The ideas expressed in City Club forums are those of the speakers and not of the City Club of Cleveland.

Ideas stream public media or their sponsors.

Production and distribution of City Club forums and ideas.

Stream.

Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black fond of Greater Cleveland incorporated.

Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, July 18th, and I'm Tony Coyne, the president and managing partner of Mansour Gavin.

And I'm pleased to introduce today's forum.

Right now, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment in our nation's political landscape, one where distrust and division have shaped public perception.

The government's role in addressing our community's most pressing and complex challenges is changing.

In topics like housing, transportation, social equity are all part of a growing national conversation and often contentious.

At the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, they believe land is more than just physical space.

It's a powerful tool for change.

Through fact based research, education, and advocacy, the Institute explores creative, practical ways to use and steward land to address the economic and social environmental issues shaping our future.

Today, we're joined by Christine McIntosh, planning manager for the City of Euclid.

Gillian Prater-Lee, program assistant at Local Initiative Support Corporation.

We often know as Lisk and our moderator, George McCarthy, the president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

They will be talking about the intersection of land leadership, policy and people, and how investing in civic trust and engagement can lead to meaningful progress.

If you like to text the question to our speakers, please text it to (330)541-5794.

That's (330)541-5794, and the city club staff will try to work it into the program.

Now, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Christine McIntosh, Gillian Prater-Lee and George McCarthy.

Well, thank you so much, Tony.

And in full disclosure, Tony was a long term board member of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

And we really enjoyed and learned a lot from his guidance.

So thank you so much, Tony.

All right.

So, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, we work all over the world and our primary audience is government.

We work with local, state, provincial and national governments all over the world, telling them, helping to find ways to use land to address other big issues, like, I don't know, the climate crisis or how to protect a habitat for endangered species, the little things.

And so for us, what we've really been able what we've been observing, particularly the United States, but really all over the world is a disturbing trend in which we're really pressing our local governments to do very much more, with very much less.

So we hope to take you on a little journey today to, really well, depress the hell out of you.

And then maybe show you some light at the end of the tunnel.

So I'm the depressing one.

And to my left is is the, leading light.

Okay, so, but just to set the stage, I just want to talk to you a little bit about, a perfect storm that we're facing.

Right now.

And, it's kind of.

It unfolds in three pieces, right in the first piece.

We've inherited, decades of underinvestment in infrastructure in the United States right now, the, 2025 report card on America's infrastructure that's produced every four years by the American Society of Civil Engineers, grades our national infrastructure at a C. And as it turns out, that's the highest grade we've gotten in about, I don't know, almost since they've started using that grading system.

Right.

The last time in 1990.

It's since 1998.

So in, in 2021, we got a C-minus or, you know, a little bit better in the 2017, we got a D plus, right?

And they look at everything from bridges and roads and tunnels and everything to say, how are we doing and what could we do better?

And, one of the things that is gives me pause is that our recent federal austerity, is going to harm our ability to continue to improve our infrastructure.

So going out from a D plus or C minus to a C, I have a feeling for years from now we're going to be looking at, a lower grade unless we inflate the grades.

Then of course, we have an accelerating climate crisis.

And so this accelerating climate crisis, which is layered on top of infrastructure that's, you know, stressed more and more and more, it's kind of expressed.

I'll give you a couple of ways to think about it.

Right.

So the average number of billion dollar disasters that we've seen in the United States has increased from nine events per year between 1980 and 20 24 to 23 events per year.

More recently, another way to think about it was, since the 1980s, the average length of time between billion dollar disasters was 82 days.

And, this year and in future years, which is probably going to be worse, it's 19 days between billion dollar disasters in our country.

It's one every three weeks or less than three weeks.

This is terrifying.

If you're not terrified, I'm going to continue to terrify you.

So, so once again, austerity at the federal level, imperils that.

And just look at Texas and our inability to adequately kind of respond to those storms.

But the thing that we really want to talk about today, and one of the things that is really concerning is, the fact that we've shifted lots and lots of responsibility to address the kinds of challenges we're talking about from the federal to the state and to the local levels.

And we've done that, without a commensurate shift of resources to do it.

But to add to that, we're now faced with, what we're calling the public sector workforce crisis, in which, staffing challenges are hitting us in the public sector locally, everywhere.

So I'll give you just another couple of depressing statistics.

So, since today, right now, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates we're almost a half a million jobs lower than we were pre-pandemic in terms of public employment.

And we they've noted that there's critical vacancies at all levels of public employment, but in particular, public safety, where law enforcement agencies are now operating at about 91% of authorized staffing and an Alexa pulse survey, we found that 87% of police and 94% of firefighters, and 86% of EMS professionals reported staffing shortages.

