JANUARY 3, 2012
All council members were present.
DECEMBER 19, 2011
All council members were present.
On Jan. 3, the first city council meeting of 2012, Edward Kelley was re-elected mayor of Cleveland Heights by his city council peers. Council Member Dennis Wilcox was elected vice mayor.
In a prepared statement, Mayor Kelley said, “As we look ahead to the next two years, we, as a city council, and every city employee must be prepared to meet our challenges head on, and give an effort of 1,000 percent. We must be proactive and not reactive. The status quo is no longer good enough and should not be accepted as we move forward.”
At the final 2011 meeting of the Cleveland Heights City Council, Council Member Ken Montlack was honored for his 24 years of service.
“Over the years, Ken has always looked for solutions to any issues that our city has faced,” said Mayor Ed Kelley. “His goal has been to make our Cleveland Heights community the best that it could be.”
During his six terms, which spanned the administrations of four Cleveland Heights mayors, Montlack chaired all six of the council committees. “On each committee he has done his best for our community,” said Kelley, who went on to highlight Montlack’s key contributions to each.
DECEMBER 5, 2011
Council Member Dennis R. Wilcox was absent.
NOVEMBER 21, 2011
All council members were present.
Almost a year after it was supposed to begin, the Taylor Road resurfacing project is still a contentious matter for some Taylor Road residents.
On Nov. 17, officials from Cleveland Heights and representatives from the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) provided details about the Taylor Road project and answered questions from a crowd of about 50 residents at city hall.
The City of Cleveland Heights has issued a Request for Development Proposal (RFDP) for the vacant site at Meadowbrook Boulevard and Lee Road. According to the RFDP, the city is seeking a project of landmark quality with uses that increase the district’s vitality and significantly add to the city’s tax base.
The City of Cleveland Heights and the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) will hold a public meeting to discuss the upcoming Taylor Road improvement project on Nov. 17, from 7 to 9 p.m., at Cleveland Heights City Hall, 40 Severance Circle.
NOVEMBER 7, 2011
All council members were present.
OCTOBER 17, 2011
All council members were present.
Recent disturbances involving rowdy or violent youth have left many Cleveland Heights residents wondering how they can avoid becoming victims and how they can keep their homes and neighborhoods safe.
In a recent conversation, Jeffrey Robertson, chief of Cleveland Heights Division of Police, repeatedly emphasized two words, "Call us." Chief Robertson clarified that on-going investigations and/or prosecutions often mean that only certain details can be made public. A critical part of his department’s dialogue is the exchange of information that occurs as the situation unfolds.
In her 18 years on Cleveland Heights City Council, Vice Mayor Phyllis L. Evans has always balanced her council responsibilities with a full-time job as a certified lab technologist for University Hospitals.
The quiet buzz of voices fills the room at the conclusion of the Oct. 4 meeting of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Board of Education. As people slowly begin to filter out, board president Eric Coble remains, laughing and talking with other board members and various community members in attendance.
It is rare to encounter someone with a background as diverse as that of Democratic Cleveland Heights City Council candidate Keba Sylla.
Jason Stein, the youngest member of Cleveland Heights City Council, was born and raised in Cleveland Heights. Involved and affiliated in multiple organizations around the community, Stein is well known for his advocacy for regionalism.
You may see her training for a half or full marathon, riding her bike in promotion of the Cleveland Heights Bicycle Coalition, writing articles for The Heights Observer, or advocating for parts of Cleveland Heights to be recognized as historic districts.
The former president of the Cleveland Heights-Univeristy Heights Board of Education knows what she wants. Nancy Peppler, currently a member of the board, is running for re-election on Nov. 8.
Politics was never a foreign subject to Cleveland Heights Councilman Dennis Wilcox. A student president in high school, he moved on to Case Western Reserve University as a political science major. He then went to law school at Ohio State University.
Bright orange leaves fell beneath a gray sky as Cleveland Heights City Council candidate Jeff Coryell canvassed door-to-door on Oct. 10. With extra absentee ballots and campaign signs in tow, Coryell met with some of the residents of Forest Hills neighborhood.
While the other six candidates vying for Cleveland Heights City Council used their opening statements to persuade the audience why they would be successful additions or returnees to council, Mike Gaynier took a different approach at the Oct. 6 forum at the Cleveland Heights Community Center.
