Mayor Meghan George's State Of The City Address 2023

Mayor Meghan George
Thursday, Apr 13, 2023
Cove Community Center

OPENING

Good Evening. It’s great to see you all here tonight. First, a big thank you goes out to Boy Scout Troop 287 from St. James for providing us with a color guard and leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Each year I look forward to this opportunity as a chance to celebrate some of our recent successes in the City of Lakewood and to talk about where we are headed. Last year, we were here not only to talk about the State of the City, but also to enjoy the grand opening of the beautiful new Cove Community Center. It’s a space that has truly realized the community’s vision as the hub of our human services work and providing an important and flexible community gathering place. I’ll have more to say about all the good things that have been happening here in a few minutes.

But before moving on, let’s recognize the local elected officials who serve our Lakewood community and have joined us here tonight:

I would also like to pause and thank City Council President John Litten. John has served the City of Lakewood for 8 years and has demonstrated servant leadership during his time on council and in the community. This is John’s last State of the City, and I would like to recognize John for his work and partnership over the years.

As we kick off the State of the City, I also need to express my gratitude to the fantastic team of directors that serve our community at City Hall. Their expertise, collaboration, dedication, and leadership are on display every day and the results they achieve are evident throughout the City of Lakewood. We are also lucky in Lakewood to have very talented and dedicated staff in all our departments doing the day-to-day work for our citizens. Directors and all Lakewood employees that are here today, please stand and be acknowledged for your hard work and dedication.

I’m happy to report to you that the state of our City is strong, something we can all be grateful for after recent years of uncertainty and stress for all of us.

If you would have told me just a few months after being elected as mayor that we would face a global pandemic, I would have thought you were trying to scare me out of taking this job. But, three years later, here we stand, thriving as a city and a re-committed as a community of neighbors that care for each other. Sometimes the pandemic seems like a distant memory, other days it continues to directly impact us. Thankfully, in Lakewood, our efforts allowed us to come out of the pandemic in a healthy position. Our small business rent relief program kept our thriving small business community from faltering during this time of great uncertainty. We can be proud to say 227 Lakewood small businesses are still here today, providing services, jobs, and taxes that help make our city vibrant. Our rental assistance program helped keep 3000 people in their homes. And with unprecedented $47 million American Rescue Plan Act dollars or ARPA dollars, we are able to make wise, strategic decisions with the dollars, and position Lakewood to remain fiscally responsible and stable for the foreseeable future.

SERVICES

Part of what makes Lakewood so stable and desirable is the emphasis we place on high quality services and maintaining housing quality. Our public works, building and housing, and planning and development departments are leading the way on this work.

In Public Works, our hardworking team continued to do a fantastic job maintaining and improving City buildings and our top notch system of parks. Lakewood is incredibly dense. With 217 streets and 180 miles of sidewalks, and 74 acres of parks – it takes an incredible amount of effort to do this work day-in and day-out. I want to specifically thank our Public Works team for all they do. And, I want to include a word of welcome to our new public works director, Chris Gordon. Chris has done a wonderful job of stepping into the shoes of recently retired Director Roman Ducu.

In 2022, we resurfaced 3 miles of roadways, planted over 400 new trees, and responded to the usual number of emergency issues with our aging infrastructure. As I often say, we all love our historic city and the charm that goes along with that – but it also is a lot of work to keep some of that aging infrastructure in good shape.

One key focus for Public Works each winter is making sure we deal with snow and ice. We were lucky to have a mild winter this year, but we were prepared. The City developed its first formal and fully integrated Snow and Ice Control Plan to fully align and clarify our strategy across departments and increase capacity. Aspects of the plan range from ways to deploy more plows on City vehicles to policy changes that ensure additional personnel to cover holidays and weekends and efforts to support homeowners in keeping sidewalks walkable.

Another way that we aim to keep Lakewood beautiful, is by maintaining quality housing that offers a range of options for a diverse population. We often refer to Lakewood as the City of Beautiful Homes. It’s an accurate slogan, and we can be proud of how we have maintained our historic character and quality that make Lakewood special. We continue to be a place where people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, and all incomes can find a place to call home and enjoy high-quality services.

