Making an In-Person Public Comment at An Upcoming Council Meeting
Council welcomes public comments at each regularly scheduled Monday evening Council meeting.
If you are interested in speaking at a Cleveland City Council, please read the revised rules and procedures for public comments and fill out the online form below.
Submitting a Registration to Speak
Anyone who is interested in addressing Cleveland City Council at a public meeting must register with City Council prior to that meeting.
Registrations may be submitted:
- By using the online form below
- In person at Cleveland City Hall, Room 220, 601 Lakeside Avenue NE. Paper forms are available to register.
- By downloading this form, filling it out, and emailing it to publiccomment@clevelandcitycouncil.gov or dropping it off at Council offices.
Registration Periods
Registrations will ONLY be accepted between Noon on Wednesday and 2:00 pm on the same day as a regularly scheduled Monday evening Council Meeting.
Council allows no more than 10 people to comment at its regularly scheduled Monday night meetings. Registration will close as soon as the first 10 people sign up. Each registrant will be allotted 3 minutes to speak.
Registrations will only be accepted for making comments at the next regular meeting; registrations for any future meeting will not be accepted until the Wednesday before the meeting. Early, incomplete, or false registrations will be rejected.
Notice of Registration
If your registration is successful, you will be notified by email or phone.
Accommodations
If you need assistance due to a language barrier or disability, please let us know at least three (3) days in advance by going here to make a request.
Attending Council Meetings
Cleveland City Council meetings are held in the Council Chamber on the second floor of Cleveland City Hall, 601 Lakeside Avenue, East.
Visitors may park for free at the upper lot behind City Hall after 5:00 pm on days when Council is meeting.
Public Record
Please remember that all registration information and public comments are public records and can be subject to public record requests.
Decorum
Cleveland City Council must maintain orderly, efficient, and productive meetings to ensure the important business of city government is completed. Council has developed a set of rules and procedures that allow the public to be heard in a fair and orderly manner. These rules and procedures apply to all speakers, and Council does not discriminate based on the speaker's identity or viewpoint or the content of the speech. Please read Council's revised rules and procedures for public comments before you register and before you appear before City Council.
Please note: Anyone attending a Cleveland City Council meeting is prohibited from engaging in any action or behavior that substantially interrupts, delays, or disturbs the due conduct of the proceedings of the Council; such conduct includes but is not limited to: handclapping, stomping of feet, whistling, making other loud noises, yelling, or similar demonstrations. Any person who violates any of the above may be immediately removed from the Council Chamber.
Rules for Speakers
- Speakers may not yield their time to other speakers.
- Speakers shall only address the topic they registered to speak about.
- Speakers' comments shall not be frivolous or repetitive.
- Speakers shall not use language that is obscene or likely to produce imminent unlawful action.
- Speakers shall address all comments to the presiding officer.
Prohibited Items
- Signs, posters, banners, placards, or similar items
- Food and drink
Make a Comment In Person at a Council Meeting
To sign up to speak during the registration period (Noon Wednesday through 2:00 pm Monday before Council Meetings) click this button.
You will be notified by email or phone if you are one of the ten people who will speak.
Make a Comment Online
If you would rather submit your comments in writing, please fill out the form below.
Written public comments will be published on this page and delivered to all Councilmembers before the next full Council Meeting after they have been submitted.
Public Comments
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I know there is new legislation being proposed that allows them to be legal, but limits the number per street. Ideally, you would just enforce the current law and get rid of them, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Something must be done to protect the quality of life for residents. These short term rentals are ruining our neighborhood, and I'm sure many others.
While we do not speak for all our neighbors and acquaintances in Little Italy, we can assure that many we know have profound concerns about the manner and substance of the SID proposal and petition process. It would be highly inaccurate for City Council to believe, as some SID proponents appear to have alleged, that there is overwhelming community support for the SID. That may be true for certain and select types of property ownership in Little Italy such as commercial, institutional or investor owned properties, but it is not universally true for property owners that occupy their own homes here.
