- [Narrator] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Idea Stream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music) (bell dinging) - (laughing) Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club at Playhouse Square, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, September 15th, and I'm Kristen Baird Adams, president of the Board of Directors of the City Club.

On behalf of City Club CEO, Dan Moulthrop the staff, and the board, it is such an honor to welcome all of you to our first forum in our new home.

A space that puts our beloved City Club in the center of downtown Cleveland's cultural hub, creating a larger and more accessible venue that suits the growing needs and aspirations of our organization, America's Citadel of Free Speech.

(audience and cheering and Kristen clapping) The City Club of Cleveland, as you know, has hosted many civic leaders throughout our storied history, including during our first forum in 1912 when Cleveland Mayor Newton D Baker, Cincinnati Mayor Tom Hunt, and Toledo mayor, Mayor Brand Whitlock, came together to discuss the work of city government, the challenges they faced, and the solutions that they were implemented.

111 years later, we are so pleased to host Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval for a conversation regarding the critical work of governing in Ohio cities today.

Justin M Bibb, of course, is our 58th mayor here in the city of Cleveland.

He has prioritized improving public safety, investing in neighborhoods and modernizing city hall.

Mayor Bibb was born and raised in Cleveland's southeast side in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

Mayor Aftab as he is affectionately known to his colleagues and his constituents, is the 70th mayor of Cincinnati, raised in southwest Ohio, he is the son of first generation Americans.

He is the city's first Asian American mayor who previously served as a Hamilton County Clerk of Courts, noting the first Democrat to hold that seat in 100 years.

(audience clapping and cheering) If you have questions for our speakers, you can text them to 330-541-5794, that's 330-541-5794, and the City Club staff will do their best to work it into the second half of the program.

Members, friends, and guests of the City Club of Cleveland, please join us in welcoming Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Mayor Aftab of Cincinnati.

(audience clapping and cheering) - Thank you.

First, we have to really give great credit and gratitude for the leadership and vision of Dan Moulthrop and the entire City Club team.

(audience cheering and clapping) It's so great to have this amazing space in our great city, and Dan, welcome to my neighborhood, by the way, (audience laughing) so, welcome.

We also need to acknowledge all the great mayors that are here this afternoon as well, too.

If you're a mayor, please stand up.

(audience clapping and cheering) Even you.

Mayor Pureval and I can truly attest that being a mayor is not only one of the hardest jobs in American politics, but the most rewarding, and all of our mayors here today share that same level of gratitude, so thanks for joining us here this afternoon.

So I have to start with a very serious question, brother.

- Uh oh.

- What happened to those Who Dey Bengals?

(Mayor Pureval laughing) (audience laughing) I was gonna bring the Nick Chubb jersey for you to wear, but you know.

- Yeah, look, (Mayor Dibbs laughing) there's a couple different ways I can answer this, but I like to learn from past negative experiences, so I'm gonna keep my mouth shut.

(Mayor Dibbs and audience laughing) - It's all good.

- But it's lovely to be in Cleveland, this is awesome.

So for those of you who don't know, Mayor Bibb is beloved, not just here in Cleveland, but across the country, particularly with the US Conference of Mayors.

He's a leader in that organization, but everybody knows him as the best dressed mayor in America.

(Mayor Bibb and audience laughing) So here this idiot from, you know, Cincinnati coming up here, I'm like, "All right, I gotta put my best suit on, I gotta get my tie together."

And this guy's not even wearing a tie, I'm like, "What?"

(audience laughing) - It's Friday, smart casual man.

- Yeah smart casual, got it.

So, other observations, so this isn't my first time in Cleveland.

I summered as a second year law associate, at the time it was Squire Sanders, now it's Squire Patton Boggs - There we go.

- Summered at Squire Patton Boggs, thank you.

I lived at the Chester Field over the summer with my buddy Matt Oliver from college, who was summering at Baker, and he's now a partner at Baker.

So this is my first time in the city, but as I'm driving and you got a new tower on your skyline that you're building.

- Sherwin Williams going up.

- That's amazin, congratulations Cleveland, (audience and Major Pureval and Mayor Bibb clapping) adding to your skyline is a massive deal, that is a huge deal, congratulations.

Second.

you were nice enough to put me at the Crown Plaza.

It seemed like almost all the employees were Ukrainian refugees, but that's incredible.

I mean, that is, you know, Cleveland opening up their arms to help those in need, so give yourselves a round of applause.

(audience and Major Pureval and Mayor Bibb clapping) - Absolutely.

- Yeah, really, really important stuff.

So I'm really happy to be back, thank you, man.

- Glad to have you.

I'm mad, you didn't bring me any skyline children.

- Yeah, no skyline, yeah, sadly.

- Maybe next time.

- But yeah, so we're here to talk about governing in the state of Ohio, you know, obviously the issues facing our cities, no matter where they are in the state or what size they are, you know, the number one issue has to be public safety and gun violence, right?

- Absolutely.

- It's certainly the case in Cincinnati.

I'm sure our table full of colleagues will say the same.

You know, gun violence is very cyclical, now that we're ending the summer back to school is there, hopefully our numbers will come down as they traditionally do, but we're kind of using this time to rethink our strategies to deploy, not just in the short term, but also next summer.