Just last Sunday in Fall River, Massachusetts, they had a fire that killed ten people.

And the conclusion that the city drew was that, that it was mostly attributable to understaffing in their police department.

So they invested another million and a half dollars to increase staffing, for the for the fire department for their response.

And then we have an aging workforce where we're, about half of the workers that work in the public sector over 45 years old.

And we're facing now, the retirement of baby boomers like me who are leaving the public sector workforce in what we call a silver tsunami.

And why what is the problem with that?

Well, the problem with that is we have no plan.

There's no plan to kind of backfill the loss of this, talent.

And the needed manpower, person power that we have at the local level to do things like respond to flash floods in Texas or to have, a building fire in Fall River, Massachusetts.

So what are we supposed to do about that?

What what are the strategies to to take care of that?

Well, yeah.

So I'm going to give you three and, we're going to talk a little bit how those three are kind of playing out, here locally.

Right.

So one is of course to build college to public service pipelines.

And that's really to find ways to attract people who want to work in the public service and find economical ways to get them educated, trained and ready to go in the public service with specialized degrees, internships and streamlined hiring processes so that they can actually get jobs at desirable jobs.

In many cases where people actually have, you know, good lifelong, career prospects and hopefully decent, retirement plans.

Right?

We have to improve retention.

And the biggest complaint of public workers is the lack of flexibility and, work arrangements.

We have to find ways to make work a little bit more accommodating to people who now are seeing the rest of the workforce work from home three days a week or, or work from home all the time and go live, you know, in Hawaii where they kind of work in Cleveland, right now.

We need to modernize systems.

And the reason we need to modernize systems are we need to find ways to do more with less.

And that's just one of those realities we have to face.

And luckily technology is on our side there.

But we got to invest in those technology tools, find ways to automate processes that that were very, very time consuming for for public workers.

Right.

Or we need to expand the use of shared services among different levels of the public sector, different, townships, municipalities and municipal area.

Why can't we share back office services at breakfast today?

Tony was telling me there's 56 jurisdictions in the better Cleveland area, 56 jurisdictions that all have their own, I don't know, their own back office for their their school system.

They have their own back office for their, mayor's office, their city councils.

There's a lot of duplication of services that could actually be found.

We could make kind of whatever more efficient.

Anyway, the bottom line is we need to do things differently, and, we need to find ways to do things differently.

And one of the ways that we're trying to do things differently at the Lincoln Institute, in collaboration with our partner university, Claremont Lincoln University, is build capacity in the public and civic sectors, nationally, finding ways to identify people who really want to work in the public sector and get them degrees, get them trained, and get them ready to actually do things that will matter on the ground in the places that they come from.

So today we have two representatives of this new effort, which is called the Lincoln Vibrant Communities Program.

And, so, as you know, as Tony mentioned, Christine McIntosh is the planning manager at City of Euclid.

She served a five year term as Euclid, Ward six council person, and she acted as a liaison between the city and its residents.

Additionally, Christine has experience as an urban programs coordinator coordinator at the nonprofit Western Reserve Land Conservancy.

She's held numerous management and marketing roles in the private sector, and Christine is an inaugural fellow of the Lincoln Vibrant Communities program.

And this completing an MPA at Cleveland State University.

So welcome, Christine.

You.

And we have Gillian Prater-Lee.

Gillian is a program assistant at the Lisk Cleveland office.

Lisk, as Tony mentioned, is the local Initiatives Service Corps Support Corporation.

Thank you.

Supporting affordable housing lending and homeownership preservation programs.

Gillian previously worked at the City of Cleveland, the Department of Community Development, managing homeless services and rental assistance grants, and is a tenant was a tenant organizer with the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the homeless.

Gillian is also an inaugural fellow of the Lincoln Vibrant Communities Program, and earned an Ma in Human Geography at Penn State I Penn State.

I know there's a little bit of Tri-State rivalry, maybe, but we'll well, we'll let that go.

Okay.

But, Gillian, so let's start with you.

You had a long career in the private.

Oh, no, that's right.

That's pretty good.

Tell us a little bit about Lincoln vibrant communities and what you're hoping to get out of.

Joining that endeavor first.

Further, so the Lincoln Vibrant Communities Fellowship, like Mack said, it's a partnership between the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Claremont Lincoln University to help develop public sector leadership.

So we completed a 24 week fellowship, mostly, asynchronously and remote.

But with that kickoff and wrap up kind of convening in Chicago, and the program is, focused on leadership development and learning about, cutting edge initiatives in land policy.

And at the end, you earn, certificate in leadership studies from Claremont Lincoln that you can transfer, to a different degree program or continue on at Claremont, Lincoln.

So as an early career professional, with an academic background, coming from my master's program, I was interested in developing my leadership skills, to more effectively get stuff done in the public sector, basically.

