CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — Cleveland Heights City Council plans to hold a public meeting later this year so members can air grievances and show the public they can find solutions.
Council’s Committee of the Whole discussed the proposal at its Monday meeting and agreed to schedule a grievances meeting sometime in the beginning of December.
Council has had its fair share of disputes in recent months, including when Councilman Anthony Mattox accused other members of council of holding private meetings without him.
In an email to Council President Tony Cuda, Councilman Jim Posch, who proposed the idea for the meeting, wrote that several people have told him that they believe the city government is in a state of dysfunction after a spat between council and Mayor Kahlil Seren. The mayor launched an independent investigation when he suspected that some council members had met in private to discuss upcoming meetings.
“Maybe the perceptions are unfair, but nevertheless they are currently the talk of the town,” Posch wrote. “I feel we need to act and work hard on solutions the citizens can see – giving them confidence in our work.”
The meeting, as Posch laid out in the letter, would begin with each council member having three uninterrupted minutes to share grievances and issues they think need to be addressed.
Members would have two minutes to respond to any concerns and then discuss which issues to prioritize. Then the group could spend up to an hour coming up with solutions to the issues.
During Monday’s meeting, Mattox objected to one provision of the proposal that would not allow council to officially add a member’s grievance to the list unless at least three members agreed that it should be.
Mattox cited a private meeting in May held by Cuda and members Gail Larson and Jim Petras. Petras is the chair of the housing committee, Mattox is vice chair, and Larson is the third member of the committee.
Cuda wrote in an email to Larson and Petras after the meeting that he later forwarded to Council Vice President Davida Russell that the trio discussed Petras’ housing initiatives, as well as several other items, during the meeting.
The email is what spurred Seren to accuse council of violating Ohio’s Open Meetings Act and hiring a law firm to conduct an independent investigation to determine whether the meeting did run afoul of the law.
Cuda has characterized the meeting as organizational to determine which issues to prioritize at upcoming meetings. He said no official actions or votes were taken there.
“Folks have looked me in the face and said there have not been side meetings of committees that I’m on,” Mattox said. “It’s a waste of my time if I have to have someone else in agreement. There’s never going to be a process and procedure for these side meetings, if no one agrees that they even happened.”
Councilman Craig Cobb suggested scrapping the requirement that grievances be approved by three council members before they can be addressed, and Posch quickly agreed.
“I didn’t realize it was that easy,” Cuda said.
However, Petras suggested that council prioritize the issues that multiple council members agree upon. That led Mattox to accuse Petras of trying to push Mattox’s grievance to the back of the line.
“If I’m going to have this discussion, and by your definition, anything that I want to discuss is going to be discussed hours or days later, don’t think I’m not going to say anything,” he said. “I have no patience left for any foolishness at all.”
Although no city officials publicly made the connection, the proposal to hold a meeting to air grievances between council and the administration channels a similar concept from a famous 1997 episode of the sitcom “Seinfeld.”
In the episode, character Frank Costanza created a secular holiday called “Festivus” for his family to celebrate on Dec. 23. Among the day’s events was an “airing of grievances” in which family members could vent about their displeasures with one another.
Costanza began the airing of grievances by proclaiming, “I got a lotta problems with you people, and now you’re going to hear about it!”
