Public Comment

Demand a ceasefire now. Condemn the war crimes and genocide in Palestine. How can you claim to represent your constituents when no one has called for a permanent ceasefire and condemned the war crimes being committed on the Gazan and Palestinian people. Barra Abu Elaish was a student with me at Cleveland Heights High School, She was a human being with a life. She was an exchange student, a doctor, a friend , a community member. She volunteered at Fairfax elementary school.She was murdered in a airstrike in Gaza. That equipment was helped funded by your tax dollars. Where is your humanity? She was not the person to have come to the USA, to have learned from our educators and to bring that knowledge with them to help other humans living is horrific conditions. You Have failed your own community members From your Palestinian and Jewish member especially. If you stay silent it shows us that you approve of this level of violence in innocent people. It is utterly shameful that you can not see what has happened and is happening and not condemn these atrocities. I will not vote for you again if uou cant do the bare minimum of your jobs. You will face scrutiny and public shame for aligning yourself with colonization an ethnic cleaning. Over 20,000 children and young adults are dead in three months. How desensitized to violence are you that you have not stood out against this? Listen to the voices of your constituents, sign a resolution demanding a ceasefire.

As a mother of five boys, all in school age, I am extremely worried about the radicalization of the local youth, specially on campus, by the hands of groups like SJP, that have been supporting acts like the massacre that happened in Israeli on October 7th, when thousands of Israeli, Jewish, Arab civilians and of other ethnicities and nationality were brutally slaughtered, raped, or kidnapped by Hamas and their supporters. I ask that the City Council apply the IHRA definition of antisemitism to the local schools and in the city hall as well. The IHRA definition of antisemitism has already been instituted in Ohio by an executive order of governor Mike Dewine, so I s as m wondering why it hasn’t been put in practice yet. May the New Year bring real peace which can only come through exposing evil and putting an end to terrorism, here as much as in the Middle East.

I wholeheartedly support this bill. It will provide better quality of life for tenants and neighborhoods alike, by strengthening requirements for property upkeep and mandating that a local person be responsible for each property. It's well past time that rental properties were no longer allowed to be controlled solely by remote, unreachable slumlords.