And I knew about the cutting edge research from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

So I was really excited, when I saw the fellowship come out and, for the opportunity to learn, from the from the staff at Lincoln Institute as well as Claremont Lincoln.

I was also really excited about the opportunity to develop a professional network of people who are doing some of my work across the country.

So we had peers in the program from, I don't know, from Montana and California and, you know, wherever, working for a local government or, nonprofits as consultants in some cases, doing this sort of work.

So just kind of peer to peer and knowledge sharing was something I was really excited about.

And I was just really excited that the program, sees local government as a source for positive change.

I think so often we can kind of become, jaded or, about local government, but I was like, really excited about, that opportunity.

And while I don't currently work for the government, or for the city, the skills and tools that I learned in the fellowship, I feel like are universal and definitely applicable to my current work at Lisk.

So one of the things we think about when we think about the network of, folks that everybody that comes to the program gets, introduced to and is hope to hope to be a permanent part of this growing network of problem solvers around the United States.

But the other way I we think about it is it's like group therapy, right?

Because for a lot of people that, that work in the places they work, they're the only person in the place that does that job.

And so they don't have peers that they can talk to.

Right?

One of the places that we, that we've recruited someone from is from a city in Maine that has about 700 people population.

Right.

And there's also people from New York City with with millions of people.

But if you're in a if you come from a small city with 700 people, the likelihood that you're going to have additional planning help around is is unlikely.

And your ability to kind of, you know, dig in and take on a challenge and look for other resources is going to be limited to whatever you can do on Google.

Right?

But in this case, what we have is actually live people on the other end who you can just reach out to and you can talk about whatever the challenges you're facing, and you're likely to find someone who's faced that challenge and somehow got some ideas about what you can do.

Okay.

So, Christine, all right.

So, you know, one of the things about working in the public sector, is that we don't do a great job of praising public sector workers.

Right.

And one of the things that we've been seeing for for the last, I don't know whether at least the last 40 years of my life is, mostly attacks on the public sector acting as if the government is inefficient and unable to do the work.

And the private sector is always the answer.

Right.

But you were in the private sector.

You came from the private sector, and somehow you decided to leave the private sector and come back and work in the public sector.

What the hell were you thinking?

Right.

So.

So tell us, why did you do that?

And and what do you hope to now get out of this network of problem solvers and the training you're going to get from the vibrant communities program?

Sure.

So my journey to public service is a bit unorthodox.

I as Mack mentioned, I worked in the private sector, for a long time working for entrepreneurs.

That was my kind of college experience, learning experience in the workforce.

Private sector has it's it's fair share of issues as well.

But it was only until I, you know, moved to Euclid, Ohio, from the Near West neighborhoods in Cleveland after renting, buying a house, becoming embedding embedded into the community.

When I started to just recognize that I was a stakeholder in my community, began volunteering, one of my first, ventures into public service, I suppose, was volunteering for our comprehensive planning process that the county was, was leading on and being a steering committee member for that.

I was a new resident in Euclid and wrote to the mayor and said that I was new.

I had fresh ideas, and I wanted to make a difference.

Somehow.

From there, I ended up, being approached when there was a vacancy on city council and just questioned, would this be something that I was interested in?

And I said, sure, why not?

You know, I'll, I'll try it.

And I ended up going through a long interview process, being appointed to City council and then winning an election.

I served five years on Euclid City Council.

It's one of my greatest achievements.

And from there, recognize that I had a passion for community development, for planning, for, talking with friends and neighbors and residents of a different neighborhood, networking.

And so when a vacancy in the planning division popped up, I jumped at the chance to apply.

And thankfully, the leaders, and directors and, and leadership at the city, welcomed me.

And I've been in this role planning manager for two and a half years.

So it's very rewarding to be able to make a difference in your community.

I work on fun projects like parks and playgrounds and streetscapes and putting benches and bike racks in, and then thinking a little bit more, forward about where is Euclid going?

How can we embrace technology?

How can we be maintain our innovation, and try to be leaders, moving forward.

So the Lincoln, Vibrant Communities program, I will definitely think and give a lot of gratitude to my mayor, Kirsten Holzheimer Gail.

She was the one who sent the opportunity to me and said that, you know, you should consider doing this.

I did, and, it's really, really grateful to be one of the inaugural, members and be able to learn from Gillian and so many others in the country, across the country.

So, from what I've been told, Gillian is a frequent user of your bike racks, right.

So, in fact, using the bike rack outside, which isn't a Euclid, but you it.

So, so, Gillian, you know, almost everywhere we work in the United States, there is a seemingly unassailable affordable housing problem challenge.

And, it seems that, Cleveland hasn't avoided that kind of challenge.