The City facilitates private development of new market rate units, which relieves market pressure on our existing housing stock. By working with developers to introduce a diversity of new units – from the infill cluster homes currently under construction on the former gas station on Lake Avenue to larger scale housing projects moving ahead by developers along major corridors like Detroit and Madison. Projects like Studio West are an example of this type of development that made major headway last year. We also continue to advance the Downtown Development site with our partner CASTO. When complete, this project is expected to introduce the largest number of new residential units in 50 years. Thank you to Director Shawn Leininger and your team for your hard work.

Over the last year, the City continued to build on another strength in this area – our building code and inspection work. Under the leadership of Building Commissioner Chris Parmalee, the building and housing department worked hand in hand with the Law and Planning Departments to update building codes, adding more significant penalties for violations in large buildings and requirements that large buildings and parking structures regularly obtain a structural engineer’s report on building conditions. We instituted the first survey process to formally and regularly assess the condition of all of the 1,500 commercial buildings in Lakewood. Others are noticing our performance – Lakewood’s Building and Housing Department received an Honorable Mention for 2022 by the Ohio Board of Building Standards Award for Building Department Excellence. The Lakewood Building Department was recognized for its dedication to customer service, effective response to the pandemic, and recruitment efforts to bring individuals into the code enforcement profession.

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY AND TRANSPARENCY

Fiscal responsibility and transparency continue to be a fundamental pillar of everything we do at City Hall. Our top priority is to make sure that we get maximum value and impact for every one of your tax dollars. Our finance team are doing an excellent job supporting this goal, and it is being recognized by outside parties.

This past fall we received the Auditor of State Award with Distinction for the third consecutive year, a recognition that less than 5% of state and local governmental entities audited by the State receive. This award speaks to our deep commitment to fiscal excellence and integrity as the stewards of your public dollars. We also received the Government Finance Officers Association Award for Excellence in Financial Reporting and the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for the second consecutive year – only the 6th time Lakewood has achieved this status. I’m very proud of our Finance staff, led by Director Peter Rancatore. Thank you for your hard work and commitment.

With the scale of our operations in Lakewood, it is an impressive achievement to have such a strong financial performance.

Keep in mind that Lakewood is one of Ohio’s top 20 cities in population, and the third largest in Cuyahoga County. We have an annual budget of over $209M. And we have 519 employees. So, making sure things operate smoothly with our finances is a major task, as well as human resources. I want to thank our Director of HR, Claudia Dillinger, and her whole team for doing an excellent job keeping us in compliance and navigating all the needs of our employees. The City of Lakewood was actually named a best in class employer last year by a national insurance and risk management group based on the efforts of our HR department and our overall approach to employment matters.

SAFETY

Along with fiscal and HR excellence, safety remains a top priority for the City. It is foundational to everything we do, and we take a broad view of how to maintain and improve public safety. It’s not just about the number of police officers on the street - that is important (and we actually increased our officer capacity this year) but a safe Lakewood has many layers. Our approach to safety includes being creative and innovative while thinking about the safety of our community holistically. In this past year, we have implemented several initiatives to do just that.

First, we launched the Neighborhood Paramedic Program this past August. With support from the Healthy Lakewood Foundation, we were able to incorporate a program in our Fire Department focused on proactive, preventative care and interventions. In 2022, we kicked off the program by focusing on fall prevention for senior citizens, using neighborhood paramedic visits to prevent trip-and-fall situations within residences. For context, in 2021 alone, Lakewood EMS responded to more than 650 calls for senior citizens experiencing injury from a fall, with over half serious enough to require EMS transport. In less than a year since our new program began, Lakewood’s Neighborhood Paramedic – Mike Sanders – has been in touch with 170 individuals, and performed 40 in-home consultations that have led to the elimination of fall risks.

For our youngest residents, we were excited to bring back the Car Seat Fit Stop program. Once a month, Lakewood parents can bring their car seats to our fire station to ensure proper installation. This program is proving to be popular and filling a need as registration for these monthly events fill up almost as quickly as they are posted. Dozens of Lakewood families have already taken advantage of this free service that keeps children safe. Our Lakewood Fire Department is also working on offering citywide training for any Lakewood resident interested in learning CPR, something each of us should do. I want to thank Chief Dunphy for his leadership and efforts to innovate, and his entire team for keeping us all safe.

