Current News

Season greetings and welcome to a new year and a new decade.

Our city government in 2019 saw significant progress in providing city services and addressing quality-of-life issues throughout our neighborhoods and we are hopeful to see even greater progress in 2020.

Continuing developments in downtown, the Flats and various emerging neighborhoods is testimony of the vibrancy of our city, though our work on council goes beyond the glitter of lights.

Addressing issues of poverty, crime, gun violence and blight is at the core of what we do in municipal government.

In 2019, City Council approved legislation to protect children from dangerous levels of lead dust in their homes; and give free legal representation to families with children who are facing evictions from their homes.

It is the children who suffer most from family disruptions. And it is the children who are more susceptible to dangerous effects of toxic lead dust.

Nelson Mandela once said, “History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children.”
Council is committed to keeping our children and all of our citizens safe and secure in their neighborhoods. This legislative body has budgeted millions of dollars to increase our safety forces, tear down more dilapidated structures and continue leveraging new construction and renovation projects.

We have also begun lighting up all quarters of the city with high-tech LED lights which provide more illumination than existing conventional street lighting. The goal is to replace the city’s 61,000 street lights with LED lights by 2020. The project also includes installing security cameras on utility poles throughout the city.

Meanwhile, we are seeing the beginnings of a major transformation of the Glenville neighborhood through a massive public-private initiative – the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative -- to build residential and commercial space and upgrade infrastructure.

City Council and Mayor Frank G. Jackson’s office worked together to leverage $25 million in bond funds to help establish the initiative’s $65 million pool of capital. The Neighborhood Transformation Initiative is a partnership between the city and major financial institutions as well as philanthropic and non-profit groups.

A study by Cleveland State University identified Glenville and other Cleveland neighborhoods as most in need of capital infusions. Other neighborhoods targeted for future investments include Clark-Fulton, Buckeye-Woodland and Kinsman-Woodland. And Clark-Fulton is seeing an infusion of private and public funding that is reinvigorating the neighborhood.

Unfortunately, we are still living with the effects of a major recession that hit our city hard a decade ago. The global financial and housing crisis left us with a lot of cleanup work, but we have been meeting challenge after challenge and today our city stands on sound financial footing.

In every neighborhood, east, west, south, and downtown, council members are diligently shepherding landmark development projects, many of them public-private endeavors.

We are rebuilding Cleveland, neighborhood by neighborhood.

And with a new year and a new decade, this 184-year-old city clearly has a promising future.

Regards,
 
Kevin Kelley