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Tag: Cuyahoga County

  • Coalition Urges Cleveland Public Power To Reconsider Solar Project on Abandoned Slavic Village Site – Cleveland Scene

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    The Harvard landfill site, 180 acres of unused land on Cleveland’s East Side on the southern edge of Slavic Village, has been a quagmire for years.

    It’s been abandoned since 2010; the city has no record of what was dumped there for four decades; it’s been a burden on Mill Creek that runs alongside it; and the site boasts enough worries that nearby neighbors have methane readers installed in their basements. Naturally, given those facts, it’s been an obvious target for environmental advocates.

    It’s why, earlier this year, Ward 12 Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer was to learn that the city and county would this coming year install seven megawatts of solar panels at the Harvard Road Refuse Site, as it’s officially known. Enough panels to power about 6,000 homes a year.

    “It seemed like a fantastic opportunity to address the long-standing environmental issues and generate needed electricity,” Maurer wrote in memo to constituents on November 22. “Until it wasn’t.”

    Cleveland and Cuyahoga County had been awarded roughly $130 million from a Biden-era program, a Climate Pollution Reduction Grant, to install 63 megawatts of solar panels in six areas, including off West 11th St. and in Brooklyn. 

    The Harvard site was a dual venture—half the land was in Cleveland; the other half was on the northern edge of Garfield Heights. And it was dually beneficial: Cleveland and Cuyahoga would have free power to throw into the grid, and neighbors would no longer have to deal with the former trash heap in their backyards.

    But come September, plans were off the table. Cleveland Public Power Commissioner Ammon Danielson cited three reasons in a letter to the city as why the $15 million originally allocated to remake the vacant landfill would have to be spent elsewhere: scope, time and cost.

    “It doesn’t make sense,” Brittany Madison, the most recent membership coordinator of Our CPP, a nascent advocate group of ten that’s tackling the issue, told Scene in a call.

    “The problem with the excuses that were given is that they are in line with what was outlined in the grant,” she said. “What they’re saying doesn’t match up with what is being publicly presented.”

    “We want transparency,” she added. “Then, once we have transparency, the conversation can go in the direction it needs to go.”

    Our CPP feels that pressure must be put on Cleveland’s power authority, both to demand answers as to why exactly a win-win was thrown out and to urge CPP to reconsider building solar in Slavic Village after all.

    But CPP’s hesitancy to go through, up until September, with a clean energy project also illustrates the clear gap between Biden-era optimism toward clean energy and a Trump administration that’s clearly pulled away from those grants in its second term. 

    As of October, Trump has slashed or curtailed nearly $8 billion in climate grants. That’s including ending a Solar For All initiative that would’ve given Ohioans $156 million to put free solar panels on their roofs and in their backyards.

    A spokesperson for Cleveland Public Power did not respond to a request for comment.

    The vague cancellation has led to a kind of rift between the county and city on how the power would be sold and moved along the grid. But advocates in Slavic Village believe they deserve a sounder explanation than a tangle of bureaucracy.

    “We still don’t have clear answers as a community,” Krystal Sierra, planning director with Slavic Village Development, told City Council’s Utilities Committee at a special meeting on December 4. Sierra and SVD have scrutinized the site’s use (or lack thereof) for almost a decade. Slavic Village, she said, “is owed an apology and an explanation.”

    “How many times does our community need to report that there are rock piles towering over their homes before the city does something about it?” she said.

    Plans to use grant dollars to build the other five solar sites, including two megawatts’ worth on the Garfield Heights side, are still going forward, Mike Foley, administrator of Cuyahoga County’s Green Energy program, told City Council. Power from the Garfield panels will be used to fuel the new county jail, he reported.

    And work continues apace on the County level.

    “The $129 million grant is safe and committed,” a spokesperson told Scene. “We have already drawn down close to $20 million from it for the purchase of solar panels for Painesville and Cuyahoga County projects.”

    “Cleveland made the decision not to proceed with the northern portion of the Harvard Rd. project. The County is reallocating the ~5 MWs of solar from Cleveland’s portion of the Harvard Rd. project over to the County,” they added. “The County is still working on developing solar on the southern part (Garfield Hts.) of the landfill project.

    Our CPP plans to ramp up pressure on Cleveland Public Power leading up to the spending deadline of June 1, Madison said. For now, the Harvard landfill site sits in bureaucratic limbo, under the auspices, county records show, of court-appointed receiver Mark Dottore, most recently in the news for his role in disgraced Cuyahoga County Judge Leslie Ann Celebrezze’s felony charge, resignation, and investigation by the Ohio Supreme Court disciplinary body.

    “There hasn’t been much activity in Cleveland related to solar,” Madison said. “That’s why this is such a big issue: we had an opportunity to use free money to actually bring some solar to the city.”

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    Mark Oprea

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  • Cuyahoga County Reaches $1 Million Settlement in 2019 Death of Man at County Jail – Cleveland Scene

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    On May 8, 2019, officers from the Maple Heights Police Department booked 36-year-old Nicholas Colbert, a National Guard veteran, for the possession of opioids. Colbert, a father of four, had begun using opioids to manage a collarbone fracture and had grown addicted.

    On the morning of May 9, staff at the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center found Colbert dead in his cell, where Colbert had hung himself with the cord of a hoodie tied to his bunk.

    His family filed a federal lawsuit in 2021, claiming massive negligence by county jail staff.