It is also inaccurate and demeaning to label resident homeowners that do not 100% agree with the autocratic imposition of the SID on them as a “disgruntled” or “emotional” minority, as some SID proponents would apparently like City Council to believe. The fact is our property rights are being infringed upon against our will by property owners with more power than we have, and we don’t care for it.
At base level, while it appears the approach to include resident homeowners in the SID may be legal, being legal does not make it right and it is not at all consistent with the way SID’s have been typically set up in Northeast Ohio, which is that they include commercial property owners and exempt residential homeowners.
Why then is Little Italy so intent on penalizing resident home ownership in this way? Because the City of Cleveland is incapable of delivering adequate policing and reasonable neighborhood amenities? Because the merchants want policing and certain things done in a way that better serves their businesses? Because the University wants its student housing to reside in a favored and protected area? It is illogical, impractical and autocratic to include residential homes in the SID without their consent and will only serve to discourage homeownership in Little Italy. Big property owners are imposing their will on and picking the pockets of small ones in Little Italy’s SID, which amounts to taxation without representation for resident homeowners who do not want to pay for a SID designed and delivered by big property owners.
So it is that many resident homeowners we know believe that the manner and substance of the SID implementation is undemocratic, unfair and inequitable to private homeowners that actually live here in Little Italy, many for generations. One of our neighbors put it far more succinctly than we have here saying about the SID proposal, “What a rip-off!” What SID proponents demean as disgruntled and emotional is, in our view, closer to righteous indignation from resident property owners who are being disenfranchised by the SID and bullied by the powerful.
We also think it’s important, then, to be very clear about one thing: the Little Italy SID proposal creates an additional property tax. We think it best to call it what it is: the SID imposes an additional tax to own property in Little Italy.
We are supportive of the fine work the University Circle Police Department (UCPD) has done in Little Italy and would welcome new funding that would address needed beautification projects like more trees. In particular, the UCPD presence in Little Italy has become a welcome asset to the community that should be maintained. We without question feel safer with UCPD here in Little Italy.
Nonetheless, we are not entirely enthusiastic about being forced to pay for and thus depend on a private police force to meet basic community safety expectations, and it bothers us that we are being forced to pay an additional tax beyond the very significant taxes we already pay just to get adequate policing and reasonable beautification projects for the neighborhood. It is indeed unfortunate that the existing tax structure does not provide sufficient resources for the City of Cleveland (City) to deliver basic safety and environmental protection services like adequate policing and growing the protective tree canopy.
While we support the excellent work of the UCPD in Little Italy and neighborhood beautification projects, we find it hard to support a new and inequitable tax that especially disenfranchises older homeowners on a fixed income and preferentially benefits the business / commercial community and nonprofit property owners that extract economic value from the Little Italy community daily. Resident homeowners only realize economic value from their home when they sell and leave, and a special tax unique to Little Italy encourages existing homeowners to do just that. It also acts as a disincentive to buy a home in Little Italy.
To be clear, if this tax is imposed on existing resident homeowners without their consent, many will undoubtedly soon be grappling with a decision to remain in Little Italy or leave.
To the extent that the SID Tax is imposed in Little Italy, we believe it must be equitable and a progressive rather than regressive tax, meaning that those that are in a position to should absorb the largest share of the burden. Commercial enterprises, private equity investor property owners from afar, well-funded non-profit institutions and absentee landlords that extract economic value and substantial profits from Little Italy’s location, history, heritage and culture should be directly targeted to pay an amount that recognizes the massive economic benefit they enjoy from exploiting their presence in Little Italy. Commercial concerns, absentee landlords and nonprofits extract economic value from the neighborhood every day and therefore preferentially benefit from the services the SID Tax will fund. They should absolutely pay the bulk of or all of this tax.
Little Italy’s owner-occupied homes should be given a significant break or be exempted entirely from the taxation scheme, as is typically the case when SID’s are established, in recognition of the community stability they provide, unlike the remote owners, investors and transient residents that do not make the significant long term financial, sweat equity and emotional investments homeowners make. Older homeowners desperately trying to stay in their homes whose property taxes have skyrocketed recently need to be entirely exempted from the Little Italy SID Tax.