Plans Senior-Living Campus with Country Club Amenities
First Interstate Properties Ltd. today announced it has finalized the purchase of more than 90 acres of the former Oakwood Country Club in Cleveland Heights. The parcel, located west of Warrensville Center Road and south of Oakwood Drive, includes the former clubhouse and related country club facilities.
OCTOBER 3, 2011
All council members were present.
SEPTEMBER 19, 2011
All council members were present.
The new Mayfield Road bus shelters at Coventry Road and at Warrensville Center Road are the first of their kind in the region. The shelters are a creative project involving RTA, the City of Cleveland Heights and a company called Solar Impact. Thanks to Mayor Ed Kelley’s tireless efforts, the city received a $100,000 Federal Transportation Administration grant through RTA. Those funds paid for the design, fabrication and installation of the two prototype bus shelters.
On Sept. 12, the City of Cleveland Heights and Cleveland State University's Monte Ahuja College of Business announced a partnership for the establishment of a Small Business Development Center to be located at Cleveland HeightsCity Hall. The center's mission is to advance economic development activities for small-to-medium sized businesses by providing them with management and technical assistance, face-to-face consulting, financial projections and information on how to obtain bank financing.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2011
Mayor Edward J. Kelley was absent.
Council members Phyllis Evans and Kenneith Montlack and Vice Mayor, Bonita W. Caplan were absent.
There will be at least one new face on council in January 2012. Although the four nonincumbents running agree on some things, each would bring a different perspective to council.
Mary Dunbar is running for council again, after losing her 2009 bid by 219 votes. A 41-year resident of Cleveland Heights who spent 22 years working in investor relations, she believes her knowledge of the community, as well as her financial and communications expertise would make her an effective council member. "I’m used to managing projects and having them come in on budget," she said.
Since March, the Cleveland Heights Police Department has been giving residents an opportunity to meet with officers through its Meet Your Police program. Every Thursday night, the department hosts an open meeting in the basement of city hall, where community members can discuss their concerns with the two officers present.
Despite the diversity of disturbances to which officers regularly respond, one topic has dominated recent Meet Your Police sessions: unruly youth. Investigator Falisa Barry, the department representative at the Aug. 11 meeting, said "the chief complaints right now are juvenile complaints."
AUGUST 1, 2011
JULY 18, 2011
At a public meeting on Aug. 15, Cleveland Heights City Council voted unanimously to pass an ordinance that amended the zoning code “to adopt regulations for adaptive reuse of existing institutional and other non-residential buildings in residential districts.”
Planning and Development Committee Chair Dennis Wilcox introduced the ordinance, which passed with a 4-0 vote (three council members were absent) on its second read. The legislation was amended after citizens made “quite a few comments about this piece of legislation," Wilcox said.
Longtime Cleveland Heights resident Ken Hadden thinks city officials targeted him for criminal prosecution, he said at the city council meeting on Aug. 15.
Hadden, who said he has lived in Cleveland Heights for more than 20 years, was acquitted on Aug. 10 after a three-day trial for charges of assault from an incident that took place at the Cleveland Heights Community Center on Nov. 13, 2010.
Working as a volunteer hockey coach, Hadden was in the locker room that evening when he heard a commotion in the next room, he said. He saw two kids fighting and broke up the scuffle by grabbing the attacker’s shoulders and pulling him away, he said. The parents of the child claimed that Hadden had strangled the youth, and Cleveland Heights Prosecutor Kim Segebarth pressed charges of assault.
With Kenneth Montlack’s decision not to seek reelection to the Cleveland Heights City Council, there will be at least one new face on council in 2012—and two council members who are not running have some ideas about what they’re looking for in a new teammate.
Council Member Cheryl Stephens, who was elected in 2009, said "attention to the needs of our community" is the most important quality for a council member to possess. "That means that when other people go home you’re still willing to listen and talk to people," she said. "You’ve got to make time for everyone in Cleveland Heights."
Cleveland Heights Vice Mayor Phyllis Evans will run to retain her seat on Cleveland Heights City Council, she said.
Evans, 66, chairs the community relations and recreation committee. She is in her fifth term on council, having been appointed in February 1993 to fill a vacant seat after Barbara Boyd resigned, and was officially elected for the first time to serve the remaining two years of Boyd’s term that November.
Tensions were high between city officials and citizens at a public hearing Aug. 8 that centered on proposed amendments to the Cleveland Heights Zoning Code.
The tension rose in the context of whether City Council should invoke the emergency clause to pass a change in zoning legislation – and how that emergency clause would impact development of the Cleveland Heights portion of the former Oakwood Country Club.