    The county, court documents read, was “obligated to take proper steps and to have and enforce policies and procedures to prevent Nicholas Colbert from committing suicide or engaging in self-harm.”

    On Tuesday, Cuyahoga County Council is expected to okay legislation that would settle the four-year-long case with a $1 million payout to Colbert’s family. 

    If passed, it would be the second largest cash settlement paid out to the family of inmates who had committed suicide while detained at the county jail before federal oversight began shortly after Colbert’s death. In 2022, the family of Brenden Kiekisz was awarded $2.1 million in a settlement four years after Kiekisz killed himself while being detained at the jail.

    Colbert’s suicide was the fifth in the county jail in just a year’s span, following the deaths of Kiekisz, Esteben Parra, Joseph Arquillo and Gregory Fox.

    Deaths that Paul Cristallo, the Colberts’ attorney, says prodded reform at the trouble facility, which was the subject of a blistering report by the U.S. Marshals after a string of deaths prior to the pandemic.

    “Nicholas Colbert was a loving father and family man who will be deeply missed by those who loved him,” Cristallo wrote Scene in an email on Monday. 

    “The Colbert family appreciates the support and prayers they received during their pursuit of justice on Nick’s behalf,” he said. “While Nick’s untimely death was surely tragic, the family has faith that it caused necessary changes within the County Jail for the benefit of others.”

    A Cuyahoga County spokesperson told Scene, “The County negotiated a settlement of this case, without admitting fault, in order to bring this unfortunate episode to an end. By doing so we hope to bring closure to both the County and Mr. Colbert’s family.”

    Cristallo and the Colbert family have long argued that CCCC officers failed to take seriously Colbert’s attempt to end his life five weeks before he was booked that May. Medical screening was inadequate, they said, or else jail staff and medical personnel would have been well aware of Colbert’s previous suicide attempt.

    Instead, the original complaint reads, officers didn’t follow policy when overseeing Colbert. They allowed him a hoodie with a cord Colbert used as a belt. They “were not at their assigned stations” and apparently “falsified documents” that would’ve confirmed Colbert was being checked on repeatedly.

    The Colbert family will not receive any funds, Cristallo said, until Cuyahoga County Probate Court approves the agreement, which should be in early 2026.

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    Mark Oprea

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  • Ronayne Reminds Us Everyone’s Welcome in Cuyahoga During Third State of the County Address – Cleveland Scene

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    There’s no denying that County Executive Chris Ronayne is the leader of the gladly received.

    New small businesses. War-torn Ukrainian refugees.

    He’s for more humane jails. Parks in the sky. Homeless mothers. Special Olympians. Natural Black hairstyles. Superman and his immortalized creators.

    “That is Cuyahoga County,” Ronayne said during his third State of the County address. “We welcome and we lead with a welcoming nature.”

    On Thursday, from a podium in the atrium of the Huntington Convention Center, Ronayne rattled off a list of county government’s reasons for praise, from big points earned on immigration, crime, courts, to police and development successes.

    But Ronayne’s inclination to welcome—a word he used 18 times in his 36-minute speech—brings up clear questions about how attractive Cuyahoga County must be to battle larger, negative narratives.

    Since 2020, the county’s lost roughly 24,000 people, the continuation of a decades-long trend.

    The state really hasn’t helped either.

    Its Senate Bill 1, which went into effect in June, has led to declining enrollment at several of Ohio’s universities, including about a 30 percent drop each at Baldwin Wallace and Cleveland State. And immigrants, mostly from Latin countries, have been abruptly locked up in detention facilities and/or deported with the help of sheriff’s offices from Geauga to Butler counties.

    Still, Ronayne kept his trademark cheer. A cheer that seemed to keep blinders on and keep the focus hyperlocal—whether that be celebrating the county’s win attracting the 2030 Special Olympics, building its new Office of Violence Prevention, soon breaking ground on its new jail, or being the first county in Ohio to ban conversion therapy.

    Ronayne shied away from topics too controversial—like massive loss of federal support—and kept his address focused on local wins. Credit: Mark Oprea

    There are roughly 380,000 people in Cuyahoga County on Medicaid and some 190,000 that get help buying food through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, colloquially known as food stamps. About 28,000 of the latter, Ronayne said, will “be directly impacted” by the passing of Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill, which may eliminate such support to those tens of thousands entirely.

    A new Cuyahoga Hunger Response Team, used to combat the federal slashing of SNAP, will launch in late October, Ronayne said.

    “We’re going to have to face draconian cuts to our kids, our families and our seniors as if we were in COVID all over again,” he told the room. “And we are going to have to apply our best selves with the kindness of Cuyahogans.”

    “Together,” he said, “we are strong.”

    Although he teased briefly the forming of Cuyahoga LIVE!, the county’s planned music commission, and massive downtown development from Bedrock, Ronayne shied away from addressing anything touchy.

    There was no mention in his prepared speech of cuts at Cleveland State, of the Downtown Safety Patrol and its chase policy, of the abrupt destruction of radio station WCSB, or of the Haslam’s sure relocation to Brook Park.

    At least until those in the crowd bothered him with such questions.

    What, oh what, one asked, do you think of the Browns? Does the Haslams’ $100 million “gift” to the city make up for what’s been a pretty sour breakup?

    “I was happy to give a speech that didn’t mention the stadium,” Ronayne said, to laughter. He cited love for the Guardians, the Cavs and Cleveland’s upcoming WNBA team. “There is a lot of other work happening in the county.”

