Public Comment

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.

Hello,My name is Vonique Ivey,I am one of many nieces of Jeffrey Ivey ,it's so easy for a person to be on the outside making judgement on a man that isn't violent and has not done no time in jail up until Jan.due to the fact that housing violations weren't up to code.My uncle is no criminal nor is he a bad person ,I understand repairs are needed to the Morrow Family home but wasn't done so in a timely matter but to place him in jail for 90 days without bond isn't fair .Mr Ivey should have been asked questions as to why and also given more time with resources to help him with the repairs not put in jail ,1125 East Blvd is not an abandoned home it has all utilities working that my uncle pays for ,he don't have no tenants living there making complaints. A man gets put in jail for not doing repairs to his home when there are slum landlords with property that have tenants who pay rent and have many of complaints but are those landlords sitting in jail without bond ? There are so many abandoned homes that property owners just walked away from because repairs were too much for them to fix but they are not jailed,it's people committing serious crimes but not in jail they get warnings or probation,but as for my uncle Jeffrey Ivey ,he sits in jail without bond ,where is justice ? My uncle is not a bad man he is not a criminal and it's not fair for him to be treated as one. A person on the outside only sees what's on the outside but has no understanding of what's on the inside yes repairs as well but much deeper than that it's a house of generation memories of our family ,fun,food and laughter 1125 East Blvd ,is the home that keeps our family together with the memories and family traditions that my great grandmother Blanche Morrow and my grandmother Cecelia Morrow Banks started.Please free my uncle and allow him to start the process of the repairs to our family home.Thank you

(1). It is imperative that the commission move forward with a sense of urgency given the length of time that it will take to impact and see improvement in the stated mission areas of the commission: health, education and entrepreneurship. (2) Given the magnitude of the wage gap foor Black women, commission counsel participants should be compensate.

Cleveland has declared racism as a public health crisis and it calls for supportive strategies and implementation steps to prevent systemic racism and address the mounting racial disparities that continue to impact Black and Brown Families. The misunderstanding of Black girls and women has lead to educational, societal, and judicial disparities which are continuously overshadowed by analyzing the negative outcomes experienced by Black Boys. As disparities highly impact black boys, black girls experience 7x more out of school suspensions, black women in Ohio are more likely to experience discrimination in health care, and black women are 2.2 more likely to die for pregnancy related causes. Ignoring the negative outcomes experienced by women due to causes stemming from racial inequity require solutions. Therefore initiating a Black Women & Girls Commission will initiate the first step in provision of strategy implementation to shift the trajectory for Black women and girls in Cleveland, Ohio.

Councilmembers, Thank you for your service to our city and all its neighborhoods. As a resident, I was thrilled last year to see the vote in support of the Black Women and Girls Commission. This is long overdue. With 52% of our residents identifying as female and 48% as Black we need to focus our public attention, time and resources on Black Women. By focusing on the needs of Black Women we will lift up our entire city. This is why the time is now to empanel this commission with 12 Black Women and Girls to identify the needs and move this work forward.