Dear Council President Griffin and Mr. Epstein, I am writing to you to provide public input on the reauthorization of Cleveland’s Residential Tax Abatement program. I have read thoroughly and with great interest the April 15 report and recommendations of the Community Development Working Group and the 2020 Study and…

My wife and I moved to Little Italy in Cleveland almost a decade ago after living not far away in the same house in Cleveland Heights for nearly forty years. We downsized and sought a more walkable, urban environment, and on balance we really like it here. Not long after…

I am hopeful a new era of civic activism is upon us. People here in Cleveland are totally fed up with our government squandering tax dollars with boondoggle projects as power broker attorneys, developers, consultants and contractors get fat on our money with rapacious and resident subsidized public and private…

Dear Councilman Griffin, Mr. Epstein and Ms. Huang, I am writing to express my shock and concern at the manner with which the Board of Zoning Appeals (BOZA) on March 21, 2022 reached its decision to deny a request for rehearing / reconsideration by the Hessler Community regarding the zoning…

If you don’t remember or have knowledge of that unfortunate, civically nauseating, obsequious and corporately driven slogan, consider yourself lucky. Since the silly misnomer was coined in the early eerie eighties, Cleveland and Cuyahoga County have consistently lost population, so that should give you a pretty good idea of how…

Dear Cleveland Councilman Blaine Griffin and Mr. Jeff Epstein, City of Cleveland Chief Integrated Development Officer, The links below are to Senator Sherrod Brown’s recent remarks about private equity’s predatory practices in the housing market here and around the country and an excellent article that appeared today in Cleveland.com about…

Thank you, Councilman Griffin, for the opportunity to share my observations and suggestions with you and the Mayor’s Action Center on the issues of affordable housing and private sector investment in the City of Cleveland (City.) I spent 40 years in management positions in the environmental business and think I…

I read recently about two new “market rate” apartment buildings proposed for the Hough neighborhood near us. Hough is a Cleveland neighborhood that is classically described as “underserved,’’ as they say here in the polite civic parlance. Hough’s been neglected because many poor people live there, and poor people have…

In a span of just nine days around Christmas this year there were four car-jackings at gun point here in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland. In one incident a young woman was shot twice when her car was stolen; it appears she’s going to be okay. The suspect’s age…