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    Mark Oprea

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  • Cuyahoga County Unanimously Passes Ohio’s First County-Wide Ban Targeting Conversion Therapy on Minors – Cleveland Scene

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    On Tuesday, September 9 – as a statewide conversion therapy ban in the Ohio Statehouse stalls once more – Cuyahoga County became the first and only county in the state to ban conversion therapy practices for minors and “vulnerable adults.”

    Cuyahoga County Council members voted unanimously in favor of the ban, which was sponsored by County Council’s first out gay member, District 6 Councilman Robert Schleper Jr. – and co-sponsored by eight other council members out of the 11 seats in the chamber.

    County Executive Chris Ronayne expressed public support for the ordinance and requested his name be added to the legislation as a co-sponsor ahead of the vote.

    Enforcing the ban

    The ordinance would subject individuals who practice conversion therapy on minors and vulnerable adults to fines on a sliding scale up to $3,500 per incident, and could lose their license practice medicine.

    The county’s Human Rights Commission is tasked with enforcing the ban. If residents believe they have been subjected to conversion therapy practices, they can submit a complaint to the commission. However, the violation must have occurred “within three years prior to the complaint.”

    Those who submit a complaint will have their identity protected under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Schleper said.

    Conversion therapy is defined in the ordinance as “any practice or procedure that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward a person of the same gender or non-binary person.”

    Every major medical and psychological organization in the world rejects conversion therapy practices, citing increases in anxiety, depression and suicidality.

    The ordinance cites an extensive 2019 Williams Institute study on the medical, social and psychological effects associated with the conversion practices – which often involve the use of aversion conditioning techniques like “electric shock, deprivation of food and liquid, smelling salts, and chemically induced nausea.”

    According to the study’s findings, at least 698,000 Americans report being exposed to some type of conversion therapy during their lifetime, including about 350,000 people who report they were subjected to conversion practices as adolescents.

    ‘Your support means more than you realize’

    Schleper worked closely with local activists like Brandon West, who crafted the city of Lorain’s conversion therapy ban in 2024.

    “This was brought to me by a group of concerned citizens that wanted me to sponsor this legislation, and I was happy to do so,” Schleper said. “When a small group of concerned citizens decide that they would like to create change, they can do so.”

    Schleper called the ban’s passing a “pivotal moment” for the county and profusely thanked his colleagues for their support.

    “Your support means more than you realize – and not just to me, but to so many lives across the county,” Schleper said. “With the passage of a conversion therapy ban, this legislation is another thread in the fabric that strengthens us as a county.”

    Councilmembers Michael Gallagher and Martin Sweeney both offered public statements in support of the “landmark legislation.”

    “The best thing I can say about [conversion therapy] is that it’s medieval,” Gallagher said. “This really isn’t a tough decision. Some people may consider it political…[…] but ultimately, we really need to protect people.”

    Additionally, councilmember Meredith Turner pointed to the unanimous vote as a point of unity and shared vision among council members.

    “Our collective vote will send a clear message that we are all children of God and that we will protect our residents,” she said.

    Banning conversion practices in other counties

    The ban’s passing comes on the heels of other Ohio cities enacting similar ordinances, including Whitehall and Westerville.

    In total, 14 municipalities have banned the practice, including Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo.

    “It is more important than ever for our cities and counties to step up to protect their LGBTQ+ residents, and I hope Cuyahoga County will continue to set an example for others in Ohio and across the nation,” said Madelyn Smith, Northeast Ohio Organizer for LGBTQ+ civil rights group Equality Ohio. “I am so proud of Cuyahoga County.”

    Ohio Democrats have introduced two bills in both the state Senate and House of Representatives that would ban conversion therapy on minors. Neither bill has been given a single hearing in the Republican-controlled Statehouse, and there isn’t a clear path to advance the legislation there.

    Schleper told The Buckeye Flame he believes other counties can also take on this issue.

    Cuyahoga County has its own mechanisms for passing the ordinance because it is a chartered, home-rule county, which gives councilmembers more autonomy. However, Schleper said that shouldn’t stop other counties from trying.

    “The bottom line is: If they want to get [this ban passed], they will,” he said.

    Originally published by The Buckeye Flame. Republished here with permission.

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    H.L. Comeriato, The Buckeye Flame and Ben Jodway, The Buckeye Flame

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  • Cuyahoga County Debuts Loan Program to Boost Development Along Public Transit Lines

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    Mark Oprea

    The Quarter on Detroit Avenue. Cuyahoga County released a loan program for developers on Monday, one that would let them borrow up to $2.5 million to finish projects in transit-rich, dense areas.

    Cuyahoga County wants more Van Akens, more Little Italys, more Gordon Squares and more Larchmere Boulevards.

    Or to put it in city planner speak: more transit-oriented development.

    On Monday, the county debuted a program that will soon dole out loans to developers who need to round-off financing for projects on or close by train or bus lines. Those builders can get up to a $2.5 million loan at an interest rate as low as four percent, as long as their project in less than a half mile from a transit line.

    Those corridors — 22 in total — are where you’d expect, including near the Red, Blue, Green and Waterfront lines, the HealthLine, MetroHealth Line and about 10 highly-used other bus lines, from the 22 on Lorain Ave. to the 26 on Detroit and the 41 on Warrensville Road.

