Mayor Justin Bibb did not contrast himself with potential reelection opponents in his State of the City talk Wednesday. Instead, the mayor made President Donald Trump — and the threat of federal cuts — the main adversary in his hour-long remarks.
He decried the prospect of U.S. Justice Department cuts to anti-violence grants. He warned that hospital systems and grocery stores could suffer if Congress cuts Medicaid or food benefits. And he said city leaders should mobilize residents to “fight” by lobbying elected leaders against rollbacks in support for cities.
Cleveland may need to look elsewhere for help, he said, pointing to the city’s flush rainy day fund, local corporations and philanthropy.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last 90-plus days since Donald Trump has taken the White House, Washington is not coming to save us,” Bibb said. “We must continue to find ways to be resilient to make sure our progress can be sustained over time.”
Rather than give a scripted speech, Bibb chatted on stage at Cleveland Public Auditorium with Russ Mitchell, a WKYC anchor and the news outlet’s managing editor. The mayor also took questions from a few of the 1,100 in the audience at the annual event organized by the City Club of Cleveland.
Bibb, the president of the Democratic Mayors Association, told reporters afterward that he had already spoken with U.S. Reps. Max Miller and Shontel Brown about the possibility of federal safety cuts.
Asked whether he would change his approach in seeking federal funding — for instance, by deemphasizing diversity and equity to match the Trump agenda — Bibb gave a defiant answer.
“I’m not changing a damn thing,” he said. “My values are my values. Our values as a city are our values. That’s not going to change. It’s my responsibility to advocate for Cleveland, to fight for Cleveland and I’m trying to do the best I can right now by doing that.”
Even as he took swings at the GOP president, Bibb sounded some bipartisan notes. He said he would work with Republicans and independents to advance his vision for the city.
And he described Cleveland’s last Republican mayor, George Voinovich, as a hero of his. He praised the late mayor, governor and senator’s work with business leaders including Dick Pogue of the law firm Jones Day.
Bibb used that example to urge today’s business community to take his side in convincing the Cleveland Browns not to build a suburban stadium in Brook Park.
“Now is not the time to turn our back on investing in the urban core,” he said.
Looming CMSD school closures ‘won’t be easy’
Bibb, who as mayor oversees the school district, foreshadowed his response to the inevitable pushback to the closing of schools amid budget shortfalls.
The mayor said there were “islands of excellence” in the Cleveland schools, but not a “system of excellence.” He reiterated a line he has used before in arguing for Cleveland Metropolitan School District closures: that the district has too many school buildings and not enough students. Too few schools offer such basics as entry-level algebra, band and football, he said.
“That’s not good enough, and so while we have great pockets of excellence in parts of our city, I want the same quality from Mt. Pleasant to West Park,” he said. “And we can’t continue to delay hard choices.”
Those choices “won’t be easy,” Bibb said. CMSD leadership has already begun the process of selecting which schools to close or merge.
Another tough choice is CMSD’s decision to cut alternative school calendars, which prompted a protest this week from students at the year-round Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School.
Finding an end date for the police consent decree
Next month, Cleveland’s police reform deal with the Justice Department will turn 10 years old. The consent decree stemmed from a federal investigation that found a pattern of constitutional violations by city police.
Bibb argued that the city had made strides since then in overhauling police training and culture. But he accused the Justice Department of “moving the goalposts” of the decree.
There’s been a tug of war recently between City Hall and the police monitor Karl Racine, who works not for the Justice Department but for the federal judge overseeing the consent decree.
In his latest status report, Racine credited the city for making progress in crisis intervention and uses of force. But he criticized what he termed City Hall’s “failure to embrace oversight” from such independent bodies as the Community Police Commission.
City Hall, meanwhile, has pushed for the monitor to lay out in more detail how he arrived at the conclusions in his report.
“We want to make sure that the monitor gives us a clear methodology and a clear end date to say when we can be compliant,” Bibb said.
Compliance with the consent decree could still be two to three years away, the mayor said. And even after that, the city would have to continue working to make the decree’s reforms stick.
Defending the downtown safety patrol
Bibb said that he took office amid a “crisis of confidence” in the city’s handling of violent crime. Three years later, homicides have fallen and the city has hiked police pay. Bibb said that he had a good working relationship with the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association.
The mayor said that he disagreed with legislation before Cuyahoga County Council that could suspend the sheriff’s downtown safety patrol. County Council members have questioned the program after sheriff’s deputies took part in a high-speed chase that ended with a fatal crash.
Bibb said the downtown patrol should remain. He applauded the county for assisting with downtown safety after a gunman injured nine people in a 2023 shooting in the Warehouse District.
“Last time I checked, Cleveland was still part of Cuyahoga County,” he said. “And so goes the city, so goes the region.”
County Council Member Sunny Simon issued a statement Wednesday afternoon standing by her legislation.
“This is really about making sure the County’s investment in this Patrol is the right investment, and ultimately protects the residents of Cuyahoga County,” her statement read. “We are purely looking at the costs and benefits of this work, which is what we should be doing as the stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
The view from the mayor’s new City Council ward
In an interview after the speech, Ward 5 Council Member Richard Starr pushed back on Bibb’s portrayal of Cleveland as a safer city.
The number of homicides fell from 168 in 2022 to 113 last year, according to police statistics. But even that lower number of deaths is too high, Starr said. He pointed out that more than 900 people have been killed in Cleveland since 2019, the majority of them African American. Still too many people are using guns to settle their conflicts, he said.
“You can say crime is down, you could say homicides are down,” Starr said. “But the reality that a lot of residents [who] call my office and connect with me is, they’re feeling and hearing gunshots every night, no matter what.”
Starr is running for a second term and will face fellow incumbent Council Member Rebecca Maurer, who was drawn into Ward 5 in the latest round of redistricting.
The new boundaries of the ward include parts of such neighborhoods as downtown, Central, Slavic Village and Kinsman. Unless he moves, the mayor himself will be a Ward 5 voter in this election.
Starr said he wanted to see City Hall make more progress in reducing childhood lead poisoning. Despite years of work and tens of millions raised to deal with the toxic paint, the city is still trying to move the needle on poisoning rates.
The council member gave Bibb credit, too — for instance, for the city’s new 311 system, which the mayor pushed to overhaul. Starr said he encourages his residents call in complaints about city services to 311, which also offers an online complaint portal.
“Sometimes residents say, ‘I don’t have the technology, I can’t take that picture or do those different things,’” he said. But I think it’s a system that’s going to go through its tweaks and updates, and I think it’s going to eventually become even better.”