Cleveland Heights city council member Kenneth Montlack has announced that he will not run to keep his seat in the city council election this November.
“A person with new perspectives, new different ways of looking at things . . . would be helpful for the city,” said Montlack, whose term expires Dec. 31.
Cleveland Heights resident Kevin Ziegler has announced he will run for city council in the fall election.
Ziegler, 26, is a fifth-generation resident of Greater Cleveland and has lived in Cleveland Heights for four years. He works at Cleveland Clinic as manager of communications and public affairs. Ziegler is a member of the Cleveland Heights Citizens Advisory Committee, which advises city council on the use of $1.5 million of federal community development block grant funds awarded annually.
FutureHeights is partnering with the League of Women Voters (LWV) for the 2011 edition of the voters guide. The LWV is a trusted source of information, and compiles an annual voters guide. Future Heights, which publishes the Heights Observer, and the LWV are both nonpartisan organizations that do not endorse candidates. The organizations are working together to avoid duplicating information. Both have produced voter guides in the past.
Open Doors Academy, a nonprofit out-of-school-hours program for local youth, hosted a community forum on July 14, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The forum, moderated by Open Doors’ executive director Annemarie Grassi, provided an opportunity for young people to express their views on Cleveland Heights’s new curfew policy and the incidents leading up to its enactment. The curfew, which has generated some controversy, restricts the presence of minors in the Coventry and Cedar Lee commercial districts after 6 p.m.
As the bidding for the Taylor Road construction project began on July 21, at least one local resident was unhappy with the plans.
Douglas Whipple, a Taylor Road resident, is upset both by the fact that the planned renovations will not include extending the curb on the residential west side of the street and by what he believes was a lack of transparency by city officials in making the decision.
JULY 5, 2011
Cleveland Heights City Council passed a budget for the 2012 fiscal year at the council meeting on July 18. It includes nearly $800,000 in cuts from the 2011 fiscal year.
The budget resolution, introduced by Cheryl Stephens, chair of the finance committee, and passed by unanimous 7-0 vote, included a budget of $40,201,515—a decrease of $792,102 from the 2011 budget of $40,993,617.
A group calling itself the Imperial Women held a protest against the recently passed special curfew ordinances in front of Cleveland Heights City Hall before the city council meeting, July 18.
About a dozen protesters of varying ages, races and genders gathered outside the building shortly after 7 p.m., carrying signs and chanting things like, “No justice, no peace!” before heading inside to the council meeting.
Mike Gaynier has announced his candidacy for Cleveland Heights City Council. Gaynier is currently board president of Cleveland Heights’s Home Repair Resource Center (HRRC), and a senior consultant for creativechange.biz, focused on executive coaching, leadership development, cultural competence, and helping nonprofits improve performance.
Leading HRRC the past three years, Gaynier has worked to protect and preserve neighborhoods—helping to prevent foreclosures, reduce vacancies and rehabilitate neglected properties— to support diversity and sustainability in Cleveland Heights.
About 150 people filled a meeting room at the Lee Road Library for a Heights Community Congress forum to discuss the recent problems with flash mobs and the new Special Curfew Districts at Coventry Village and Cedar-Lee, July 13.
Topics of discussion ranged from issues of flash mobs and social media to safety and security to the fairness and effectiveness of the new curfew laws. Kasey Greer, Heights Community Congress executive director, facilitated the discussion by posing questions to the audience, which included such local officials as Cuyahoga County Council Member Julian Rogers and Cleveland Heights Mayor Edward Kelley.
JUNE 20, 2011
Cleveland Heights City Council unanimously voted to implement changes to the Minors’ Curfew ordinance at the regularly scheduled council meeting on July 5.
The amendments, intended to make the curfew law less restrictive after council designated the Coventry Village and Cedar Lee business districts as Special Curfew Areas six days earlier, expand the Curfew Exceptions clause in the ordinance.
Heights Community Congress, in partnership with Heights Libraries, will host a community dialogue to talk about youth issues in the community. The event, “Community Solutions: How do we bridge the gap between perception and reality,” will be held from 7 to 9 p.m., Wednesday, July 13, at the Lee Road Library, 2345 Lee Road. It is free and open to the public.
A new ordinance passed June 29 at a special meeting of Cleveland Heights City Council prohibits minors from being on public grounds in the Coventry Village and Cedar-Lee business districts after 6 p.m. and institutes fines for parents of children who are found to be out after curfew, effective immediately.