And I'm wondering, one of the one of your programs at risk is to focus on that.

But I'm wondering just how you're working across sectors to kind of deal with that affordable housing challenge and how you're working with the city and other partners to take that on?

Definitely.

Yeah.

So clearly there's a crisis in affordable housing in Cleveland.

Cleveland is one of the places where rents are rising the fastest in the country at this point.

And that coupled with low, low wages and incomes, creates a crisis in affordable housing.

We're also dealing with deferred maintenance in our aging housing stock.

Rise in absentee landlords and pervasive lead issues in our housing.

So Lisk is working with partners to help address these issues.

So in March, we launched the Cleveland Housing Investment Fund, which is raising $100 million to support the development of 2500 to 3000 units of housing across the city of Cleveland.

Thanks to initial support from the city and KeyBank.

The fund has a focus on investment in neighborhoods that haven't historically received this sort of investment.

So the middle and opportunity neighborhoods, developing affordable and mixed income housing and working with local developers, emerging developers who haven't historically had access to that sort of capital to get their projects off the ground.

Additionally, we have some housing preservation programs, so we have a home repair program, that will launch shortly.

In an ER is property program to address, issues when, the title for properties and transferred clearly among passing of the homeowner.

And so these are examples of programs where we're able to work through partners, to help preserve homeownership between generations and address these sorts of maintenance issues, that a homeowner might not be able to afford.

And these are examples of when Lisk is able to bring national resources and expertise to the local market to meet the needs of the local housing, the local housing market and beyond housing, we really kind of try and take some of like a holistic approach to community, development.

So we work on things like financial stability, child care, workforce development and small business development, which we see as all parts of building a thriving local economy where people can access financial resources, develop a small business and live in quality, affordable housing.

So Gillian mentioned this issue of heirs property, and this is, kind of interesting.

This is a topic we've dug into recently at the Lincoln Institute.

Originally we thought that the heirs property problem was a problem in the rural South where, you know, rural farmers, who have been there working for generations.

The, the, the family leader would die off and then there would be multiple heirs, and then they wouldn't really transfer a title, and then they would just continue to farm, and then those heirs would have additional heirs.

And then, eventually you'd have what you call a fractionated title where there might be one property with 50 people with a legitimate claim to the ownership of that property.

And so that's what we thought was the problem.

Well, as it turns out, that's a gigantic urban problem, too, and we didn't even know it.

And so, as we started to dig into the problem and the sometimes not called heirs property, sometimes just cloudy title, or disputed title or whatever, and what it is, is, very often the case where someone dies without a will intestate and then they don't transfer the property and no one records the transfer of the ownership.

Now, you think that would be easily resolved?

Someone just go in and tell people, I've been living there and pend property taxes all this time.

Just give me a title.

But it's not quite that easy.

And what's even worse is that it usually doesn't come to light until something bad happens.

And so when something bad happens, it's like when Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans.

And then, you find out that a significant share of the family is living in the lower Ninth Ward, have clawdy title because they were living at grandmother's house, and grandma died 15 years ago and nobody got the deed.

And if you don't have a deed, if you can't claim to be a rightful owner, you're not eligible for emergency assistance.

So FEMA won't help you.

Right.

And so we found that in New Orleans.

But you know where else we found it?

We found it in Maui.

So when Lahaina burned down, same problem because there are lots of families where the generational transfer of the asset happened without generational generational transfer of the paperwork.

Right.

And then just this year, we found out there was a big problem in Altadena, California and L.A. County when L.A. burned down.

And Altadena once again, a historically ethnic community with longstanding ownership of people who have just passed ownership on for generations and no access to health when their homes burned down, and no idea how they're going to figure that out.

And so one of the things we're doing is finding strategies for, folks who, have other means of establishing that their rightful residents to be able to qualify for some kind of assistance by being able to produce paperwork like power bills and property tax records and stuff, and so then and then working with them to find ways to resolve the the deed problem, but at least get them some assistance, when they're a victim of an emergency.

All right.

Sorry for that departure.

We'll get back to the to more important things.

Right.

So, you know, so, Christine, you know, I mentioned these billion dollar disasters going on all over the place.

We've seen, like, I don't know, three of them in the last three weeks.

Right.

So, but Lake Erie hasn't been spared from the impacts of the climate crisis.

And, I wonder if you could take a minute about what you're doing in Euclid to build a community resilience and preserve, the lakefront?

I'd love to.

Yeah.

The Euclid, the city of Euclid has been an innovator, along the shores of Lake Erie.

We have a three quarter mile lakefront trail that was constructed through a public private partnership.

This is a decades long vision, $15 million vision to mitigate shoreline erosion, protect private property, and then open up the shoreline to the public.