How are you guys fairing with gun violence and what are you guys working on?

- It's been a challenging summer in Cleveland related to gun violence.

I know you've had a hard summer as well too, and Mayor Ginther as well.

And it is just so hard to be in a state where we can't do what 80% of Ohioans wanna do, past common sense gun reform, it's past time, it's past time.

(audience clapping) And despite the fact that we see this historic extreme level of preemption against our ability as mayors to pass common sense, not just gun reform, but common sense issues around affordable housing, or issues to address our public health issues and challenges.

We are still trying to innovate and do what we need to do as mayors to step up.

And so there are a couple things we're focused on in Cleveland.

Number one, we can't police our way outta this problem.

We gotta be real about that, but it's also important that we prioritize aggressive law enforcement, but also constitutionally appropriate policing.

And so we're working with the state where we can to get more illegal guns off the street.

Really proud of the leadership of our US attorney, and Steve Dettelbach, who's now the director of the ATF, we had a major operation over the last couple of weeks.

We got over 250 guns off our streets in a special operation.

(audience clapping) And what's so unique about violent crime and safety now is technology and intelligence is the secret ingredient, because of the NIBIN data and NIBIN tool we have right now, we're able to track where these guns are coming from.

And in one instance, with the work with the US attorney and the ATF, we found that in one case, one gun that we caught was responsible for 14 shootings in our city, 14 shootings.

Here's the other crazy data point, of the over 240 guns that we caught, roughly 205 of them were bought illegally.

And so until we as a state and as a nation address this unrelentless, sickening and immoral obsession with guns, we won't see a safer country and safer cities.

- I think you've put your finger right on it.

You know, despite the propaganda, you know, big cities are actually innovating around public safety.

You mentioned we can't police our way out of it.

The other challenge that Cleveland and Cincinnati are facing are just getting people to be police officers.

So our recruit classes are historically low.

Our retirements are historically high.

And, you know, we're really putting a lot of pressure on the law enforcement men and women, when there's so few of them, they have to work all the time, and an overworked stressed police officer is not good for anybody.

So there's a real challenge we're facing from a pipeline perspective, for a diverse, well-trained, well-educated police force that is from and of the community.

It's a real challenge that we're facing in Cincinnati, and I'm sure in Cleveland The other thing you've put your finger on is the accessibility of guns.

I mean, you know, despite the fact that we're two decade low for violent crime in Cincinnati, our homicides are down 10%, our kids shooting, our teen shootings' through the roof.

It's insane, and you know, when we think about teen violence, the two elements that are really contributing to this crisis is the accessibility of guns and the inability to resolve differences peacefully.

So on the accessibility front, we've got a state legislature that is passing stand your ground, permitless carry, arming teachers.

They're putting more guns in our streets than they're blaming mayors and cities for not being able to control the gun violence, even though they're flooding the cities with guns.

And then on top of that, you mentioned preemption, then they're saying, "Well, we're gonna flood your community with guns, but you can't pass any local laws to do anything about it."

The cynicism of it is extraordinary.

I just had a round table conversation with some high school students, and I asked them, "How easy is it for you to get a gun?"

And they told me within 30 minutes, they have someone in their phone already, they can text and get a gun.

These are kids, you know, the accessibility of guns is so extraordinary in Ohio that at the US Conference of Mayors, other mayors from around the country have this massive problem of ghost guns.

And certainly there's some of that in Ohio, but because it's so easy to get a real gun in Ohio, we have not seen the increase in ghost guns that other communities have.

You know, what frustrates me is that we have an accessibility problem that we can't do anything about.

The other thing that's really contributing to the teen violence, at least in Cincinnati, is social media.

And, you know, these kids are portraying themselves on social media one way, and if that is punctured or deflated at all, they lash out because it's an ego thing, it's a rep thing and it turns to violence.

What used to be a fist fight behind the- - Now it's a gun fight.

- The playground is a gun fight.

- I don't know if you read the Surgeon General's report on the future of youth mental health a couple months ago, but one of the biggest takeaways from the Surgeon General's report was this fact that loneliness and isolation between our teens is the highest it's ever been.

In Cleveland we have one of the highest teen suicide rates in the country.

And we brought the Surgeon General here a couple months ago, and I was talking to a junior at the time who was at the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine, and she said, you know, during the pandemic, she learned how to, you know, do homework on Zoom, was highly engaged in the classroom.

School comes back into session.

And mind you, you know, for almost two years these students had no socialization, no ability to enhance their emotional wellbeing.

They go back to school and she said "The world was moving, but I wasn't."

And because of this idea where our young people are getting self-empowerment and their ego is all tied towards social media, they're trying to find ways to lash out, and they're also trying to find belonging, because they don't feel connected anymore.

What do you think we can do as mayors to really address the mental health crisis we have amongst our youth in our respective cities?.

- It's so difficult because as a city, we don't provide mental health care, right?

Like, we're not a social service agency.

So what we have really tried to do is divert our city dollars and our federal block grants and CDBG to a coalition of providers that are getting it right and connecting them more effectively to the people in crisis.

So, I think Cleveland is on this path as well, but Cincinnati has had a co-response model to 911 calls for the past 20 years.