    The county’s idea is rooted in its annual transit-oriented development study that its been funding since 2022. (And reached an “all-time high” last year.) It’s an idea that, if done right, is mutually beneficial: more apartments and shops along dense areas, more people using transit to get to them.

    It “is smart growth in action,” County Executive Chris Ronayne said in a press release. TOD is “strengthening local ties, boosting our economic and transportation infrastructures and ensuring resources are within reach of all of our residents.”

    Such a boost pairs nicely with similar incentives at Cleveland City Hall, where city planners are moving forward with a Smart Code zoning pilot in three neighborhoods, representing Cleveland’s best bet to codify zoning law that automatically encourages dense, walkable development.

    Also, in 2023, the city put a perks system—transit-demand management—into law to encourage developers to build bike racks, pocket parks, shuttles, or more to go along with their apartment complexes.

    And the county’s program bears similarities.

    Loans awarded to developers can be used for new construction—parking lots, sidewalks, tree lines—or improvement to preexisting structures. Projects have to be at least a half-mile from one of 22 transit lines, include a non-housing element, and prove that at least one job will be created for every $150,000 borrowed.

    Building in front of an RTA station? You have to have an “active first floor use,” the program guide stipulates.

    But will developers buy in? Many often gripe about Cleveland’s relatively low tax abatement policy, about higher-than-usual federal interest rates and a tough housing market that leaves few guaranteed incentives for developers not swayed primarily by passion.

    Also, tax perks from the state—like for low-income projects—may not be the kicker.

    This “signals to the development community that we are listening,” Cuyahoga County Planning Commission Mary Cierebiej said in a statement.

    Those interested in more details can tune in to a Zoom webinar on September 9.

    Developers have until September 29 to submit a first round of eligibility applications. Final approvals, the county said, for loans will be doled out later this year and early 2026.

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    Mark Oprea

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  • In Second State of the County, Chris Ronayne Plays it Cool for Packed Atrium

    In Second State of the County, Chris Ronayne Plays it Cool for Packed Atrium

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    Mark Oprea

    Chris Ronayne’s State of the County speech on Thursday was compact just as it was comprehensive.

    Despite the ceaseless drumming and droning of vuvuzela horns outside the new atrium at the Huntington Convention Center, County Executive Chris Ronayne delivered his second State of the County address in a mostly cool and concise manner on Thursday.

    For a little more than 40 minutes, Ronayne rattled off a “best of” tour of county achievements, both recent and foretold, to a sold-out crowd of 800—and about a half dozen pro-Palestine protesters who repeatedly interrupted Ronayne’s boosterism as if privately on set cue.

    Despite the constant criticism for the county’s $16 million investment in Israel bonds, Ronayne kept his fatherly, friend-to-all schtick intact, whether it was lauding the creation of the Child Wellness Center, or helping to build the new Fairfax Market in Midtown, or applauding Downtown Cleveland’s own “Superman Summer.”

    Ronayne kept his tour concise just as it was comprehensive—especially when touching on sensitive matters. Both the controversial County Jail project in Garfield Heights—which has seemed to worry surrounding residents—and the possible loss of the newly-named Huntington Bank Field to Brook Park, were glossed over quickly, it seemed, as if to check off a box.

    “Cuyahoga County is leading the way,” he said, when touching on the projected $750 million correctional facility. “Our government continues to innovate, modernize and transform.”

    click to enlarge Several pro-Palestine protestors interrupted Ronayne's speech throughout. - Mark Oprea

    Mark Oprea

    Several pro-Palestine protestors interrupted Ronayne’s speech throughout.

    With just a year-and-a-half in the county executive post, Ronayne has spent what seems to be an incalculable amount of time trying to present the county in a positive light, which seems bolstered by Ronayne’s encyclopedic knowledge and affection for a place where he’s lived the bulk of his life.

    It’s how Ronayne, in his 34-minute speech, seemed to frame his policy: vying to keep the 54 municipalities in Cuyahoga County politically attuned through a highly personalized lens. (“You can see I’m very close to our mayors,” he winked at one point. “We got each other’s backs.”)

    “Wherever I am, I always stop to hear from residents. I tell them I work for them. I work for all of you,” he told the crowd.

    “And the reality is our entire county team works for you,” he added. “Protecting our children, investing in housing, keeping our roads and bridges safe, supporting our small businesses, improving our government services, transforming our social safety net, innovating in sustainability and leveraging our assets for growth.”

    And growth was often substantiated by, as in Bibb’s State of the City, impressive data: 502 small businesses helped with the county’s financial assistance; 122 guns taken off the streets by the Downtown Safety Unit; 222 low-interest loans handed out for home improvements; $130 million from the EPA for the county to use towards climate pollution reduction.

    But Ronayne’s itch to highlight dozens of county programs and hurrahs sometimes felt a bit lacking in the exec’s trademark chutzpah, as if he was narrating a script for a marketing video to be shown in the Convention Center lobby.

    “Our word to the world is that you are welcome here,” he said, capping off a mention of the county’s new Welcome Center for immigrants. “We all are. All of us.”

    A welcome that apparently extended to the half dozen pro-Palestine protesters who managed to sneak into general admission tables. (“It’s the First Amendment right,” he said, as one accused him of “supporting genocide.”)

    At one point, during the event’s Q&A, a man wrapped in a black-and-white keffiyeh scarf asked Ronayne if he would reconsider the $16 million in Israel bonds in the county’s investment portfolio.

