Cleveland City Hall wants the public – and especially local reporters – to pay more attention to its new website, which displays facts and figures about city operations.
Mayor Justin Bibb called a virtual meeting last week with newsroom managers to ask them to encourage their employees to start using it. Launched in April, the website is an open data portal, which means users can access and interact with all kinds of information collected by the city. Some of the information, including crime statistics, is updated every 24 hours. The portal is essentially displaying the data that sits on the city’s own computer servers. And the city plans to add troves of new information every month.
But the reason for the special meeting was best expressed by Urban Analytics and Innovation Director Elizabeth Crowe, who is the architect of the portal.
“We are drowning in requests,” she said about the inquiries for information City Hall receives from the public and media. (The city received 33,000 requests in 2023.)
Crowe said some of the information that reporters are seeking is readily available on the data portal, a point reinforced by the mayor’s press secretaries who joined the call. They stressed that reporters trying to make deadlines have a better chance of getting the information by visiting the portal than by flooding them with emails and calls.
The press office gets frequent requests for such things as basic as the number of homicides to date. The portal has a dashboard with safety information. It takes a few minutes to get your bearings. But with a few clicks, you can find that there have been 48 homicides in Cleveland so far in 2024. Signal Cleveland also could easily find stolen cars mapped on the portal within 24 hours of a car being reported stolen. The portal, however, does not make police reports available online, information that fuels some reporters’ daily work.
As Signal Cleveland pointed out before, the portal offers census data and parcel-by-parcel property conditions, spreadsheets of building permits, rental registrations and housing code violations, among lots of other things.
City Hall’s request was an earnest one that masked frustration with local media. Unsaid was press secretaries’ view that reporters should be spending a few minutes trying to find basic information before asking them for information already available at their fingertips. City Hall ended the meeting by offering to provide training sessions on how to use the portal to morning and afternoon newsroom shifts.
Campaign contributions and pickleball
Cuyahoga County Council Member Martin J. Sweeney may not be the most top-of-mind elected official these days, but he still is a top draw among politicians, business people and Democrats looking to network.
Sweeney’s 28th annual fundraiser dubbed “Party with Marty” – held last late month at the Aviator Pub (the old 100th Bomb Group near the airport) – attracted a wide array of officials and others from the past and present, including a few linked to past corruption scandals.
Among the attendees were business owner Tony George; Democratic Party Chair David Brock; former Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish and his former chief of staff, Bill Mason; architect David Bowen; Cuyahoga Council President Pernel Jones Jr.; and, of course, Sweeney’s daughter, State Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney, who is seen as a potential statewide candidate someday. There were many dozens more there, both big and small, including Olmsted Township Trustee Riley Alton.
During the event, which took place on the rooftop as a wedding unfolded on the patio below, two figures in particular earned attention and a warm welcome: Former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, who was released last year from prison after serving nearly 12 years of a 23-year sentence for public corruption charges. (His original sentence was 28 years, and some Democrats have long felt Dimora deserved far less.) Also there was Nate Gray, a once-influential businessman and confidante to former Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White. Gray was convicted of corruption nearly 20 years ago and was released from prison in 2019.
Sweeney’s fundraiser ended with a political first. In the parking lot, Sweeney and others set up a portable pickleball court and played a few matches. An attendee described the intensity of the matches as more of a dink than a banger.
Another week, another departure from Cleveland State’s cabinet
David Jewell stepped down as the university’s chief financial officer Wednesday, according to an email sent to faculty and staff by President Laura Bloomberg. Jewell was hired in 2021 by ousted former president Harlan Sands. Jewell’s base salary was $290,000, according to a contract reviewed by Signal Cleveland.
Bloomberg said Jewell will “continue to advise and work remotely on special projects” over the next few months, an undoubtedly busy time as the university looks to close a projected $40 million budget gap and address continued enrollment woes.
Wednesday’s note didn’t name an interim VP. Bloomberg did mention, though, that Cleveland State will launch a national search for Jewell’s replacement. There’s already one search under way. As Signal Cleveland reported earlier this month, the university is looking to find its next enrollment chief.
Now, Bloomberg will get to hire two of Cleveland State’s most important positions – and two key members of her cabinet – as her university sits at a pivotal point.