So we were well ahead of a lot of cities where we sent CPD and mental health professionals to some 911 calls.

We have recently gone a step further.

So for some 911 calls, we now only send unarmed mental health professionals, and what we've seen is two things through the data.

Number one, we have more effectively connected people in crisis with the help they need.

And number two, maybe even more importantly, we have saved 1,000 of hours for police hours.

I talked about the lack of manpower earlier.

It's even more critical for us as mayors to divert our law enforcement resources to our priorities, which is preventing violent crime, and oftentimes our police are kind of a taxi or, you know, required to be a social worker, things that they're not trained for.

So not only is this more effective use of our resources, but we're now able to throw more police officers at our violent crime problem.

But on the violent crime, there's no doubt that it's a problem with our kids, but the challenge that we have with the accessibility of guns is that it's everywhere.

So if you don't have a gun, you don't feel safe in your community, because everybody else has a gun, so it's an arms race to the bottom.

One quick example, Hyde Park, Cincinnati is a very affluent community in Cincinnati, there's a Hyde Park Kroger, where two people got into it in the store.

They both left the store.

One person went to their car to get their gun and started firing at the other person indiscriminately into the parking lot, broad daylight, affluent community.

There is nothing any mayor or any police officer can do to prevent that, and that is a fact pattern.

People having guns and flying off the handle and reaching for lethal violence quickly, that is a fact pattern all across the city, all across the country, and that is precipitated by the accessibility of guns period.

That is not a political statement.

If there are more guns in my city, there is more violence, and we have to do something about the gun laws in the state, and the ability for us to pass gun laws in our communities.

(audience clapping) - Yep, very good.

(audience clapping) I know it's hard to reconcile this, given the nature of politics in this country right now, but we have to find a way as a country to make this a moral issue.

Just like civil rights was a moral issue of our time in the 1960s, the ability for us as a nation not to address the fact that gun deaths are the leading cause of death amongst America's children right now.

- [Mayor Pureval] Yeah, yeah.

- That's a problem.

And so, while it's important to vote for the president next year, while it's important to vote for a member of congress, voting for who is in the state legislature (audience laughing) it's just as important.

(audience clapping) Just as important.

- [Mayor Pureval] So voting is important?

- Yeah.

- But doing everything we can right now is also what we're looking at.

So the city of Cincinnati is suing the state of Ohio right now for their overreach on guns.

We just won at the trial level yesterday.

(audience and Mayor Pureval clapping) We just won at the common police court in Hamilton County for an injunction that will put a preliminary stay on the state law preempting us from passing gun law.

So I absolutely echo you.

We've gotta change the state legislature, but we're also not waiting for an election and are suing right now.

- Absolutely, we talked about the importance of voting and democracy building.

We saw an extreme overreach by the legislature just this year trying to increase the threshold for any referendum that could pass to 60%.

- Why did we do that?

- I have no idea.

- The timing of that was curious.

- Yeah tell me about it, right?

(audience laughing) And, you know, for many folks they thought they could get away with it.

What are you seeing in Cincinnati in terms of democracy and how you guys are trying to address it?

- I love what you said about, you know, obviously it's important for folks to focus on the federal campaigns, President, Senate, Congress, but what I love about our role is that it really is the purest form of democracy.

When you're mayor, there's no spinning or obfuscating, right?

If there's a snowstorm, they don't want to have a hearing about it or give a speech about it.

(audience laughing) - How'd, you know, snow's my favorite subject.

(audience laughing) - And potholes are my favorite.

(audience and Mayor Bibbs laughing) But, you know, they don't care what your feelings on abortion is if you're not plowing the damn snow and picking up the trash.

- Absolutely.

- And when you're mayor, you know, there's no blaming other people.

- [Mayor Bibb] Yeah and you can't escape the problem.

- Right, that's right, there's leadership.

- Yes.

- There is taking clear positions on hard issues and leading, you are the moral voice of your city.

And so, when I think about democracy in our little corner of the state, I feel really inspired and optimistic about it, because despite the insanity going on at the national level, Cincinnati is able to work together, is able to work with the corporate community, the philanthropic community, the activist community.

The only reason Cincinnati is able to get anything done, anything big, universal pre-k, you know, you know, developing our riverfront with the banks, passing a massive transit levy to take a page outta your book and do bus rapid transit and really improve our public transit, it required public-private partnerships, and that isn't a democracy, that is the essence of what we do.

The Cincinnati city motto is Juncta Juvant, which in Latin means strength and unity, and if that's not a, you know, bumper sticker for democracy and specifically for what makes Cincinnati special, I don't know what is.

So, even though I have real concerns about democracy at the federal level, cities are little democratic laboratories.

And if our cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati and the rest of our Ohio cities continue to lean into innovation, continue to allow for new ideas to push the envelope, then the country and our state will be just fine.

- And I wanna just build on this point.

The future of our state depends on the ability of us as big city mayors in the state to get stuff done.

We are responsible for over 80% of the GDP in the state, 80%.

We send more money to Columbus than we probably have to or should.

But it's so important- I think they're just rich.

- I know tell me about it.

- It's got so much money.

(audience laughing) It's unbelievable.