    Ronayne responded both curt and personal. He thanked the man for “coaching the kids” in the deep, complicated matters surrounding the Israel-Hamas War. He recalled his work as a local soccer coach.

    “I’m just going to say this,” Ronayne added. “We are not moving away from Israel bonds.”

    And that was that. Until next year.

    “In the words of my mother, a small business owner who got me through school and got me here today, I say to you what she said to me,” Ronayne said, ending his speech. “Let’s keep going.”

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    Mark Oprea

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  • Roldo: Why Does Cuyahoga County Always Eye Sales Taxes to Fund Projects?

    Roldo: Why Does Cuyahoga County Always Eye Sales Taxes to Fund Projects?

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    Erik Drost

    Funded in part by sin taxes, the stadium is another example of decisions made by Cleveland’s wealthy

    It has become too easy for politicians and the string-pullers who guide public decision making here to add taxes on products everyone buys.

    And leave the more wealthy to enjoy the benefits.

    The sales tax, paid by anyone buying things, falls on most people. Rich or poor

    It is highly unfair for that reason. And more costly as prices rise.

    What would be fairer?

    An income tax. Highly graduated so those with high incomes would pay the greater share.

    Sales taxes are being used to build and upkeep sports facilities, a convention center and the arts.

    It is highly unfair.

    But our leaders seem to go there first, often and fairly exclusively.

    No matter how low your income, you pay the full cost of the sales tax.

    It can hurt.

    So it’s become very easy to use sales taxes, even when voted upon.

    County Executive Chris Roynane and the County Council recently voted to extend a 0.25 percent increase in the general sales tax. It now stands at 8 percent total in the county, highest in Ohio.

    The voters had no say. It lasts another 40 years!

    This increase extends the tax through 2063. It is said to raise some $3.4 billion.

    The tax originally was also passed without a vote.

    Remember the hip hip hooray about the Medical Mart, one of its recipients.

    That’s when former County Tim Hagan helped bring MMPI of Chicago and its owner, a Boston Kennedy family friend of his, to town for a pie-in-the-sky plan. The Med Mart was supposed to lure big profits from medical-related businesses to Cleveland.

    Cuyahoga County ended up paying MMPI $32,854,730. But the County, after building the “Med Mart” for $46 millio,n had to redo it. The refix recently cost the County another $56 million.

    Hagan allowed no public vote for the sales tax for the med mart.

    This is an incredible filtering of small cashflow that may not hurt those with high paying jobs but becomes an almost daily drain on those with low incomes.

    It is easy for the politician. Especially when you have a docile news media. And it’s easy for those who set the pattern of decision-making here. For example, Dave Gilbert, of Destination Cleveland, the convention business mouthpiece, is often quoted by local media on downtown and visitors to the city. No sales taxes bother him. He earned an income of $536,000 in a recent year.

    The Greater Cleveland Partnership, which a few years ago combined a number of other corporate mouthpieces – the Greater Cleveland Growth Association, Cleveland Tomorrow, and the Greater Cleveland Roundtable – into a single powerful corporate mouthpiece, helps set Cleveland’s public agenda.

    The Partnership doesn’t push taxes that might affect their business leaders wallets. Heavens no.

    Baiju Shah, who heads the Partnership, made $198,000 in a recent years. The sales tax has no impact on him.

    Former Partnership boss Joe Roman called the sin tax “a small tax.”

    He was making $1.5 million in 2021.

    And these people are deciding what tax should be levied on Clevelanders.

    Destination Cleveland and its ilk have been making these decisions essentially without opposition since 1980.

    They were so confident in their power that they boasted about its nature to Fortune Magazine.

    The magazine headlined the article: “How Business Bosses Saved a Sick City.” Took over is a better description.

    The article was blatant in its description about how the Cleveland business leaders drove a business putsch of city government here, calling it “a benign conspiracy of top executives.”

    They have not loosened their grip on the city and county now preparing a new tax thrust for the Browns stadium deal.

    The next sales tax measure will be on the November ballot. It will raise the cigarette tax to 70 cents a pack. No little amount.

    And it will take out of the pockets of smokers who are generally lower income, as one study shows 18.3 percent low-income are smokeers, 12.3 percent middle-income and 6.2 percent high-income.

    The total take expected: an amazing $160-million in its 10-year duration. Again, not pennies.

    These are not trifling figures, especially when they land largely on low income families.

    And the politicians never offer an alternative method of financing.

    The big one, possibly likely to get larger with the pressure for a new football stadium and constant request from Gateway’s baseball stadium and basketball arena, will be the so-called “sin” tax.

    First passed in 1990 for 15 years, it was extended twice.

    The sales tax on beer, cigarettes, wine, cider and liquor raises about $13.6 million each year. That should produce another $272 million in new sin taxes in its latest iteration.

    Of course, those subsidies only trigger many more subsidies from city, county and state.

    I remember the first sin tax vote in May 1990.

    Unlike today, there was organized opposition. Presently, the city has no real organization that speaks for those without power. It shows why so few people even vote anymore in the city. They see no reason for hope.

    Many likely don’t remember but that first sin tax for Gateway FAILED in the city of Cleveland where most low income people live.

    Why? Because the 21st District Caucus, then a creation of Carl Stokes, strongly opposed it. Stokes was a judge at the time, so he didn’t participate, but his brother Louis Stokes was the Congressman of that district.