So we worked with, over 100 property owners, usually through.

And, homeowner association.

So a number of property owners within that association who all had to sign off, join the effort, sign easements, which are, are in place in perpetuity to open up the lakeshore.

So we have the, Euclid waterfront Improvement plan, that was completed in 2022.

We that's a three quarter mile long asphalt shared use path along, Lake Erie starting from Symmes Park.

And it terminates at our phase three of the project, which was Senator Kenny Ugo Park.

That was one project that, when I came aboard, was able to work on, as the project manager and see to fruition.

It is, just a short trail extension that brings you up to Lake Shore Boulevard.

So you could theoretically take a loop along the shoreline and then up to the street level into your neighborhood and even cross through into, other neighborhoods, you know, south of, Lake Erie.

So what Euclid's really trying to do is maximize our resiliency when we were planning this, this trail project, as I mentioned, it was decades long.

The idea came through in probably the 1980s to do something like this.

Never thought it could happen, but it did.

And it's been a driver of economic development.

Higher property values, more connectivity with the trail network.

We're actively trying to connect other neighborhoods in Euclid, to the south, you know, south of the highway that divides us, to try to get folks who live in various areas along our 11mi.

Euclid is pretty big.

And has a lot of barriers, to get to the lake.

So what we're trying to actively work on are trail connections.

So we're we're doing that.

We just completed a comprehensive plan update for Symmes Park, which is over 35 acres of, for the most part, naturalized, park space that comes up along Lakeshore Boulevard and have improved that, modernize it so it matches all of the rest of our improvements.

So going through connectivity studies for trails, we're also working with Kiowa County, and developing a pilot microgrid project, in our industrial core.

So again, striking upon that innovation that you come to known for, and working to provide resilience to really our core, manufacturing base, they are, you know, outside of our residents, the backbone of our economy and Euclid.

So making sure that when they experience issues with the traditional power grid, that the city is equipped, has the right partners at the table, has a collaborative, spirit in trying to find those solutions.

So I want to underline a couple of things in that the story you told.

Because one of the things that I think a lot of people don't appreciate is the fact that, number one, there was very little access to the to the lakefront before this project started.

Number two, you had all these private landowners who were looking at their property with significant fear of erosion because of the rising level of the lake and the increased intensity of storms and the likelihood that any individual landowner was going to be able to do anything was basically zero.

Right?

So who could actually find a way to align the interests of all these different landowners, the city itself.

Right.

And hopefully if you're if you're successful, help to contribute to, a lakefront, access that will extend from Ashtabula to Toledo.

Right.

That's the dream.

That's the dream.

Right.

But see, the thing is that it never would have happened without public intervention, public sector intervention, because who else is there?

And with the right kind of, you know, civic and and public and private partners, right?

That's right.

So the city fields and this is probably every city, fields questions, concerns, you know, week after week, day after day from residents, stakeholders, business owners, employees about what the city can support for them.

You know, what challenge are they facing?

How is the city going to step in and help?

A lot of the times we can't there's we're very limited on what we can do for a number of issues.

You know, private property rights or, limited capacity, with the workforce, and, pressing, you know, issues, other priorities and trying to juggle all of that.

But this was an example, both the waterfront improvements plan and the microgrid, where we fielded those concerns.

And we got a team together.

Maybe we didn't lead on it necessarily, but it came together.

And we are addressing those issues, and we're doing so fairly quickly.

The microgrid project is, County Council just authorized full engineering for the project.

It is slated for completion in operation in 2027.

We've been working on that for, a couple of years now.

It started off as just a pipe dream, and it's now going into, engineering.

Thanks.

All right, so, we're about to begin the audience, Q&A.

And for our live stream and radio audience, I'm George McCarthy, president and CEO of Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the moderator for today's conversation.

I am joined by Christine McIntosh, planning manager and development coordinator at the City of Euclid, and Gillian Prater-Lee, program assistant at local Initiatives Support Corporation Lisk of Cleveland.

We're talking about the need to invest in leadership policy in communities that are defined by trust, civic engagement and positive change.

We welcome questions from everyone, city club members sitting here, guests and those joining via our live stream at cityclub.org or live broadcast at 89.7 WKSU Idea Stream Public Media A reminder to keep your questions short to the point.

Actually, a question.

Right.

So and I'll I'll ask you if there's a question.

If you go on too long, don't worry.

So we can get as many questions as possible.

And for those of you either in the audience or watching or listening, if you'd like to text a question, please text it to (330)541-5794.

That's (330)541-5794, and city club staff will try to work it into the program.

Chris Thompson, my question is for Christine.

George has done a good job of making us depressed, as he promised.

He referenced that there's been a long history of what you might just call anti-government sentiment in our country.

Most of it's been focused on the national level, some on the state.