- But it's so important for us to think about how we elevate the role of what we're doing as mayors across the state to make sure that this state can achieve its long-term potential and promise as well too.

- But on that economic subject, so, you know, we were elected mayor after the pandemic, well, after the worst of the pandemic.

And, you know, with interest rates where there are, with insurance rates, where there are, it's really hard for us to get anything out of the ground right now in Cincinnati.

How's your economic growth looking like in Cleveland?

- Well I would say this, and you probably would agree with this same sentiment.

The American Rescue Plan investments were a lifeline for Cleveland in our economy.

(audience clapping) And, you know, thank God we have a president in Joe Biden and a vice president Kamala Harris, (audience clapping and cheering) who believes in the importance of investing in cities, by the way.

And, you know, the ARPA funds have been really that down payment, I believe that will set Cleveland up for the next 100 years.

You know, we're taking $50 million of ARPA money, something no other city has done across the country.

We wanna raise another $50 million to take a 1,000 acres of vacant land that we see predominantly in the east side of Cleveland, and make that vacant land greenfield sites for the next jobs for the 21st century.

- Love that.

(audience and Mayor Pureval clapping) - That is so important.

- We're also taking $15 million of that investment and really trying to jumpstart the economic recovery of Cleveland southeast side, because while you saw the cranes downtown for Sherwin Williams, it's our vision and goal to see cranes in Lee Harvard and Buckeye and all across Mount Pleasant and the southeast side of Cleveland as well too, right?

(audience clapping) But beyond just the federal investment we've gotten, you know, we need to think differently about the future of our financial future when this federal money goes away, because the spigot would be turned off very soon.

- [Mayor Pureval] (laughing) Yeah.

- And so one thing that our leadership team at City Hall has really prioritized is how do we be a better asset manager for our assets at the city of Cleveland?

(audience clapping) I'll give you three examples, one, the West Side Market.

- [Audience] Yeah.

- The crown jewel of our great city, and I'm trying to steal a lot from you at Finlay Market in Cincinnati, by the way.

- [Mayor Pureval] We gotta market.

- Yeah.

(audience laughing) - You know, this has been an asset that has been a drag on our balance sheet for far too long.

So when we took office, we hired the amazing leader, Jessica Trivisonno to help us think about how do we turn the West Side Market into a positive revenue generating asset for our city long term, and hopefully this year with city council support, we'll convert the West Side Market to have a nonprofit operation in the future to make that an amazing asset for next 50 plus years.

(audience clapping) - That's great, man.

- You know, I really think Cleveland and Cincinnati in particular are really well poised on the I think the brink of just massive growth.

And it's not wishful thinking, but it is just looking at the trends nationally and globally in the country.

You know, I am convinced if it's not in the next 25 or 50 years, there will be an inward migration from the coast into the middle of the country.

The confluence of the pandemic and climate change and the rising cost of housing and living, these macroeconomic factors are gonna push us into the middle of the country, and that's not just rhetoric, I've got data points.

If you look at the New York Times of the past month, they have had headline story after headline story about our western states not having access to enough groundwater.

It's a massive, massive problem for the western part of the country.

Then you see headline after headline about California and Florida insurance rates either going through the roof or insurance companies just pulling out of communities, that is unsustainable for those coastal areas.

And then the final data point is talking about ARP, the infrastructure bill from the Biden administration, the Inflation Reduction Act from the Biden administration have all been profoundly important to Cincinnati.

The Brent Spence Bridge, don't even get me started on that thing.

Does anyone know up here know what the Brent Spence Bridge is, by the way?

(audience laughing and clapping) So not a lot of you, but I will just say this, Ohio and Kentucky got the single largest federal grant in our country's history, $1.6 billion to redo the Brent Spence Bridge, which connects Ohio and Kentucky and has 3% of the nation's GDP coming over it.

But the final point about this inward migration is the CHIPS Act.

The CHIPS Act paved the way for Intel to invest $200 billion in the center of our state, and two of the reasons that they chose that location was, one, its access to fresh water at the Great Lakes and the Ohio River, and number two, we're all affected by climate change, but Ohio is not seeing the droughts and the wildfires and the hurricanes and the earthquakes that the rest of the country is.

So Cleveland and Cincinnati's location in the country, but specifically our location to fresh water is going to be manna from heaven in the next 100 years.

- How did you guys prioritize the transformation of the Cincinnati River and over the Rhine, and what kind of impact does that have for you?

- It's had massive impact, you know, so obviously we're all very focused on mitigating climate change, but we are now in Cincinnati thinking about, okay, what are the effects of climate change going to be and how can we use these dollars from ARP, the dollars from IRA, the dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill to make investments right now that will take advantage of that in the future?

So making huge investments in our water treatment facilities, to maintain a clean river, making big investments in tourism around our river.

This is ridiculous, but we just host hosted Red Bull Flugtag (audience laughing) the energy drink on the river.

So Flugtag is their main international event, and these crazy people build homemade gliders, and they jump off a ramp like four stories high- - It's like our version of the air show.

- Into the Ohio River, yeah, that's right, that's right.

(audience and Mayor Bibb laughing) But what I loved about it is there were 100s of boats in the Ohio River, right?