As I noted before, last year we increased our authorized officer capacity for Lakewood’s Police Department. This was a strategic move that will prevent any loss in capacity in our roster of officers as we face a number of expected retirements in the department and also deal with an industry-wide talent gap as police work has faced a shortage of talented individuals interested in the job. By raising our authorized number by 4 officers, we can proactively recruit and retain officers to make sure we have no gaps and we maintain officers on patrol and doing follow-up and crime prevention work. Best of all, we were able to dedicate some federal ARPA dollars to this initiative, allowing us to implement this new policy with no negative short-term budget implications.

I’m proud of our police department for continuing to explore forward-looking police tactics and policies. One I want to highlight is our department’s commitment to crisis intervention training and implementation within our police department. At the end of 2022, our police force had 27 personnel – from patrol officers to dispatchers to command staff – who were specifically trained in crisis intervention tactics and interactions, which help safety personnel recognize when they are dealing with someone facing mental illness and help to stabilize that person. Our statistics show that when our department encounters people in crisis - which happens hundreds of times each year– we are able to avoid arrests, and instead connect people to the help they need. I applaud Chief Kaucheck for continuing to pursue our shared goal of steadily increasing the number of officers fully trained in CIT techniques.

Another exciting program that we will roll out this summer is the Lakewood Police Department’s SAFE PLACE program. This innovative model, developed by the Seattle Police Department, is a community-based approach to safety and policing that builds relationships within our community to assist victims of hate crimes, harassment, and bullying. Our officers will begin meeting with and training local businesses and organizations interested in providing a convenient “safe place” for victims of hate crimes and harassment. This model has been adopted by over 300 law enforcement agencies across the country, and I am proud that Lakewood is among the first in the State of Ohio to roll out this program.

The concept of doing our best to make Lakewood a safe place is always top of mind for me and our safety forces. That’s why we are so focused on being prepared and having the right training for our first responders. All of us have heard so many stories recently about concerning events across our state and our nation – from the train derailment in southern Ohio to the horrifying shootings happening in so many communities in America. Lakewood has been fortunate to avoid these situations, something we fully intend to maintain – but we also remain vigilant and committed in our efforts for our safety forces and our community to be prepared for anything.

On that note, I would like to mention that in a state where a majority of legislators are more concerned about assault weapons and high capacity magazines than they are about protecting the well-being and safety of school children, I particularly want to thank Representative Skindell and State Senator Antonio for their work and leadership in Columbus fighting for common sense gun safety reform.

I also want to pause here to recognize our IT department and Director Mike Coletta’s team, who play an important and generally unseen role in so much of our safety work at City Hall. One example I want to highlight is their impact on helping our safety forces with support on communications equipment and capacity. We all are grateful for the IT team. Mike has also done a fantastic job helping Lakewood secure grants to underwrite the costs of technology and equipment, such as radios and cameras.

Undoubtedly, our parks and greenspaces are some of the most treasured places in our community. Last year, the City began working to implement a park ambassador program in partnership with the Block by Block Ambassador Program. With the groundwork laid last year, when the weather gets warm our new Neighborhood Safety Specialists will begin staffing Lakewood parks on foot and bicycle to provide a stable, friendly, presence. Their duties will include being on the lookout for and serving as a deterrent to unwanted behavior and activity to identify and report potential issues before they arise or escalate. Ambassadors are already in our five largest community parks: Lakewood, Madison, Cove, Kauffman, and Wagar in the warmer months, seven days a week from 1:30-10:00 p.m. Please take the time to get to know these ambassadors and welcome them to our community. I also want to note that the Block by Block agreement was negotiated by our new law director, Ernie Vargo, who joined City Hall after a distinguished career at Baker Hostetler and has been a great addition to our team. Welcome aboard, Ernie.

PARKS & AMENITIES

Speaking of our parks, in 2022 the City continued to invest dollars in maintaining and improving our fantastic system of greenspaces. One project I am sure we are all excited about is the Foster Pool Revitalization. Following the 2022 summer swim season, the City began construction on a multi-million dollar project to completely rebuild and revamp this beloved community asset. When soon completed, Foster Pool will incorporate new features that create a more useful and friendly environment for people of all ages and swimming abilities - from our young ones taking their first lessons to athletes looking for a full workout. The new pool will have improved accessibility, a new competition and recreation pool, a water play amenities area, a splash pad, and bathhouse renovations. The project also solves a longstanding leakage issue that caused an annual loss of one million gallons of chlorinated water. I’m sure we all can’t wait to dive in when the weather warms up.