    I spoke at a 21st district rally meeting held to oppose the measure. I recited facts and figures in a non-dramatic way.

    Bert Jennings, an activist, followed me with a rip roaring attack on the tax measure, raising the crowded room to a roaring objection.

    The Cleveland suburbs passed the measure with enough votes to tip the negative city result.

    That may have been the last gasp from those who knew the deal cost them a high price.

    Now, without an organized citizen opposition, measures that hit the “little guy” pass with little reaction.

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    Roldo Bartimole

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  • Former Cuyahoga County Employee to Plead Guilty to Wire Fraud Charges

    Former Cuyahoga County Employee to Plead Guilty to Wire Fraud Charges

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    Tim Evanson

    The federal courthouse in Downtown Cleveland.

    Curtis McEwen, an IT professional facing federal wire fraud charges, is set to take a plea deal in court, filings this week show.

    In charges filed last month, the DOJ alleged the now former IT director for the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities manufactured false expense reports and employee invoices to redirect millions to his own pockets at Saber Healthcare, where he worked for nearly two decades before being fired in March 2023.

    He was hired months after by Cuyahoga County, which has previously said background checks and employer reference calls revealed no reasons to be concerned. He was asked to resign the day charges were filed and did so.

    Court documents released on Tuesday show that McEwen agreed to a plea deal to two counts and was released under an unsecured bond of $20,000. On release, he had to surrender his passport, get a mental health evaluation and is barred from obtaining any new lines of credit.

    According to the July indictment, from 2014 to 2023, McEwen allegedly “falsely represented” on expense reports that he had paid contracted companies for “IT-related products and services.” He then, the Feds say, created imitation invoices to “substantiate his payments.”

    McEwen allegedly siphoned $80,006 to $182,808 for each monthly invoice, and rerouted that money intended for third party companies into his own assets, which grew to include a mansion, a $11,000 2017 BMW R Nine T motorcycle,  a $15,000 2020 Ducati Diavel 1260 bike, a Rolex Submariner, a $44,000 Ressense Antwerp watch, a $10,000 Luminor Panerai Automatic Power Reserve watch and more.

    McEwen’s allegedly long stint of wire fraud at Saber didn’t apparently extend to his IT work at the county.

    “As a public entity,” a spokesperson told Scene in July, “we have many safeguards in place to ensure fiscal responsibility. We have reviewed all relevant records and are confident that our safeguards worked.”

    McEwen should be sentenced in federal court sometime this fall.

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  • Cuyahoga County to Plant 1,200 Trees in Canopy Restoration Effort, But Residents’ Role in Solution Looms

    Cuyahoga County to Plant 1,200 Trees in Canopy Restoration Effort, But Residents’ Role in Solution Looms

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    Mark Oprea

    Cuyahoga County’s tree canopy is about a third of what county advocates said it could be.

    Fifteen-hundred trees are to be planted and grown on public land in Cuyahoga County in the next few years, the result of $1.2 million in grant rollout, county representatives said this week.

    That money, which hails from the county’s annual investment into trees, will equate to some 200 trees planted in Parma; 128 in Olmsted Township; 130 in Bedford; 18 in Lakeview Cemetery; along with a dozen other projects intending to keep parts of our canopy we’ve let go over the decades. (Cleveland got its tree due in 2023.)

    And, according to data from the last county survey in 2019, there’s a lot of space to fill: the current tree coverage of Cuyahoga County—some 96,000 acres—is roughly a third of the land area that’s viable for greenery.

    With the Urban Forestry Commission set to mesh its goals with Cleveland’s new Division of Forestry, optimists might see this influx of millions of dollars dedicated to sprouting new elms or sumacs across the city as a fine beacon of good things to come. Meaning the possible restoration of our depleted canopy by 2040.

    Yet, city and county specialists share similar anxieties about an aspect of grant dollars not easily influenced: the plots of private land that lie where the sidewalk ends.

    In other parlance: the pesky, vague sphere of the tree lawn.

    “It’s been my personal experience that residents have a wide variety of attitudes towards trees that shed leaves on their property,” Jenita McGowan, the county’s chief of climate and sustainability, told Scene.

    “If the residents wanted it, they thought there’d be an overwhelming want and need,” her colleague, Mary Cierebiej, the county’s director of Administrative, Planning, Information and Research, added.

    In past years, “people were not interested because again, the maintenance of leaves and trees falling or limbs or other bad things—maybe they’ve taken trees down in the past? Yeah, I mean, there’s a wild difference of opinions.”

    click to enlarge What $1.2 million in tree money gets you. - Cuyahoga County

    Cuyahoga County

    What $1.2 million in tree money gets you.

    Besides the historic neglect the city had in the late 20th century for its grated trees, as the 2021 Tree Plan showed, the deeper problem of restoring the canopy to a level Clevelanders can be proud of deals with a tough navigation between private and public property.

    The city cannot and does not plant on private land. Tree-planting incentive programs have existed for the better part of the past decade, which often offer planting and maintainance gratis—yet these are the best bets for City Hall to convince neighbors that the benefits outweigh having to rake a little more.

    There are innumerable benefits, after all: Higher tree canopies help lower rates of heart disease and asthma, help combat high summer temps on street level, help raise land values when planted strategically.

    And strategy, at least in the Tree Plan guidebook, means planting saplings with an equity planner’s lens: on streets and tree lawns in Lee-Miles, in Jefferson and Clark-Fulton, where tree canopy coverage is a third of what it is in leafier neighborhoods.