And, you know, we don't eventize our river well enough, but the moral of my story is access to fresh water is going to be incredibly important.

The trillions of dollars in federal money available right now really give both Cleveland and Cincinnati a huge opportunity to get our fair share, and remake the face of our city for a generation, I mean, we are living history for future people to look back and say, that was an inflection point in Cincinnati and Cleveland.

- That's great, before we get to audience questions, I'll ask you this question and I'll answer it as well.

- [Mayor Pureval] Great.

(audience laughing) We're both 20 months in, it feels like four years already doesn't it?

(audience laughing) - Yeah I mean, look at all these grays, (audience and Mayor Bibb laughing) homie here is just black hair.

(Mayor Bibb laughing) Like, you know, I'm like aging minute by minute.

- 20 months in, biggest thing that surprised you so far?

- Two things, I've been so surprised by... We all have our different agendas in Cincinnati, but to a person and to an organization, they all believe to their core that what they are doing is what's best for Cincinnati.

And I may not always agree with that, but what I have loved about being mayor is I never have to second guess someone's motive.

Everyone's motive in the city is to improve the city.

And having that buy-in from the private sector and the public sector, you know, I think is really rare, and it's really inspiring.

The second thing that I was surprised by is I didn't realize I had the power to marry people.

(audience and Mayor Bibb laughing) - [Mayor Bibb] Same.

(audience laughing) - And I'm a huge ROM-COM guy, big ROM-COM guy, (audience and Mayor Bibb laughing) so I love marrying people.

- We should trade ROM-COM favorites together, because I'm a big ROM-COM guy myself.

- Yeah, I would love to.

So, you know, particularly in the summer, they'll come into the office.

I love going to the actual wedding, like the actual ceremony because you're just this random guy (audience and Mayor Bibb laughing) that is gonna be part of these people's lives for forever.

- Forever, and they make you sign the document.

- Yeah you sign the thing and it's great.

(audience laughing) - That's great.

- Oh, well, what about you Mayor Bibb please.

- For me, I think, and I saw this firsthand after the Dobbs decision came down, but how many national issues are now on our agendas as mayors and how we collectively as a body, need to always work to aspire to the better angels of our nation, and I think we have the ability to do that as mayors across this great country.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

(audience clapping) - (indistinct) Q&a, I'm Kristen Baird Adams, president of the City Club Board of Directors.

We are joined by Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Cincinnati Mayor Aftab.

We welcome questions from everyone, city club members, guests, students and those joining us via our livestream at cityclub.org and our radio broadcast at 89.7, Idea Stream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question, please text it to 330-541-5794, that's 330-541-5794, and the City Club staff will work it into the program.

May we have our first question, please?

- Before you ask, just a quick tip itself.

I was on the phone this morning with Sharon.

I'm name dropping.

(audience laughing) He's yelling at me for something, but he told me that the rule is you can't come to the Cleveland Club without answering questions.

So I'm very happy to participate in that tradition.

(Kristen laughing) - Welcome to both of you.

Thank you for continuing the tradition started over a 100 years ago, of two mayors opening, what is this beautiful, revived, renewed City Club venue.

You've both indicated dissatisfaction with the makeup of the legislature.

Hopefully we are going to have a redistricting amendment on the ballot in a year.

(audience clapping) What can you do and you're both Democrats, what can the Democratic party do to turn out the vote and hopefully get us a legislature that is representative of the state of Ohio?

- Great question.

(audience clapping) I want to first say this.

We do have some amazing Republican colleagues and allies in the state legislature across the state.

It's important to note that, by the way, and, you know, my motto is this, I'll work with anybody, Democrat, Republican, Green party, I don't care what party, if you share my same values and commitment to move the city forward, that's my focus.

The best thing we can do to try not to vote as mayors is be visible, keep knocking on doors, keep meeting our residents where they are, and keep talking about the importance and the power of voting, because voting matters, your voice matters and you have no right to complain if you don't show up to that ballot box.

(audience clapping) No right.

(audience clapping) - I think that's absolutely right.

the only thing I would add is Mayor Bibb and I take our roles, not just the role of mayor, but who we are uniquely in that role very seriously.

Mayor Bibb, the youngest and first millennial mayor in Cleveland, and me the first Asian and South Asian mayor in the Midwest, and I genuinely believe particularly to try to reach out to the younger generation, if you see it, then you can believe it.

And with Bibb's election, with my election, with Shammas' election of young diverse mayors kind of stepping up and a change in generational leadership.

I hope that we are uniquely able to inspire younger people, college, high school age folks to step into the arena and to really prioritize public service.

And I get so excited and proud when I see younger activists of color getting more involved in the process earlier, and I'm hoping that that will have an impact not just on the redistricting legislation, but in politics across the state.

- Okay, hello.

I'm sorry.

(audience member speaking indistinctly) hello I'm a student at the Cleveland School of Architecture and Design, (audience clapping) it was mentioned that the numbers of people in law enforcement are low right now, and I just wanted to ask, what do you guys think the steps are into increasing those numbers?

- It's a great question.

You know, it's actually a little bit worse in Cincinnati because we had a Department of Justice consent decree imposed on our CPD 20 years ago or so, and that has been the primary tool by which we have maintained diversity, not only amongst our rank and file, but also critically in leadership, that was recently struck down as unconstitutional, given the recent affirmative action jurisprudence.