Another beloved Lakewood recreation space is Winterhurst Ice Rink, which has served our community, first as an outdoor amenity beginning in the 1930s, and since the 1970s with two year-round, indoor ice rinks. Over time, the needs and priorities of residents for using Winterhurst have evolved, and we have recently issued an RFQ to explore the best model for operating the facility. There is an opportunity to adjust use of Winterhurst to make sure it aligns with community goals. We are excited about the next chapter for Winterhurst.

This year, we are also launching a planning effort to explore more access to our greatest and most breathtaking asset - Lake Erie. The City is undertaking a Lakewood Park Waterfront Access Feasibility Study to determine how we can realize more elements of the Lakewood Park Master Plan, which envisioned multiple points of access to the lake, possibly even a pier. I encourage you all to take part in the public engagement process and share your thoughts. The ultimate goal is to provide more people with more opportunities to enjoy the waterfront.

In other “green” initiatives, the City continued its commitment to evolving our municipal fleet of vehicles, with older gas powered cars being replaced by fully electric or hybrid vehicles.

The City also updated our tree plan last year and planted over 400 new trees, with a special focus on our parks and areas with less canopy coverage.
In an effort to keep our Lake and the Rocky River healthy and clean, Lakewood is also working hand in hand with the Ohio EPA on an agreement to improve our clean water infrastructure. To that end, we have dedicated a major portion of our ARPA dollars to reduce the burden on our ratepayers of implementing that plan. The City’s integrated wet weather improvement plan (IWWIP) was actually adopted years ago, but we formally entered our agreement with the EPA this past year, and have now dedicated $25 million of those federal funds to advance the plan, an investment that will pay off for decades.

In a related project, last year the City also began construction on a new Berea Road facility serving multiple purposes, including recycling and refuse services and an updated facility for the humane treatment of stray animals. The project also allows space to be freed up for the buildout of our water and sewer infrastructure in the Metroparks. By modernizing our recycling center, we will provide a streamlined facility where residents can drop off both nontraditional waste – from hazardous waste items to tires and construction debris – as well as process recyclables. Our new animal shelter will ensure the safe and humane treatment of animals that do not have a home or whose owners can no longer care for them. Both of these needs have been on the City’s radar for years. I’d like to thank our area’s representative, Councilman Dale Miller, as well as all of County Council, for hosting us and considering our request for support.

While we are on the subject of our animal shelter, I also want to pause briefly and thank all of our staff and our Lakewood volunteers, including LASWAB and CCLAS, who pitched in with time and resources during the holiday season to address an animal crisis in one of our homes where 40 beagles were being kept in unsafe conditions. It was a huge lift by many caring people to provide for the dogs in the short term, and I’m happy to report that they have all found happy new homes and are out of City care. This whole episode speaks volumes about how deeply Lakewood cares. Our City Hall team is currently working with the Citizens Committee for the Lakewood Animal Shelter, the Lakewood Animal Welfare and Safety Advisory Board, and others to discuss what lessons can be learned from this case to proactively address animal welfare moving forward.

As I draw to a close, one year ago, we cut the ribbon on this beautiful new facility. Since then, it has become what this community had envisioned: a bustling, welcoming community center with programs and activities for all ages, from seniors to families to youth. In just this past year, this building and department has served over 1,000 people (adults and children), delivered over 18,000 meals, provided over 20,000 check-ins to our seniors, and provided thousands of hours of programming from everyone from our youngest residents to our seniors. In addition to the phenomenal programming here at Cove, our Human Services Department, led by Director Chad Berry, work hand-in-hand with other city departments and organizations throughout the area to ensure residents are connected to resources. That includes everything from including senior nutrition, transportation, and activity programs; the Lakewood Family Room; Help to Others (H2O) youth program; community-based social work services; and the juvenile diversion program. You can also find flexible meeting spaces here available for residents. This place is truly a gem for Lakewood.

CONCLUSION

Thank you for joining us tonight to talk about the State of our City. It’s an exciting time for Lakewood, and we all have a part to play in keeping our momentum going. I look forward to working with you all in making that happen.