What's the climate like for you, local officials when you say, hi, I'm here from the government and I'm here to help.

What what kind of response do you get?

I thank you for your question.

I have been lucky in my experience that I find most people who reach out.

This is when I was on city council, although some of the some of the questions were a little tougher, I would say, then you're in the hot seat when you're an elected official for sure.

But most people are very gracious and they're looking for some question to be answered.

And even if you don't have the answer or the rates, partner or program or reference that they can look to, you're at least listening to them.

So on the flip side, there is also a culture that is not face to face in person.

That is is very challenging if you're in a in a leadership role, heavy scrutiny, a lot of ignorance as to how government functions and what we're able to do, and what we can't do.

So there's a little bit of both.

But for the most part, I would say that I've had a positive experience.

If you can cut through, some of the online comments, or just criticisms, which you're never going to get away from.

And most of that is just coming from a lack of knowing, what the what the true scenario is on the ground and how we work in government.

So, Gillian, you jumped ship from the the government to the civic sector and not to the for the for profit sector.

But so, what motivated that shift?

And would you consider coming back to government another time?

Yeah, I definitely be open to it.

I mean, so I was working at the city and the community Development department and you'd hear things about this investment fund that was happening that was, you know, about to launch.

And I was just like, that is something I'm really excited about and something I'd really be interested in being a part of.

And I think, working at Lisk, at the national organization to be able to learn, from peers in that way, in different, places was something that was very interesting to me is, you know, someone who has a really academic background.

I'm always trying to learn new things.

I was really excited about that part of Lisk.

But yeah, I'd definitely be open to working back in local government.

Yeah.

You know, one of the things that, I like to remind people when I travel all over the world and talk about the role of government, is that a lot of people don't appreciate the fact that local government is the one that's responsible for delivering your quality of life.

And unfortunately, most people couldn't even pick out their local government in a police lineup.

That's true.

And so the the only time they notice local government is in its absence.

So when they forget the Or they're not able to plow the roads or something else goes wrong, right.

And then all of a sudden local government is noticed, but it's not noticed in the right way, or they're noticed when you sit in line at the DMV waiting to renew your driver's license.

Right.

And you think about how inefficient government is.

But everybody misses all the invisible ways.

The government actually does all the things that we take for granted, and our lack of civic education doesn't do us any any favors, because we don't even really know what the processes are that are going on behind us.

And all we do is get angry when we pay our property taxes.

Right.

So we have a question over here.

Yes, this is a tax question with elected officials, especially at the federal level, disparaging public service.

What can we do to restore and protect the importance of credibility of working in the in the public sector?

Great question.

I would say first, make sure that you're educated about how government works.

So if you don't know something, start to do a little bit of background research.

But if you don't know or you don't have the, connectivity to the answers, reach out and ask questions before, making demands, I suppose.

But really, I mean, that's what we do at City Hall, at least in Euclid, all day, every day is answer questions, and try to educate on what we're capable of doing, what we're legally able to do.

And how you might be able to, you know, find your own path forward without the assistance of government.

But, of course, we're very compassionate people as well.

And so we're always trying to find some partnership or, or opportunity that they can tap into as well.

And another thing, and I hear this often that, public servant, you know, public service is a thankless job.

I disagree, I get thanked a lot.

And I think it helps that I live in Euclid, I work in Euclid, I serve in Euclid.

And so I see my neighbors, I see I view everyone, regardless of the neighborhood you live in, in Euclid, as my neighbor.

And if you can make that connection, then I think that just takes takes everything down a notch.

And you can be more open.

To the ideas and this and how we can how we can make people love local government again.

I mean, I think by delivering results for our community, is is a way I think there are some rightful criticisms that there's been initiatives that have failed, that haven't followed through.

You have a plan and you don't act on it.

You know, like I think as a community member, like it's kind of fair to be critical of that happening.

So I think it's by demonstrating results, for our community as well.

So one thing that's just kind of coming to mind, was when I was working at the city, I was working on the home for Every Neighbor Initiative, which is an initiative to get people from unsheltered homelessness directly into housing.

And I was very skeptical, when I started, you know, it was a very ambitious program, and to be able to deliver on that and I think the city's been able to see that program through and get over 100.

And I think it's over 150 individuals housed, just over the first six months, 12 months.

I'm not quite sure of the numbers.

But as we can have programs like that that are successful or as we can get this partnership with the city, for the chief to be successful, things like this, we can we can demonstrate, you know, that sort of success to community.

And certainly that's one of the predicates of the Vibrant Communities program, because in the end, what we're hoping is things actually happen and then stories can be told.

And one of the things that, you know, governments don't have an advertising budget, generally they're not a big one that PSA is around or something.

Right.

