids Care Alliance Health Center Case Western Reserve University Center for Black Health and Equity Center for Health Affairs Center for Community Solutions Cleveland Clinic Cleveland Office of Minority Health Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority First Year Cleveland Healthy Cleveland BreatheFree Committee Hospice of the Western Reserve MetroHealth Midtown Cleveland Inc. Mt. Sinai Health Foundation National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – Cleveland Branch National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc. Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services, Inc. Ohio Public Health Association Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation See You at the Top (SYATT) Signature Health Slavic Village Community Development Corporation The African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council The Gathering Place University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital Urban League of Greater Cleveland Young Latino Network YWCA Greater Cleveland

I am a hot dog cart owner and interested in adding my cart to the city where not so much congested traffic is and with a menu that is affordable street food for community.

To discuss the upcoming 2023 Minority Men's Health Fair and the importance of the smoking legislation.

Why is our elected officials allowing certain companies to avoid the competitive bidding process file #367-2023 this is not in alignment with the process it gives the McLean Company and Wasworth an unfair advantage as millions of dollars that could go to minority contractors to provide services in this sector as well. Our government should not be creating a monopoly with vendors who should be part of the Bidding process consider this at the administrative review and do not pass this emergency ordinance.

When will the people of Cleveland be able to gather at the meeting so our voices can be heard? this is operating like a Shadow government

My name is Arthur Hargate and I live in Cleveland’s Ward 6. I am providing public comment regarding reports in the press that the Justin Bibb administration is promoting legislation in City Council that authorizes $1.5 million to be spent with an outside consultant for a 10-year operational strategic plan. I do not represent any organization and I am not being paid to provide this comment. Voters in Cleveland (City) thought we elected Mayor Bibb to hire and surround himself with excellent people and tap existing City resources to get the City moving in the right direction fast. The City administration’s penchant to rely on expensive outside consultants is very disturbing. How many horribly expensive plans like this one proposed do we need that never get fully implemented? The City’s history with this type of planning is not very good. The City should internalize this functionality to get continuous operational improvement over time. Mayor Bibb can lead the strategic planning himself (he is the City CEO, after all) with existing people, newly hired expertise and community input. There are many community members with exceptional expertise in this type of endeavor that could volunteer their time in oversight. It is critical to implement much needed changes and reforms quickly and incrementally as they go. Waiting months for a minutely comprehensive, gold-plated consultant plan with myriad pretty pictures, graphs and endless slide-decks is unnecessary and a waste of limited City resources. Little or no control can be had with the recommendations the consultant will provide with no budget constraints and requiring more consulting. The consultant’s endgame is to addict the City to the consultant. Forget the endless, obscenely overpriced study, analysis paralysis and pretty plan and do the obvious work that every employee of the City knows is needed right now. It’s not rocket-science, nowhere near as complex and complicated as it is being presented and it doesn’t take a consultant with little or no present knowledge of the City’s operations to tell the City what people on the front lines know needs to be done. A consulting team to do this work will cost many hundreds if not thousands of dollars an hour. Projects like this are typically late in arrival, hugely overbudget and can be monumentally off-target in recommendations. It is in the consultant’s best interest to vigorously expand its scope and embed itself in the City’s operations as a permanent fixture to provide an ever-expanding spectrum of services. Once a consulting firm like this embeds itself like a tick in the inner workings of the City, its presence, influence and on-going cost will only grow exponentially and become permanent. Existing City managers and staff will be engaged and ultimately distracted by the consultant, often in ill-fitting, patterned investigative exercises that provide little or no ultimate benefit. It is far more efficient to engage those people directly in the project’s design, inputs and outputs, making the people that will be responsible for implementation also the agents for the plan end-product. It’s effective, efficient, builds ownership in outcomes and enhances internal teamwork and consensus to do this type of strategic operational planning with internal resources. A consultant-lead, grandiose operational strategic planning process right now is a waste of taxpayer money and will be a gargantuan distraction at City Hall. Internalizing and making permanent strategic operational thinking and action for continuous improvement is the most effective way to get and keep Cleveland’s operational capacity strong. And there are many more important priorities that can be addressed with $1.5 million. Thank you.

I think it is absolutely ridiculous that a 60 year old man has been jailed for the housing issues he's facing. We literally have slumlords out here putting people in unsafe homes, not taking care of their properties let alone their tenants, doing extremely illegal things here in northern east Ohio not even just Cleveland. Instead of working with him or presenting him with equal opportunities and resources for someone of his income, you put him in jail!? With murdered, rapists, actual criminals. I have known Jeff since I was 8, I am 30 years old. Jeff is such a light in the community, he is gentle, generous, loving. He hope for nothing but the best for everyone and everything. He helps when help is needed, and he actually cares genuinely about his community. To keep him jailed is the true crime. Maybe this will make you all wake up and smell the bacon and take care of our neighborhoods where slumlords run amock basically ruining people's lives and moving like the mafia. Maybe this will make you and give you the opportunity to create resources for people in his situation or that need help with their cherished family homes. It's rough out here and we need to be uplifting and helping the people in our community. We would like to trust our elected officials and judges to make better judgement on these situations. You got Cleveland ran through with opioid fiends and drug dealers giving them the drugs but this was your concern, and enough to jail Mr. Ivey rather than help him. A shame.