A Message from Executive Director Mary Cierebiej

Greetings! Welcome to the first edition of the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission's newsletter! It is our sincere pleasure to provide professional planning and technical services to the communities in Cuyahoga County. Our team produces valuable resources, best practices, and tools that can be utilized by you as community leaders.

There is so much that we can learn from each other and the work happening across Cuyahoga County. The goal of this newsletter is to share streamlined updates on projects, best practices, and resources that are available to you to utilize in your work. Like you, we are striving to improve opportunities at the local level and countywide, and we are here to support you in your efforts.

Working together with our partners across Cuyahoga County, we want to inspire all of our communities to thrive, and advance our social, economic, and environmental health through equitable community planning.

As the saying goes, we are stronger together!

Just Awarded: Safe Streets & Roads for All Grant

County Planning in collaboration with Cuyahoga County was recently awarded $600,000 in Safe Streets & Roads for All (SS4A) grant funding for the development of a Comprehensive Safety Action Plan for Cuyahoga County. The plan will bolster efforts to address safety in our transportation network, and it will include a detailed safety analysis of existing crashes; deep community engagement; recommended infrastructure and non-infrastructure changes to address safety concerns; and an understanding of how crashes and recommended changes impact racial, socio-economic, and mobility groups.

Over the five years from 2017 to 2021, there have been 484 persons killed in fatal crashes in Cuyahoga County—events that upend lives, families, and communities. That number is moving in the wrong direction and is disproportionately affecting minority communities in our County.

The Comprehensive Safety Action Plan will be undertaken collaboratively with communities that have already completed or are in the process of completing their own Safety Action Plans, including the cities of Cleveland, Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, Euclid, and Rocky River.

More information will be posted on our website when the plan kicks off in 2025.

New Progress Report: Single-Family Zoning Reform

County Planning recently released its "Progress on Infill" report, a 2024 update of the Single-Family Zoning Analysis, to highlight the accomplishments of this effort and the progress that has been made by all of our communities in advancing neighborhood revitalization.

The Single-Family Zoning Analysis was a joint effort of the First Suburbs Consortium of Northeast Ohio, the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, the Cuyahoga Land Bank, and First Federal of Lakewood. Our efforts addressed disinvestment and barriers to neighborhood revitalization principally through zoning reform. Eight communities in the First Suburbs have updated their zoning or are in the process of updating their zoning as a result of this initiative.

Zoning changes that have already been adopted mean that more than 13,000 parcels no longer need certain variances for construction. That means less red tape, faster construction time, and more homes and investments in our communities.

Thanks for taking the time to read our first newsletter! Future editions will offer more information about what we've been up to and tools for benefiting your community. If you found this message valuable, please consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. Please let us know if there are opportunities for us to collaborate with you.

Cuyahoga County Planning Commission

2079 East 9th Street, Suite 5-300

Cleveland, Ohio 44115

216-443-3700

info@countyplanning.us

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