But, so people don't get to appreciate what is actually delivered.

Right.

And that's why.

So they only notice when it's not there.

And so I don't know how we can kind of reinforce for folks that, you know, there is a quid pro quo.

Right.

The you pay your property taxes and you expect things to be delivered.

But frankly, those things generally get delivered and we just take them for granted.

And so, you know, I don't know, can we get over our sense of entitlement and start to understand just how good we have it is?

I mean, we we carry ourselves around as if, I don't know, everything's going to help, but actually we live pretty well in this country, and part of living pretty well is everything is delivered to us at our door by our local government.

So what do you got?

Hi.

My name is Carrie Grace.

I'm the CEO.

And founder of.

Grace Education Institute.

Obviously, on the education side, I do have two questions.

The first question.

Is we talk a lot about collaboration.

And obviously there's a high need for collaboration.

And I was just.

Wondering if there are any plans or there has ever.

Been thought given to how.

We're incorporating.

Our education.

System.

Into the problems that we're trying to solve in the future.

So what I mean by.

That is curriculum development, staff.

Training, all of that.

How are we collaborating, and have we thought about that aspect when we're talking about some of.

These bigger issues now that they have been established?

And then my second question is, in addition to my role at the Institute, I am also a firefighter EMT for North Randall.

And when you said, sharing resources, I'm assuming.

You mean, like mutual aid.

Into that.

Is there a plan at North Randall?

We do provide mutual aid for our surrounding cities.

Is there a.

Plan.

Or an idea of how.

That can happen?

More efficiently on a broader scale?

I'll tell you the answer to that.

Second question is you got to come to the link and Vibrant Communities program and make that happen, right.

And we will help you.

Right.

If you come.

All right.

But you have a yeah.

I think that is, that would be one step is talking with peers in other communities and looking at case studies.

And that was one, huge benefit of being in the Vibrant Communities program.

The fellowship program is having the access to the Lincoln Institute's research data, case studies, even the the mayor's desk newsletters that we were we're fed, so much content and inspiration that you could just, you know, take that and then look into what is this community doing?

Can't, you know, public servants also really want to talk to each other?

So if I got a phone call from someone in a different community, I would probably spend the whole afternoon chatting with them about it.

Or at least, you know, offer up to get coffee or lunch or something and just go over things.

In Euclid, we do have mutual aid as well.

So there is regionalism in that.

We do.

We have a few shared, services and implement some of that was very controversial for our residents because they felt like it was, going to become a deficiency in the level of service, and quality.

But for some aspects that has not been the case.

As far as collaborating and incorporating education, one of my, big dreams is to get some of our youth, some of Euclid's youth involved in our departments planning.

So I've been making regular visits to Euclid High School and talking with the junior ambassadors there, and always have a line out to the principal and superintendents and board of education to try to get them to get involved in our planning processes.

Which we'll have we'll hold a public meeting about a park project, and I can give you the median age, and it is not 14 years old or, you know, even eight years old, for sure.

So how do we get youth to feel like this is a place that they live in, that they are invested in, that they have a role in and can help shape the future of the community.

So I've been trying to make connections and partnerships, every day, with some of that, our Euclid High School program, they have a million career tech programs.

They are separate from the city.

They're their own school district, Euclid City Schools, but they have a number of career tech programs, including, construction trades.

So we're trying to work through how can they build more projects that are in our public spaces so that they feel that they're a part of it?

So, Gillian, you're trying to raise $100 million, build 3000 homes in the in Cleveland, right?

You're not doing it alone.

So think so what can you say about kind of partners and collaboration and how you're going to get that done?

Yeah.

So certainly, our work at Lisk, we can't do it alone.

We are, financial and we're an intermediary.

So that means we work through our partners on the ground, to deliver grants, loans, equity and capacity building support to local communities.

So whether it's supporting emerging developers, working through their financial ads and pro formas and all these sorts of things, or working with CBDCs to understand the housing needs in their footprint, collaborating with Casey's legal clinic on these tangled title cases that we were talking about, we work closely and collaboratively, with the local public sector and civic sector, to get these things done.

Yeah.

The one thing about, schools and one thing that a lot of people don't appreciate around the country is how much land schools have at their disposal.

And one of the things we've been tracking at the Lincoln Institute is, what land is available locally that is owned by the government that could be deployed for other purposes, like the building of affordable housing, and we were mapping it out.

And so in the fall, we're actually going to we're going to launch a campaign, a national campaign around the responsible and effective use of public land.

But one of the, one of the main kind of players in that are going to be schools, transit authorities and, local governments and most of the local land that's desirable to build in cities.

It might be surface parking lots or something owned by the government.

We need to figure out the right strategies to use those effectively and to make the right use of those public resources.