And so not only we have fewer numbers, but it's also gonna be harder for us to recruit diverse candidates.

So what we're trying to do is create a pipeline from our Cincinnati public schools into our public safety careers.

And so in partnership with our superintendent, we have started a public safety academy for Cincinnati public school students in high school who want to go through this academy.

And if they graduate from the academy, they get points on their civil service exam, so that they can be fast tracked right into police or fire.

That's one of the efforts, obviously providing good benefits and salary and also trying to improve just the way of life for police officers.

Police officers are incredibly scrutinized in life or death situations way too often, and the mental health of fire firefighters and police officers are steadily on the decline.

Earlier this year we had a police officer take her own life via suicide, and unfortunately I think that is going to happen more and more.

So making sure that we are there from the mental health perspective and not just the physical is critically important.

- I just want to add on to Mayor Pureval's point.

This is personal for me.

My father got his start after he came back from Vietnam.

He went to the police academy at Tri-C and was a cop, one of the first black cops in Cleveland Heights, and it made the world a difference from my family to enter the middle class and being a police officer or first responder is a noble, honorable profession, and we must recognize that and uplift our police officers, obviously hold 'em accountable when they step outta line, but we have to stop attacking the career enterprise of law enforcement.

(audience clapping) It's so important that we respect 'em.

I would also say money talks.

You know, we just announced brand new incentives and investments on the recruitment side of our police department.

Historically, when I took office, if you wanted to join the police academy in Cleveland, you only got paid $16 an hour.

We just changed it to $24 an hour, a 50% increase.

(audience clapping) We also are offering a brand new $5,000 signing bonus for new officers joining our academy, and in just two weeks we saw a nearly 60% increase in applications after announcing these incentives.

(audience clapping) So money talks, but if we don't do a better job as mayors, creating the right environment where we honor them, respect them, have their backs, obviously hold them accountable when they step outta line, then that money won't be effective, because you want to feel supported, and you want to feel like you have the ability to do your job every single day.

- Yeah, it's so interesting.

The national narrative is always so different than the local experience.

Nationally, you hear folks talking about Democrats defunding the police, and when you step back and look at it, ARP we used a lot of the ARP money we got to fund our police officers and to fund our firefighters.

80% of our budget goes to public safety.

Democratic mayors are the one that actually funds police officers, and recently we've seen more of the Republicans actually attacking law enforcement.

- Mayors, first of all, I want to thank you, for the great comments on our police.

Mayor and I have talked, I come from a long line of Irish New York cops, so thank you.

You talked about the accountability and the deeded to step up and vote for the local legislature, for the local mayors that's very important.

As chairman of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, one of the things we've been talking about is what do we do to hold our judiciary accountable for their auto thefts, retail thefts, gun violence.

We have a lot of people that are showing and then being excused, we're turning a lot of people back into the streets after being arrested many, many times.

This concerns us for downtown.

So I wonder if you have any suggestions to that, because we're gonna take a hard look at how we can basically take a look at our own judiciary and what judges are doing that and letting them go and which ones aren't.

So like your thoughts.

- I would just say, look, judges are elected in the state of Ohio.

And so if you don't believe that judges are acting in the best interest of your community, then organizing, activating and running someone against them or opposing them in their election is absolutely the most impactful thing you can do from a judiciary perspective.

Look, I'll say without knowing the fact patterns here in Cleveland, I'll say if you're a violent criminal, then you shouldn't be on the streets of Cincinnati.

I think that is something that we can all get behind.

When it comes to kids, it's very and very difficult.

Not only is it difficult because you have various state laws that really mandate, the judges do certain things, but it's difficult because every kid is coming from a different situation, from a home situation.

And so rehabilitating kids is very, very challenging, particularly when you have kids engaged in a historic amount of gun violence and also a historic amount of property theft.

This isn't unique to Cincinnati and Cleveland, however, this Kia, Hyundai issue is a problem across the country and was really quickly spread via social media.

So of course, particularly when we talk about juveniles, Mayor Bibb and I have to strike the right balance of making sure that we're keeping our community safe, while also making sure that we're not destroying yet another generation of young black kids.

And that balance, I'll agree with you, is very, very challenging to hit, but the easiest thing in the world for a mayor to do is to be tough on crime, to put forth short-term solutions that have unimaginable long-term consequences, and I am just not interested in continuing down that vein.

(audience clapping) - I would agree.

We have to be thoughtful and recognize that there are no short term fixes when it comes to violent crime.

We gotta accept that.

Poverty is a form of violence.

Lead paint poisoning is a form of violence.

Food deserts in our city are a form of violence, and these issues are very nuanced.

And to me, what I've learned is the importance of just picking up the phone and finding ways to collaborate.

And it's so important that the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch start to work more together to figure out what are the gaps in the systems, and how do we plug those gaps together?

And I think one of the biggest powers we collectively have as mayors is to really own that collaboration table, to really make sure that everyone is responsible and all on the same page and rowing in the same direction.

It's very hard to do that in a complicated, nuanced political environment, but collaboration, collaboration, collaboration is the best thing we can do to address some of these gaps we have in our judiciary system.

