Public Comment

The National Hookah Community Association (NHCA) brings together, and serves as the voice of, hookah producers, distributors, sellers, lounge owners, consumers, and community members who support the preservation of hookah’s cultural traditions. We are writing to request that as you consider a ban on flavored tobacco products, you acknowledge the cultural significance of hookah to minority and immigrant populations as well as the lack of youth access to, and use of, the product. California took a historic step just last month by enacting a statewide ban on flavored tobacco products, which exempted hookah, for these reasons. NHCA has worked with California, and with many other state and local governments including Colorado, Columbus, Denver, San Diego, San Jose, Los Angeles, and others, to include exemptions for hookah in recent flavor ban legislation. Hookah is a small category in the tobacco space, making up only roughly 0.005% of nicotine product sales. However, hookah is an important cultural practice to many and one that has existed for centuries, originating in the Middle East and India. Today, a broad cross-section of immigrants in the U.S. from around the world enjoy hookah at home and in lounges as a centerpiece for cultural, business, and social gatherings. Hookah is widely used by Middle Eastern, Armenian, Turkish, East African, Indian, Persian, Indonesian, and other minority immigrant citizens. Hookah lounges across the country have come to serve as safe gathering places for many diverse ethnic and religious communities. Despite the importance of this social practice and tradition, NHCA members continue to find that many policymakers are often unfamiliar with hookah, its practice, and its community. NHCA fully supports efforts to eliminate youth access and usage of tobacco products, including hookah. Hookah is unlikely to be used or consumed by youth for many reasons. Hookah water pipes are expensive, several feet tall, not easily concealed, and the setup for use is a lengthy process. Lounges that offer hookah are restricted to of-age customers, preventing teens from accessing the product. Recent research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that of those middle and high school students who reported using tobacco, just 1% used hookah in the past 30 days, ten times less than the number of teens or youth who vape. Shisha, the product used in hookah, is a combination of tobacco and a sugar substance such as honey or molasses, and the total product is only comprised of approximately 15% tobacco. As has been the practice for hundreds of years, hookah is, by nature, a flavored product. Unfortunately, noble efforts to address the teen vaping epidemic by banning flavored tobacco also would result in the ban of ALL hookah. A ban on hookah would not only eliminate this important cultural practice for many U.S. citizens, but could also shutter many small, independent, and minority owned businesses. Many of these businesses serve as community gathering places for immigrant populations in cities across the country. Many hookah users are part of religious or ethnic populations that already face discrimination. Eliminating this cultural practice would make many feel as though they are misunderstood and targeted as an outsider by lawmakers and regulators. We ask that you do not target this important cultural practice and shutter minority and immigrant owned businesses. Please grant an exemption hookah for both retail and lounges from the scope of any flavored tobacco ban legislation. National Hookah Community Association

I am a 30 year resident of Cuyahoga County. Prior to moving here, I lived in New Haven, CT and Baltimore, MD. In CT, I often drove to the West Haven waterfront on the Long Island Sound, where I'd have dinner, shop, and walk along the shoreline. In Baltimore, I lived there during the development of the Inner Harbor. I worked in a restaurant, shopped, and attended festivals there. When I moved to the North Shore, I foolishly expected the Cleveland waterfront to have similar, or even better, retail and tourist development. Boy, was I wrong. Over the years, I've often lamented how sad and inadequate the shoreline of Cleveland remains. Proper expansion would yield a lot more revenue than the Burke Airport. It would become a tourist destination, just like the Inner Harbor. Retail and dining would thrive, if built to be user friendly year-round. Hotels & residences would command top dollar. Tax revenues would be huge. This should have been done many years ago. Not another decade should go by. Please don't let the monied few, who utilized prime real estate for private planes, deprive Cleveland of a potential crown jewel to be enjoyed by all.

First, I want to praise City Council for the efforts in the past year towards decriminalizing fare evasion. I am an Ohio resident who was born and raised in Cleveland, and while riding the Healthline as a black man, I faced harassment from transit police to present my pass, and witnessed other, always black, riders being "escorted" (read: manhandled) off the bus over failure to prove that they paid. I know firsthand and secondhand that this punitive system has only hurt everyone it impacts. To celebrate Transit Equity Day coming up, and the concept of transit equity as a whole, I request for the members of City Council to give up use of their cars for one week and only rely on transit. From transit police to poor sidewalk clearance during the winter to reduced bus lines, I think the only way to truly understand what needs to be done to restore the RTA to what it was 30 years ago is to experience its current deficits directly. Even if this request is too much for ask, I trust and believe that City Council always acts with the best interest of the city of Cleveland and will consider the thoughts and experiences of its residents who have the most to gain and the most to lose in their policymaking.