So, you know, stay tuned and keep us on your, you know, your mailing list or keep us stay on our mailing list so you can get involved.

With CMS so CMS is.

Leaving us, talking about how their Brighter Futures initiative.

Looking sorry.

They're looking for partners, to be able to develop the land after those schools.

Are, shut down as.

Schools.

So.

The I think that.

To my point is like, how are we collaborating?

More effectively and.

Efficiently with educational systems, to really guide a lot of the change that we need to see happen.

So if you, if you refer to Merriam-Webster and you look at the second definition of collaboration in Merriam-Webster, you'll see that it's cooperation with the enemy once they've occupied your land right.

And so this is, in this case, collaboration can be a terrifying thought, because now you're giving up, you know, you're asked to close schools and give up the land, and now they want the land.

And how much autonomy, how much say you're going to have over the use of the land.

So let's make sure it's the first definition of collaboration and not the second.

Right.

And I think there's also a lot of, you know, to be of partnerships.

I worked at the Western Reserve Land Conservancy and one of our programs is redeveloping vacant land in that exact scenario, working on projects and half, currently they are, working on expanding parks and green space on a former school lot in Euclid.

We have a number of, old elementary school sites long demolished, that were eyeing up redevelopment for.

And, you know, we have a lot of ideas, maybe not a lot of developers at the table.

But residents see that land as public.

And, you know, there's a common sentiment that it should remain in the public realm.

So how do you balance, you know, revenue generation from maybe land sales and developer agreements with also public benefit?

The other question.

This is a text question.

You mentioned the loss of ownership three generations in a family.

But what is the risk we face with so many out-of-state and international landlords?

They sit on properties and land without development and can block the community projects.

Is there an understanding of how much of Cleveland is actually owned by Clevelanders?

When you guys were there last year, what did you learn from our our session here at the City Club last year?

Oh.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a huge problem.

The kind of buying up of property in Cleveland, by, bad actors really in the market.

And we know that that can lead to deferred maintenance issues, all sorts of issues, absentee landlords, these sorts of things.

And I'll plug, a couple things.

I know the city has their residents first program, which is working on having, requiring, property owners to have a local agent in charge, to be able to kind of bring to court and exercise those, to hold someone accountable in those sorts of situations.

And then like, second thing I will mention is, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, program called Who Owns America?

That looks at, ownership.

It's able to look at ownership patterns across the country and really identify who is behind, that LLC that owns all these properties on the block.

And you don't know who it is.

And layer that in with things like, housing code violations and, yeah, just different kind of, housing market trends, to really understand what's going on.

In the, in the local housing market.

Yeah.

So we talked about that across the street last year.

Last year about about this time last year.

And so, I don't know if you remember, but when we showed the maps of what was actually going on in Cuyahoga County, it's actually terrifying.

One of the things that a lot of people don't appreciate that today in the United States, 25% of the single family housing stock is owned by institutions owned by investors.

It could be mom and pop landlords, they could be institutional investors.

But, as part of our Who Owns America program, we're actually tracking who owns what.

We're going through the corporate veils to figure out where the source of capital is.

We've got about 15 different policy ideas about how jurisdictions can get ahead of, outside investors buying up their housing stock because the housing stock they're buying up is all the starter homes.

And how are we going to get, you know, the next generation of homeowners if there's no homes for them to buy?

I can see there's there's some stirring going on here.

Is Tony, is it time to, call a close to this, this session?

Okay.

Well, all right, we're gonna hand it over to, to Tony Coin to bring us home, Thank you very much to Christine McIntosh, Gillian Prater-Lee and George McCarthy for joining us today at the City Club.

We appreciate all of your conversation.

Forums like this one are made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

You can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at cityclub.org.

Today's forum was made possible through partnerships with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

The City Club would also like to welcome guests at the tables hosted by the Cleveland Foundation lists Cleveland emerging municipal leaders of the city of North Olmsted and the Cleveland Leadership Center.

And Wednesday, July 23rd, we will have our third forum of our Summer series, which will be a conversation with Ricky Smith, founder of Random Acts of Kindness Everywhere, an owner of Something Good Social Kitchen, which is right across the street in Playhouse Square Plaza.

We will be talking about what it means to do something good, and how Ricky is supporting the community in positive and powerful ways.

You can learn more about upcoming forums at cityclub.org.

Again, that brings us to the end of today's program.

Thank you again to Christine McIntyre, Gillian Prater-Lee, George McCarthy, and members and friends of the City Club.

I am Tony Coyne.

This forum is now adjourned.

For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

The ideas expressed in City Club forums are those of the speakers and not of the City Club of Cleveland.

Idea stream public media or their sponsors.

Production and distribution of City Club forums and ideas.

Stream public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, incorporated.