(audience clapping) - My name is Merle Johnson, I'm on the State Board of Education and I'm glad that Mayor Bibb mentioned the magic word collaboration, because Cincinnati has a hidden treasure that many don't know about, and that's the Oiler School.

My colleagues on the state board, and I went to Cincinnati last week to take a look at Oiler.

It represents the research that you have to address students' non-academic needs in order for them to be successful with their academics.

And when you talk about collaboration, Oiler has more than 40 partners that have made it possible for that school to have a vision clinic, dental clinic, health clinic, and they've also gone in the community and dealt with abandoned buildings, and they were able to take the vacancy rate from 40% to 23% in eight years through working with Habitat for Humanity and so forth.

So my question to you, Mayor, is what has the role of the city been in working with schools like Oiler, the community learning centers, which are really, really wonderful?

- What was your name?

Remind me the name.

- .

Merle Johnson.

- Merle Johnson, such a fantastic question, Merle, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about this.

(audience clapping) So Community learning centers started in Cincinnati, and Merle described it really perfectly.

It is a cross expertise collaboration, amongst a lot of different partners to really provide a one-stop shop for not only the kids, but also the community.

The answer to your specific question is Cincinnati funds and staffs the health clinic and the vision and dental clinic.

We are really fortunate to be one of the few cities in the country that run our own health clinics.

So the Enquirer just did a story about the highest paid Cincinnati employees in the city.

You'll be happy to know that I'm 256 out of 6,000.

(audience laughing) And in fact the Enquirer this week ran two stories back to back making fun of how little money I make so.

(audience laughing) Anyway, so we run health clinics, including the one at Oiler school.

And so, you know, it's been a profound success not just for those students, but specifically importantly for that neighborhood that has seen massive disinvestment and just bone breaking poverty for so long.

(audience clapping) - As mayors of two big cities in Ohio, there seems to be a divide between the rural areas and the urban areas, and it seems to be us against them, and the suburban versus the big cities.

how do you conquer that divide and make so that it is, we are all in it together?

- Well, there's a tangible example by the great work led by Keary McCarthy from Ohio Mayors Alliance, Keary.

(audience and Mayor Bibb and Mayor Pureval clapping) The Ohio Mayors Alliance gives us a platform for big city and medium sized city mayors across the state to really work together, and I think this collaboration has really been beneficial for me over the last 20 months since I took office, for us to really expose to the legislature and other rural lawmakers about the challenges and unique opportunities we have as mayors across the state.

And so I think galvanizing that political power coalition building and just exposing them.

Last year we hosted a group of rural lawmakers in Cleveland, went to a Guardian's game, toured the West Side Market, toured all parts of our city and just exposed them to what's actually happening in Cleveland.

Most of them have never visited Cleveland before.

And so it's so important that we spend that time building those relationships, talking about our issues and making them a part of the conversation to win them along long term.

- And Mayor Bibb mentioned it earlier, but the big cities of Ohio are really the engines of economic growth for not just our cities, but the entire state.

And so because of surgical and extreme gerrymandering, just putting partisanship aside, there are so few representatives in Columbus that actually understand the importance and, you know, the specialness of all of our cities no matter the size.

And so what Mayor Bibb is talking about, developing those relationships, crossing those boundaries, educating I think is the best thing that we can do, but the other thing that we can do, I think is tell them how we can help them, how we can bring more dollars more investment into the communities that they care about and frankly, share the wealth that cities generate.

- Thank you for being here in Cleveland, I appreciate the opportunity.

You alluded to the issue of preemption, and I wanna elaborate on that and ask you a follow on question.

We had a vote in August that established a majority strong support statewide for majority rule.

There's likely to be a pro-choice vote coming up in November that's likely to generate a great deal of support.

After that, there's gonna be the gerrymandering issue that probably is gonna have to resort to a constitutional amendment again.

Would you at some point in that line also support a constitutional amendment to strengthen home rule authority for the cities against the state legislature?

And, you know, perhaps giving you explicit authority to act on behalf of local residents for public safety and public health?

- You wanna go first?

- Yeah, the answer's yes- - Yes.

- Of course.

- Yes.

(laughing) (audience clapping) The answer is yes, and look, you know, obviously Mayor Bibb and I are biased, but you know, this is just a straight up federalist argument, right?

Republicans should be the first ones to fight against a, you know, concentrated government that is overreaching into a local separate government.

I mean, it's big government at its worst, right?

And of course I would support it.

Now do I think that would pass?

I don't because who wants to sit through a preemption conversation, right?

(audience and Mayor Bibb laughing) I mean, how are we gonna message a preemption constitutional amendment?

But yes, I would of course support that.

- And for me it's simple, and this is not rocket science.

My philosophy and government is this.

I don't believe in big government or small government, I believe in smart government, and smart government is letting Ohio's mayors dictate what our residents need every single day.

We know what's best.

We know what's best.

(audience clapping) - I mean, they voted us in.

- Yeah, - Right?

- Yeah.

- So it's really an attack on your voting rights, your ability to choose your own leadership that reflects your policies and your priorities.

- Oh, wait, is is this on?