Dear Cleveland City Council, I am a resident of the Tremont neighborhood and am writing as an individual in my personal capacity to encourage you to join in celebrating Transit Equity Day on February 4th, 2023, which is observed each year in honor of the life and legacy of Rosa Parks on her birthday. I also encourage you to commit to the Clevelanders for Public Transit Transit Equity Day challenge by committing to ride public transportation for a week beginning that day. Experiencing public transportation first-hand is an important way to build understanding and empathy about the ridership experience, and to break down the "windshield bias" that develops from only experiencing life from behind the windshield of a car. When you try transit, you may also find yourself walking and biking more to get to/from bus or train stops as well - giving you more perspective about sidewalk and bike lane/trail conditions as well. There are great resources to learn about improving transit - two excellent books are Better Buses, Better Cities by Steven Highashide, and Human Transit by Jarrett Walker (who has a long-running blog by the same name: https://humantransit.org/) My family moved to Cleveland in May 2022, and we are thankful to be able to share one car while meeting many of our transportation needs by walking, biking, and using transit. We appreciate all of the efforts by the City of Cleveland to make walking, biking, and transit safe and convenient options, and we know there is more work to do. Thank you for efforts on Complete and Greet Streets, and Vision Zero. Sincerely, Andrea Hamre, PhD Tremont Resident andreahamre.wordpress.com

Thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts. I am writing in support of the Mayor's desire to fund system, process & technology upgrades within the City of Cleveland that will streamline & digitize Cleveland's 311 Resident Request hotline. As a resident of Cleveland, I can say we desperately need a timely, responsive, and easy-to-access way to reach City Hall. As someone who conducted a small bit of research on the topic as a member of the Mayor's transition advisory team, I can say that this is a gnarly problem only a serious commitment will be able to solve. I hope the Mayor and his teams will also consider how to provide access to those who do not have internet access at home. It is time for Cleveland to step into the digital age, while intentionally including all of its residents. I am in full support of the Mayor's initiative and I hope that Council will approve this funding. Thank you for your consideration.

Week after week a person in my household watch the Recycle garbage be put into the regular trash by the garbage men. I have stickers on the cans yet they are lazy and put everything together. I work at a hospital and if I screwed up I would lose my job. Maybe some of these low lifes should also.

I would encourage the Council and Mayor to review the investigations into coordinated sabotage of public utilities in majority-black communities in North Carolina, Washington, Michigan, and elsewhere. My suspicion is these events are not isolated, but part of regional efforts to prepare for major disruptions of social order as part of white nationalist and/or anarchic extremist political groups in the run-up to the 2024 election. I would encourage Council and the Mayor's office to consult with the FBI and state and local law enforcement, and that the issue within the Charter be resolved to permit armed security at these vital sites.

Dear City Council, I am writing you today after reading that there is discussion of closing the Burke Lakefront Airport. I’m just a small time guy from central Pennsylvania who enjoys general aviation. My wife and I also enjoy flying to Cleveland several times a year and spending an evening downtown at Drury or Marriott along with dinner and a show at Pickwick & Frolic. After leaving we always look forward to our return. Flying into Burke is great with easy access to the city, not many places in the US that you can fly in park the plane and walk into the city within minutes. We also enjoy the water front area, especially the sub, having spent 4 years on SSN , neat to see the old ones. Anyway, I can confidently say that if Burke Lakefront Airport closes that I’ll probably never be back to Cleveland as it’s over a 5 hour drive (also same distance to NYC) but only a lovely 50 minute flight. Mike Cummings, Wellsboro Pa. N66VK

Why is there not a program for seniors or at least reimbursement for bags.

Connecting the East and West bank of the flats directly below the route of the water taxi, via an underground pedestrian tunnel, would be an immense improvement to the walkability of the Flats area. Center Street Bridge (CSB) is currently down for repair and has already been delayed 6 months past its origional estimated completion. Even when CSB is operational, walking from start to end point of the water taxi takes approximately 25 minutes. The water taxi runs seasonally and for extremely limited hours, it's route closes long before the businesses on either side of the flats do. A pedestrian bridge is unfeasable due to the shipping lane. It would either need to swing, raise, or be permanently affixed to clear shipping traffic which would require elevators which would be a choke point for traffic. An underground tunnel connecting the two sides of the river, shipping and pedestrian traffic will never conflict with one another. A stairwell and a ramp for ADA compliance are all that is needed, but an escalator would be nice. The benefits of connecting the businesses on both sides should be readily apparent. It makes barhopping easier. It makes getting to and from Browns games easier. Whiskey Island would be significantly more accessible to EBOF residents.