The legislation was drafted in response to “an accelerating problem of unsupervised youth” over the last few months. While the issue was highlighted by an incident of overcrowding and confusion that resulted in 16 arrests at the Coventry Street Fair on June 26, council members and citizens emphasized that the issue of flash mobs disrupting the business districts is a recurring one.
The first Coventry Street Fair of the summer ended on a bad note when a disturbance by a flash mob broke out in the early evening of June 26, resulting in 16 arrests.
“Every bit of 25,000” people attended what started out as “probably the best fair we’ve ever had,” said Steve Presser, owner of Big Fun. “The vibe on the street was great… People were having a wonderful time.”
According to Presser, who was one of the event’s organizers, two small fights between teenagers broke out on the street shortly before 6 p.m., the fair’s closing time. As the merchants started to pack up their booths, “it became an issue… They had to move those kids out.”
JUNE 6, 2011
Cleveland Heights City Council Member Dennis Wilcox became the first sitting member of council to officially announce his candidacy for reelection, June 9.
Wilcox is chair of the Planning and Development Committee, vice chair of the Finance Committee and a member of the Municipal Services Committee. He is seeking his fourth term on council.
Wilcox said he wants to be re-elected because “there’s a lot to do.” He wants to see projects he has worked on, such as the new Strategic Development Plan and the Green Zoning initiative, come to fruition.
“I think I’ve proven that I have good judgment,” Wilcox said. He cited “balancing the budget” and “continuing to develop good city services” in the midst of the economic downturn as his best accomplishments on council.
“It has been an honor to serve the residents of this great and diverse city,” Wilcox said in a press release. "I look forward to again engaging with the voters on the issues of concern to them.”
MAY 16, 2011
Newly appointed Cleveland Heights City Councilman Jason Stein was sworn in at the regularly scheduled Cleveland Heights City Council meeting, June 6.
Stein, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat in 2009, was chosen by the remaining city council members to fill the vacancy left by Mark Tumeo, who resigned his seat after accepting a position at the University of North Florida.
The audience filled the extra seats provided by City Hall staff and spilled out in the adjacent hallway as the meeting began. After the roll was taken—the other six council members were present, as was Tumeo—Mayor Edward Kelley announced that Stein was to be inducted.
Jason Stein will likely be appointed to fill the city council seat vacated by Mark Tumeo. According to Cleveland Heights Mayor Ed Kelley, the city received 18 applications from people seeking to fill the vacancy and interviewed six candidates for the position.
“All of the candidates interviewed very well and would have brought strong skills to council,” said Kelley. “Jason brings financial expertise. He is a homegrown product, has done a lot of work in the community, and he brings a younger perspective to council.”
Kelley also said that Stein will add the council’s diversity. “Just as Mark Tumeo was the first gay member of council, Jason may be the first Orthodox Jewish person on council.”
About 50 citizens from Cleveland Heights, University Heights, South Euclid and other communities held signs in front of South Euclid City Hall on May 25 to protest the development of the former Oakwood Country Club.
The protests were a prelude to a public hearing held by the city that evening to hear residents’ comments about the proposed development. The city is required by law to hold such a hearing before voting whether to rezone the propoerty from residential to commercial use. The property was purchased by First Interstate Properties in December 2010.
Aiyanna Adorjan, a fourth grader at Noble Elementary School in Cleveland Heights, joined the protest “to help people to vote to keep Oakwood green and not take away nature for animals.”
Council Member Kenneth Montlack introduced three resolutions at the May 16 city council meeting that declared properties on Coventry Road to be public nuisances. A fourth resolution declared a Northcliffe Road property to be a nuisance. All four resolutions, which passed unanimously, authorized abatement of the nuisance--likely to lead to demolition of the houses.
Photos of each property were displayed at the meeting to illustrate the severe structural issues. While three of the properties are located in close proximity on the same street, Rick Wagner, manager of housing programs for Cleveland Heights, declined to frame it as a neighborhood issue.
The City of Cleveland Heights has received applications from 18 people seeking appointment to fill the seat vacated by former Council Member Mark Tumeo.
Tumeo’s last council meeting was May 16. He left the area to serve as dean of engineering at the University of North Florida.
Cleveland Heights Mayor Ed Kelley said that he and the council are narrowing down the list of applicants to interview based on their written applications. He explained that because of the large number of applicants, it would be impossible to interview each one.