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This article provided by Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism. Please join Eye on Ohio's free mailing list as this helps provide more public service reporting to the community. By Christopher Johnston
While running for Cleveland City Council Ward 3 seat last year, Ayat Amin spent a lot of time canvassing neighborhoods and talking to residents about environmental issues.
“What came up time and again in our conversations that really resonated with people was air quality,” she said. “Specifically there were a lot of residents who felt they were experiencing poor air quality but didn’t know what to do about it.”
When she inquired about signs of air pollution in their neighborhood, residents told her they would have to wipe soot off of their outdoor plants or off their houses. In Ohio City, residents of Lakeview Terrace, one of the oldest public housing complexes in the U.S., complained of particles in the air from the roughly 1,000 trucks passing through, spewing exhaust and stirring up dust that landed on their cars, homes and in the air they breathed every day. After she lost the election to incumbent Kerry McCormack, Amin convened an informal citizen action group that met regularly to research available data and discuss air pollutants such as methane and lead in the air. They talked with representatives from the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency and Cleveland’s Division of Air Quality, which was helpful and “wanted the same things we wanted.” However, the group stopped meeting after about five months. “Our group stalled at the beginning of last summer because we were struggling to determine what we could actually do about air pollution,” she said. “There wasn’t enough data for us to prosecute, and the city was already working on getting more monitors. We didn’t have definite sources of pollution data that we could mobilize people in the neighborhood and say, ‘Hey, your air quality is poor, and here’s the proof of where the pollutants are coming from.’”
Carleton See, an environmental monitoring specialist, carries containers full of filters for the monitoring equipment at the George T. Craig Air Quality Monitoring Site in downtown Cleveland. (Gus Chan for Eye on Ohio)
Since then Amin has continued to research the problem and looked at what other cities are doing to address air pollution.
This project provided by Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism. Please join Eye on Ohio's free mailing list as this helps provide more public service reporting to your community. On May 12, 2021, Chris and Angela Powers submitted a $4,000 bid for a Lawrence County Land Bank property.
It was above the Auditor’s appraised value of $3,340. But the Powers really loved the riverfront site.
LGBTQ+ Business Enterprises are part of an intentional effort to create jobs, provide opportunities and build equity...if people sign up. Since 2014, more than 25 public entities — such as Houston, Miami Beach and Nashville — have signed on to offer the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC)’s process to certify Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Business Enterprises (LGBTBEs), including Cleveland and recently Columbus. But despite great fanfare in announcing the new program, few businesses have actually signed up.
Cleveland was one of the first cities in the U.S. to offer LGBTBEs, opting into the NGLCC program in 2015. The advertised benefits include networking, an online business directory and training on how to secure government contracts.
Ratepayers are getting tiny credits right now, but House Bill 6’s coal plant bailouts have huge net costs. And millions of dollars of those costs were improper, critics argue. This story is a joint project of the nonprofit Energy News Network and Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism. Please join the free mailing lists for Eye on Ohio or the Energy News Network, as this helps provide more public service reporting.
Al Jenkins outside of his Cleveland home. This project was funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center and provided by Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism.