ReportWire

Tag: Slavic Village

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

    [ad_1]

    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.”

    Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.

    Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

    [ad_2]

    Mark Oprea

    Source link

  • With SNAP Benefit Freeze, Clevelanders Face Question of How to Feed Themselves, and Their Pets – Cleveland Scene

    [ad_1]

    After a little more than two decades working as a software engineer, making well into the six figures and even owning his own company, Jay found himself unemployed and out of a job in January, a byproduct of AI.

    That began an era of loss. Job applications went unanswered. His savings dwindled while trying to keep up with his and his wife’s home in Brooklyn. He lost his car insurance. He forever gave up his confidence in the White House. “I voted for Trump,” Jay, 41, told Scene. “This is my fault.”

    By August, Jay’s pride fizzled. He needed help. He applied to the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, casually known as food stamps, and got approved for $759 a month, to feed himself, his wife and their three-year-old daughter. (They used the funds mostly on pasta and frozen meatballs.)

    Yet, in light of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s impending freeze on SNAP funds come Nov. 1, Jay now has another bundle of anxiety: How to feed his cat, Nebula, and his two dogs, Sandy and Jinx.

    “It costs a ton already,” Jay said in a phone call. “I can’t even say. I hunt down which of the dollar stores has the cheapest dog food and cat food. But it adds up; it’s not cheap.”

    Democrats and Republicans are currently, as of Friday, in a standstill as far what it will take to end what’s been so far the second-longest government shutdown in U.S. history, at 30 days and counting.

    Cities, counties and states are trying to make up at least some of the difference, but SNAP benefits are expensive, and more than 42 million Americans rely on them. In Cuyahoga County, there are some 190,000 reidents who need their EBT cards to keep pantries and refrigerators stocked.

    As of September, SNAP gives its receivers up to $297 a month per person, which amounts to $9 a day, or roughly $3 per meal. But throw two teenagers in the mix, maybe a border collie or two, a hamster and a goldfish, and those leaning on D.C. to keep them alive this fall are heading towards the previously unthinkable.

    “People are gonna have to make a choice, right?” Anne Konarski, a SNAP policy expert who studies hunger for a Cleveland nonprofit and owns three dogs, said. “Do you feed your kids or do you feed your pets?”

    In interviews with four local pet food pantries, all of them told Scene that they’ve strengthened their relationship with regional food banks and the Hunger Network, the largest food distributor in Cleveland, in the past year—both out of necessity and an empathy for pet owners that walk in on a routine basis.

    A routine that’s become more dire in the past week or so, as a subset of their clientele wonder how they’re going to make it to Thanksgiving while keeping their pets healthy and nourished to see December. Or, as some expressed to Scene, whether they might be forced to give them up to a local shelter, many of which are already at capacity and facing budget issues of their own, or let them loose on the street.

    Volunteers at Neighborhood Pets, a food pantry in Slavic Village, sorted out dried dog food to hand out to clientele on Thursday. Credit: Mark Oprea
    Taymar Ethington, a Slavic Village resident on SNAP, and her two boys at Neighborhood Pets. Credit: Mark Oprea

    “They can and will turn to animal shelters and say, ‘I can’t afford my pet anymore’,” Sharon Harvey, president of the Cleveland Animal Protective League, said. “Or, ‘If you can’t help me with what I need for my pet, can you take it and find it a new home?’”

    Harvey, like the others that bring in boxes of food, relies primarily on donations to bag and distribute food to pet owners. Times have gotten harder. Harvey helped dole out 17 tons of pet food last year; near the end of September, they had already sent out 20 tons in 2025.

    The same is true for Wayne Campbell, who’s been running Paws For Purpose’s pet food pantry in Lake County for the past five years.

    Donors haven’t been as reliable this year, he said. And as a result, PFP is in more need of supply (amid climbing grocery costs) and facing more demand.

    All while trying to keep true to PFP’s mission: keep pets out of and away from shelters.

    “I mean, we used to give out 80 bags of cat food, 80 bags of dog food with dry treats and canned food, and we’re up to about 160 now of each,” he said. “It’s just, you know, the need is getting greater and greater.”

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Thursday signed an executive order providing $25 million in emergency relief in the face of the impending food disaster, with $7 million going to food banks and $18 million going to about 63,000 Ohioans directly. But it’s a small drop in the bucket. About $34 million would be needed to fully fund just Cuyahoga County’s portion of SNAP benefits for November.

    Cleveland and Cuyahoga County officials are convening Friday morning to announce what will be their proposal to help cover the gap left by the SNAP freeze. Leaders will, a press release read, “discuss the urgency of addressing the needs of Cuyahoga County residents.”

    As for their pets?

    Over in Slavic Village on Thursday afternoon, Becca Britton helped lug in boxes of canned tuna and dried dog food, kibbles her volunteers soon scooped into Ziploc bags and handed out to the dozen or so waiting in line in the lobby. (A quarter of which were on SNAP.)

    “It’s heartbreaking, even just right now,” Britton said, as her volunteers shuffled around her, some bagging pellets or tending to clientele. “We just don’t know. But I do think—sad as it is to say—that it’s going to get to the point where people are going to have to surrender their pets.”

    Close by was Taymar Ethington and her two boys, who stopped by Neighborhood Pets on Thursday to pick up food, toys and a leash for their puppy, Prince.

    Ethington, a single mom living at a nearby apartment building, said the up-in-the-air situation with SNAP has propelled her to extend her gathering outward: to the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, to churches, to the Salvation Army. She even set up a pantry nook in her building to help out fellow SNAP receipients.

    “I’ve been stocking my pantry, filling up my deep freezer,” she told Scene, as her boys waited nearby. “Things like that. Filling up my canned goods.”

    As for Prince, Ethington said he’s going nowhere.

    “He’s just a little puppy,” she said. “He doesn’t cost too much to feed.”

    Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.

    Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

    [ad_2]

    Mark Oprea

    Source link