    “I think that the geospatial data bears out that we cannot street tree our way into a restored tree canopy,” McGowan said.

    “And it shades an area of our communities that are important when you’re walking around,” she added. “But if we planted a tree in every tree lawn in the county, I still don’t think we solve our tree canopy issue.”

    A solution, both McGowan and Cierebiej, admitted that could also stem from more accurate data. The last full-on tree count of Cuyahoga’s stock—which was by satellite image—is five years old.

    “I think Mary and I are in agreement in order to continue this program, it’s probably time to assess it,” McGowan said, “so we can make sure that we’re targeted in how we use public funding for trees.”

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  • Lakeside Men’s Homeless Shelter Extension Opens, Putting Dent in County’s Demand for Beds

    Lakeside Men’s Homeless Shelter Extension Opens, Putting Dent in County’s Demand for Beds

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    Mark Oprea

    Melissa Sirak, director of the county’s Office of Homeless Services, speaking at 2020 Lakeside on Tuesday.

    A year ago, in March 2023, Cuyahoga County released a strategic plan to best combat growing rates of homelessness exacerbated in wake of the global pandemic. Among the call for outreach workers and more affordable homes, the report clocked a goal for 2028: to house 500 more.

    On Tuesday, the county seemingly stepped a bit closer to hitting its mark when it cut the ribbon on 2020 Lakeside Avenue, a brand new building intended as a sibling operation to the next-door men’s shelter at 2100, which Cuyahoga County has been overseeing in partnership with the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry for almost two decades.

    Out of the 5,000 or so the county estimated are homeless inside its boundaries, roughly 350 of those people are unsheltered, single men. (About the number of beds at 2100.) And, for the past few years, local governments and nonprofits have been drumming up solutions on the best way to steer this population—and the growing population of homeless women—into permanent housing.

    click to enlarge Lutheran Men's Shelter at 2100 Lakeside Ave. - Google

    Google

    Lutheran Men’s Shelter at 2100 Lakeside Ave.

    That is, if those that occupy the numerous tents that dot Superior Avenue choose to check in to 2020, or if they find greater value sleeping out on the sidewalks, without noisy neighbors, potential drug interference, or the nagging intimidation of barriers-to-entry.

    “It’s bittersweet, because we need these beds, we need this space,” County Executive Chris Ronayne said from a podium inside 2020 on Tuesday. He recalled a recent tour of the shelter next door: “I was just making the rounds and walking, and realizing that it’s crowded. It’s crowded. And we need to give our residents the dignity of space.”

    What looks to be a far cry from conditions in the past including spoiled food, the county’s newest shelter features 113 beds—the majority of them bunked—in a 14,000 square-foot room that resembles more of a barracks than a hostel. Each “semi-private” room contains one or two Hallowell lockers, and are separated with nine-foot, powder blue walls. There are lights for reading, outlets for charging phones, among other amenities.

    It’s a stark contrast, it seems, from what lingers feet away from the new building.

    “They really did a better job,” Loh, an activist who was present at county meetings rallying for action “every week,” told Scene, as she walked through 2020’s pristine shower stalls. In other shelters, “you can’t use the toilets. They run out of drinking water. Run out of bathroom tissue.”

    click to enlarge Brand new sinks and showers at 2020 Lakeside. "It's a big improvement" from 2100's shelter next door, housing advocate Loh told Scene. - Mark Oprea

    Mark Oprea

    Brand new sinks and showers at 2020 Lakeside. “It’s a big improvement” from 2100’s shelter next door, housing advocate Loh told Scene.

    click to enlarge Most of 2020's beds are bunked, and grouped in a very open room setting. Most have just one or two lockers. Some walls are color-coded, a county employee said, to help those with mental deficiencies find their beds. - Mark Oprea

    Mark Oprea

    Most of 2020’s beds are bunked, and grouped in a very open room setting. Most have just one or two lockers. Some walls are color-coded, a county employee said, to help those with mental deficiencies find their beds.

    It’s what, one thinks as they tour, $4.4 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars can build. But that was then, back in 2021, when the county’s budget for solving homeless issues was given more financial grace by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

    Which makes one wonder how exactly, as Ronayne and others suggested on Tuesday, the county could wrangle more funds together to fix the shelter next door. “We’re at this cross-current of ARPA winding down,” Ronayne said, “at exactly the moment when, sadly, our rates of unhoused are going off.”

    As are hesitation to build facilities. Last February, residents of Ohio City sounded off at a Board of Zoning Appeals meeting, fearing that LMM converting an office building off Franklin Avenue would be hazardous to their neighborhood. BZA approved the construction regardless.

    Similar tones of fear were seen at a town hall meeting in Munson Township last month, where hundreds of anxious locals showed up in attempt to steer the Geauga Faith Rescue Mission away from constructing a 10-bed shelter for women in their apparent backyards. (It worked; GFRM is now hunting for another site.)

    Michael Sering, LMM’s Vice President of Housing & Shelter, said that he believed 2020’s opening would create an absorbing effect, both deflating some of the overcrowding at 2100 and other shelters, and speeding up renovation of their first space.

    “We will no longer need offsite location and shuttle trips to meet periodic influxes” of people, Stearns told press. As for 2100, “we can now rearrange or de-concentrate one-third of our beds. And that will make for better spaces for everyone.”

