Notes

The budget hearing for the Finance, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee began shortly after 9:30 a.m. 

Council members present were: Council President Blaine Griffin (Ward 6), Joe Jones (Ward 1), Kris Harsh (Ward 4), Richard Starr (Ward 5), Austin Davis (Ward 7), Kevin Conwell (Ward 9), Mike Polensek (Ward 10), Nikki Hudson (Ward 11), Tanmay Shah (Ward 12), Brian Kazy (Ward 13), Jasmin Santana (Ward 14), and Charles Slife (Ward 15).

This hearing was about the Department of Port Control and mostly concerned Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport. Director Bryant Francis and his staff gave a presentation to the committee of department activities for 2025. A major topic in his remarks is the CLEvolution airport modernization project, which began in 2025 and is scheduled to continue into the early 2030s.

Information covered during the presentation includes:

• The department is asking for a $195 million budget in 2026 as published in the Mayor’s Estimate, with $2.8 million of that amount allocated to Burke Lakefront Airport. Department Finance and Procurement Director Christine Gilmartin told the committee that Hopkins was a “residual airport” that didn’t earn a profit. Instead, extra revenue was used to reduce costs for airlines.
• Cleveland-Hopkins served more than 10 million passengers during 2025 from 10 airlines.
• For 2026, new routes are planned to Montreal, New York City and Phoenix.
• Cleveland-Hopkins participates in the Sunflower Hidden Disabilities program (which enables individuals with non-visible disabilities to signal the need for accommodation through wearing a sunflower lanyard), and in November started the Hopkins Flight School, a program to help first-time travelers and individuals who may need more help (e.g., older individuals, people with autism, etc.) learn to navigate and make their way through a simulation of the airport experience in a safe and secure setting.

After the initial presentation, Port Control administrator Henrietta Brown provided the committee with demographic and position information about employees within the department. This resulted in ongoing discussion between council members and Port Control staff during the course of the meeting. The summary below contains information presented early in the meeting around open positions and employee demographic diversity combined with later discussions around those topics.

1. Open positions – There are currently 505 positions with the department, but only 354 are filled. The most common open positions were airport maintenance workers (27 open) and custodial workers (14 open). Several committee members expressed concern at the number of open positions. Polensek was “extremely disappointed” in the number of vacancies and said there should be a “concerted effort” to fill positions. Francis and other Port Control staff said that the division was moving beyond posting open positions to the City of Cleveland website to include attending job fairs, etc. Port Control staff also said that they would start tracking employee retention rates to see how that related to the number of open positions. Davis commented that civil service rules may need to be updated to help fill vacancies, with Brown responding that recent hires in human resources and administrative positions at the airport should help the division achieve a “more reasonable” vacancy rate. Toward the end of the meeting, Starr asked about summer jobs for youth at the airport and whether the Youth Opportunity Unlimited (Y.O.U.) program could help. Francis was open to the idea but talked about complications in getting jobs at the airport.  

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2.  Employee demographic diversity – Brown presented an employee breakout by gender and race/ethnicity. As of 12/31/2025, 27% of division employees were female, 51% were white, 39% were Black, and 4% were Hispanic. During the meeting, council members asked for more information about employee diversity. Conwell asked for average wages by race and position breakouts by race, emphasizing the importance of “meaningful jobs with meaningful benefits.” (Conwell was told this information wasn’t available). Shah asked about efforts to recruit individuals of Arab and Middle Eastern descent to work at the airport (e.g., advertisements in different languages), and was told that the need to use a prescribed recruitment process meant that wasn’t possible.

Other issues addressed during the meeting include:

1. Hopkins and Cleveland Public Power (CPP) – Polensek expressed his frustration that the airport wasn’t using CPP as its power source. While agreeing with Polensek, Slife noted that CPP doesn’t typically operate west of West 117th Street, and that covering the five additional miles to the airport could result in more power disruptions and outages. Slife advocated opening areas between West 117th Street and the airport to CPP to increase the potential customer base for the utility in addition to connecting the airport to CPP.

2. Hopkins and the Browns’ Brook Park stadium – Kazy asked Francis about a recent Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency (NOACA) analysis that found that the new Cleveland Browns stadium in the city of Brook Park (just a few miles east of the airport) would only add an additional 30 to 60 seconds of travel time to get to Hopkins. (Note: Kazy didn’t refer to the stadium by name, instead calling it “that monstrosity”.) While Francis emphasized the division’s collaboration with the Browns over the new stadium, Kazy expressed his skepticism at the NOACA estimate (“I just don’t see how that would be possible”).

3. Hopkins and the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) rail station – In response to a question by Shah about the RTA line at the airport, Francis said that a new station will be constructed as part of the CLEvolution project (the station is expected to open in 2029). Francis said that a “low percentage” of travelers use RTA, although a “fair amount” of employees use the rail service to get to work.

4. Burke Lakefront Airport – In response to a question by Davis, Francis said that Burke has no public flights but does host private and corporate flights. Francis said that while Burke has a positive impact by hosting flight schools and providing parking for downtown events, he didn’t mention direct positive impacts to the city from Burke.

The morning session of the committee ended around noon for a lunch break.

These notes are by Documenter Tucker Handley.

If you believe anything in these notes is inaccurate, please email us at documenters@signalcleveland.org  with “Correction Request” in the subject line.