Okay, (laughing) my name is Kyle Williams and I go to MC2 Stem High School, and my question was, you mentioned earlier about trying to get guns out of primarily person of color communities, and I wanted to know about what happens if, like, somebody goes into a teacher's desk, since they just released that law.

Let's say East Cleveland allows teachers to keep guns in their desk just for safety.

What if someone goes in there, grabs the gun and does something not good with it?

What would the outcome be?

- So it's a great question.

(audience and Mayor Pureval and Mayor Bibb clapping) Thank you, and just to clarify my statements.

My statement isn't about getting guns out of communities of color, my statement is we need less guns across the city.

This isn't specific to communities of color, everybody has guns, even affluent communities like Hyde Park, there's gun violence.

So that's just one clarification, to your specific point, it's a great fact pattern to identify the insanity of, in response to horrific school shootings across the country, the decision to put more guns in schools.

I mean it is insane.

(audience clapping) And look Uvalde was an absolute horror and tragedy, and in no way am I shaming any law enforcement officials, but it was a good example of, it's not always the case that someone who has a gun will be in a position to make the situation better.

It's probably more the case that someone with a gun will make the situation worse as we have seen across our city when people get into arguments, but what's frustrating about that fact pattern is there's nothing Justin, or I could do, there's no law that we can pass in order to require that that teacher use a gun lock in their school, because of state preemption.

So we can't do common sense things to help the killing of so many kids in our communities because of state preemption.

- And I would say this, I'm not the mayor of east Cleveland, but as mayor of Cleveland with mayoral control of our schools, I'm not gonna allow our teachers to be armed with the guns at all.

(audience clapping) Unacceptable, unacceptable.

(audience clapping) - Kate Konowski representing Case Western Reserve University in Kent State, let's hear it Spartan's Flashes.

All right.

I was very interested in your motto of Cincinnati where you said, is its strength and unity and we are at a time right now in our country where we haven't been more polarized than we are.

And I'm just curious to know what you believe that the role of the mayor is to try to ameliorate or mitigate that tremendous gap so that we can find any kind of common ground or at least bridge that gap in some way.

- We are modeling good behavior already.

And so if our leaders who are locked into these partisan challenges would look to local government and to see how black, white, brown, Republican, Democrat, rich, and not rich are working together, I think that would certainly be a good lesson for the rest of the country.

- And I'll just close with this.

One of our former colleagues, the former mayor of Pittsburgh, has this great quote that I often use, He says "There's three parties in America, Republicans, Democrats and mayors."

(audience laughing) And as my grandmama once told me, model the behavior you want to see, model the behavior you want to see.

If Congress modeled the behavior that we're doing as mayors across the state, this country would be a lot better off, and we're trying to show the next generation as mayors how to get the job done.

- What if I acted like DeSantis and started attacking Procter & Gamble Right?

I'd be outta there.

If you attacked Sherman Williams or Cleveland Clinic?

- Yeah, game over.

(audience laughing) - Game over.

(laughing) - You can't govern that way.

You cannot govern by picking fights with people.

- No, you can't.

- There's enough fights coming our way, right?

It's just a waste of time.

Anyway, go ahead, sorry.

(audience and Mayor Bibb laughing) (audience clapping) - Thank you, thank you Mayor Bibb and Mayor Aftab for joining us, the City Club of Cleveland.

Today's forum is part of our leading City Series presented in partnership with Bank of America.

It also is the annual Nelson E Weiss Memorial Forum, an attorney, Mr. Weiss was a longtime member of the City Club and served as our president in 1982.

He had a keen interest in education, serving as a member of the Cleveland Heights University Heights Board of Education for many years.

We are so grateful to his friends and family and the law firm of McDonald and Hopkins for honoring him with their support of the City Club, and we're so grateful to have members of the Weiss family with us here today, including Shaker Heights Mayor David Weiss and his sisters Rebecca and Virginia.

(audience clapping) We would also like to welcome students from the Cleveland School of Architecture and Design, Lutheran West and MC2 Stem High School.

(audience clapping and cheering) And we'd also like to welcome guests at tables hosted by AARP Ohio, BakerHostetle, Huntington Bank, Bank of America, Idea Stream Public Media, Ohio Mayor's Alliance, Ohio Doors Academy, Redfern Group, Trust for Public Land, Youth Opportunities Unlimited and the Urban League, and also DLR Group whose team designed our beautiful new space and Turner Construction, whose team built this amazing space.

(audience and Kristen clapping) Thank you all for being here today.

Next Friday, September 22nd, the City Club will welcome Jim Free of NASA.

He'll be talking about what's next in deep space human exploration, including the Artemis Mission and future trips from the Moon to Mars.

And just announced the City Club will welcome author, professor and activist Angela Davis on Tuesday, October 3rd, (audience clapping) and on Thursday, October 5th, author Laura Meckler will discuss her new book, "Dream Town Shaker Heights And The Quest for Racial Equity."

Tickets are available for the forums mentioned above, and you can learn about these and others and also access our archives at cityclub.org.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

We are so grateful for all of your support.

Thank you for joining us for the first forum in our new home.

And I am Kristen Baird Adams and this forum is now adjourned.

(audience clapping) (bell dinging) (bright music) - [Narrator] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Idea Stream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.