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  • ‘A Stark Contrast in Approach’: Michael O’Malley and Matthew Ahn Go Toe-to-Toe in Prosecutor Race Forum

    ‘A Stark Contrast in Approach’: Michael O’Malley and Matthew Ahn Go Toe-to-Toe in Prosecutor Race Forum

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    Tim Evanson

    The Cuyahoga County Justice Center in an undated photo.

    Two very disparate takes on Cuyahoga County’s justice system were on display this week at virtual forum between county prosecutor candidates Matthew Ahn and Michael O’Malley.

    Held over Zoom Thursday afternoon, and moderated by Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association attorney Matthew Besser, the two candidates vying to win the Democratic primary — and, essentially, the entire race — for the top legal seat in the county in November sparred on a number of topics, from the brimming jail population to office transparency, from conviction ethics to the issue of the death penalty.

    The event amplified the noticeable differences between the two: in age, in policy, in political lean, in overall stature. (Except in dress: both candidates showed up in a powder blue shirt and a royal-blue jacket.)

    To put it relatively brief: 32-year-old Ahn further solidified himself as the candidate of progressive ideas; 59-year-old O’Malley as the weathered prosecutor resting on the badge of experience.

    Among issues of Cuyahoga County’s future jail site build, of office transparency, nothing seemed more of contrast than the topic of court bindovers, when juveniles are tried as adults. Besides mandatory bindovers—say, when a 16-year-old is caught on video killing two victims—the two sparred about each other’s idea of discretionary, or voluntary, bindovers. When the court decides.

    Ahn’s viewpoint was, of course, driven by data and race politics: 90% of kids tried as adults in recent years, he said, are Black. Therefore, he argued, the court should look away from bindovers, and more so to what causes a 16-year-old to use a gun in the first place. (Though Ahn was nebulous on such examples.)

    click to enlarge Thursday's Zoom debate: Ahn versus O'Malley. - Mark Oprea

    Mark Oprea

    Thursday’s Zoom debate: Ahn versus O’Malley.

    “All of the studies that we have demonstrate that children who are tried as adults and sent to adult prison are much more likely to commit more crimes upon their release as compared to children who are kept in juvenile court for the exact same charges,” Ahn said. “So this is a practice that is also subject to a very severe racial disparity.”

    O’Malley retaliated with his own data: 80% of last year’s teenage suspects were tried as adults; though only nine total bindovers were discretionary. He added that, as per policy, those optional bindovers—ordered by the court or by O’Malley’s office—require mental health reports, dives into prior crime, into a kid’s “response to previous treatment.”

    The prosecutor, who reiterated several times he’s been involved in the county’s justice system since 1987, rested on a hard-nosed stance for which he’s become known.

    “Fifty-three percent of those bindovers last years were aggravated murder, murder, attempted murder,” he said. “So these aren’t, like, kids stealing Hyundais and Kias. These are individuals with guns who are causing havoc.”

    But what data is, and how it’s handled, was probably the most illuminating divider between the two. Whenever Ahn was knee-deep in the tenets of his “fairer, data-driven, more evidence-based” take on the prosecutor’s seat, O’Malley seemed to raise his brows, or allow a kind of dubious smirk. And for every career point O’Malley was proud to rattle off, Ahn seemed to have the policy tweak in mind ready to go.

    We saw this in the candidates’ take on the Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit, a branch of the prosecutor’s office that takes on cases of alleged wrongful conviction. Ahn again wanted to overhaul the unit with a “collaborative approach” to avoid poor judgment; O’Malley offered a hands-off rebuttal that appeared to mock Ahn’s data mind.

    “I’m proud to say that the rate of relief [for the Unit] is fifteen times better than that of the Ohio Innocence Project,” O’Malley said, citing the criminal justice reform advocacy group. “Which should tell you the type of work we’re doing.”

    The volley continued, and came to a head, when the two discussed their takes on capital punishment.

    Despite “moral questions,” Ahn called Ohio’s death penalty a “policy failure on every front,” citing the “eight wrongful death sentences” in Cuyahoga County in recent memory—one of the highest rates by county in the nation. He mentioned Alabama, which has the country’s highest error rates in capital punishment. (For every eight executed, one is exonerated.)

    “That is better accountability, it is better for victims, and it is better on a policy level,” Ahn said.

    O’Malley interjected: “I don’t understand Matt’s view after his three or four minutes” of speaking.

    “My feelings have certainly evolved; I do a lot of self-reflection as the prosecutor,” O’Malley added. “All of these cases are serious. As I said, we have not had a capital case in Cuyahoga County in over four years. But I can tell you this: If we have a mass shooting with mass casualties? My guess is you’d probably see it again.”

    In his concluding two minutes, Ahn spoke pointedly about the campaign he’s run since early 2023, one that’s fueled primarily by an almost emotional belief in best practices. Before convictions. Before bindovers. “That is not the way my opponent has run the office. That is not the way we have seen the office run.”

    Ahn added, “What you’ve seen here today is a stark contrast in approach.”

    O’Malley, in his concluding thoughts, seemed to shrug in his swivel chair. Experience, he said. Managment. “The reality is, Matt’s never had a case,” he said. “He’s never worked with law enforcement. He has no idea what data we use. He has no idea what we do with the data.”

    Both candidates will have roughly a month of campaigning before the county primary on March 19. The seat itself will be decided in November’s general election.

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