It also seems clear that residential homeowners will be paying a disproportionate share of the total budget while commercial enterprises and huge nonprofit institutions owning large sections of property are getting a massive subsidy. Commercial enterprises and nonprofits have the ability to increase their revenue and reduce their expenses to cover the new tax, while homeowners don’t, many of whom are retired, older and on a fixed income.
With a Little Italy SID Tax, owner-occupied residential properties will unquestionably be less attractive to purchase in Little Italy than before. We are concerned that an additional tax levied on Little Italy homes will discourage home buying by individuals and home improvements that increase property values and will only encourage even more property acquisition by non-profit institutions, corporations and investors (including private equity) looking to make a financial killing in Little Italy, creating even more instability in the community than they already have to date.
It also concerns us that community outreach regarding the SID Tax may not have directly touched all owner occupied homeowners so they truly understand that their property taxes will increase dramatically. While the public participation may have met the letter of the law, more must be done to educate all resident homeowners directly on exactly how much their taxes will increase and how much commercial and non-profit interests will pay by comparison.
To reiterate, City Council then should not assume there is broad-based community support for this SID Tax with respect to homeowner residents, simply because LIRC is representing that many large and commercial property owners support it, or because large property owners, many of whom are institutional and commercial, have simply overwhelmed the minority and underrepresented voices of small private property owners. Only robust public participation and comprehensive public education directly to resident homeowners will reveal the entire community’s true views of the SID Tax.
We also have fundamental concerns about authorizing a new, unelected taxing authority locally (the Little Italy SID) to levy taxes on all property owners for services and projects that in our estimation will primarily benefit corporate, nonprofit, private equity investor, absentee and mercantile landowners. If this new taxing authority and its attendant bureaucracy is approved, we are concerned that it is the opening of a highly uncertain Pandora’s box, and there’s no telling how these non-residential entities will then find new and creative ways to defray their operating costs onto the entire community, and especially residential, owner-occupied property owners, who can least afford an additional cost specific to living in Little Italy. Property owners in Little Italy need to think long and hard about whether they really want to approve this additional taxing authority and its attendant bureaucracy in Little Italy to pay for safety services and beautification projects we already pay for and expect but do not receive the full measure of from the City of Cleveland.
When we moved to Little Italy 12 years ago, we relied on the existing Little Italy Master Plan that expressed a preference for development of owner-occupied resident housing in Little Italy to stabilize the neighborhood. Soon after we moved here, a study was conducted by Cleveland State University and the Cleveland Foundation that reiterated the same priority for development of owner-occupied resident housing as a critical element to a thriving Little Italy. But that hasn’t happened. The great majority of the housing development since we moved here has been tax-abated luxury rental housing, built largely by outside investor developers that do not live here. Some luxury condos were built.
As property owners occupying their residence, whose property taxes have shot up dramatically in the last 12 years, we believe our interests as community members in Little Italy are essentially ignored and are certainly less of a priority than those of merchants, investor developers, large non-profits and landlords, many of whom do not even live here. We have a serious concern that the SID and its taxes will reflect their priorities going forward and the historical and current bias we feel against the interests of owner-occupied residential property owners.
All efforts should be made to explore alternative funding mechanisms. A broad-based, one size fits all additional property tax, especially on owner-occupied residential property owners, many of whom are retired, elderly and living on a fixed income, is not an equitable way to pay for policing and beautification of the neighborhood, in our opinion. In fact, we believe it is a top down, autocratic power play by large property owners, more reminiscent of feudal than democratic governance. It also smacks of exclusivity by design and feeds the reputation of exclusion that Little Italy has tried for decades to overcome.
Respectfully,
Joan and Arthur Hargate
Edgehill Rd., Little Italy
Submissions are accepted up to 5 hours before a hearing if time slots are available