Cuyahoga council celebrates its slush funds, but does it ignore alarming jail deaths? Today in Ohio

Today in Ohio

Today in Ohio, the daily news podcast of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County is setting aside $86 million in federal stimulus money for “miscellaneous community grants” to fund various projects to be proposed by council members and Executive Armond Budish.

We’re talking about what else stimulus money could be used for on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here. See the automated transcript at the bottom of the post.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.

Here are the questions we’re answering today:

So did Cuyahoga County Council go ahead and create their gigantic slush funds?

What are the chances that votes in Ohio’s Congressional primaries will be rejected as valid?

How many additional medical marijuana dispensaries does Ohio want to license, and why the need for more?

Which well-known law enforcement personality from Ohio is Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives?

How is Cleveland Hopkins International Airport trying to alleviate the parking jam, and will the help come in time for Easter Week spring breakers?

What’s the bad news for people using cellular phones that rely on 3G networks?

What do we know about the latest death in the Cuyahoga County jail, and is the pace of deaths in the jail picking up again?

What is Vytalize Health, and why are investors putting $50 million into the company with offices in Cleveland?

What is Cuyahoga County’s latest investment in rebuilding the regional tree canopy?

We all know we have a nursing shortage in Northeast Ohio. Is the rate of pay a reason? How does Ohio compare to neighboring states?

We have an Apple podcasts channel exclusively for this podcast. Subscribe here.

Do you get your podcasts on Spotify? Find us here.

If you use Stitcher, we are here.

RadioPublic is another popular podcast vehicle, and we are here.

On Google Podcasts, we are here.

On PodParadise, find us here.

And on PlayerFM, we are here.

Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

Chris: [00:00:00] I am most postponed recording this podcast for a little bit or releasing it so that we could talk about the Broadway release at Playhouse square. It’s a big moment for theater goers, but people get mad when we delay the publishing in this podcast. So we’ll talk about it tomorrow. It’s today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the plain dealer.

I’m Chris Gwynn here with Lisa Garvin, Laila, Tassie, and Laura. Then it’s a sunny Tuesday and it’s supposed to be sunny all day. Right.

Lisa: And in the

Chris: sixties, let’s take a day off and go garden.

It’s the first day you can do it all spring. No such luck we have work to do so did Cuyahoga county council go ahead and put in legislation to create their gigantic slush funds, Layla, not really a surprise because they really don’t pay attention to what the will of the voters and taxpayers are. But don’t

Leila: worry, Chris, [00:01:00] the slush funds are on their way.

Geiger county council is undeterred from their bad idea. So far Caitlin Durbin reports that on Monday, the county officially announced plans to set aside this $86 million in federal stimulus money for what they’re calling. Miscellaneous community grants that will fund various projects to be proposed by council members and executive arm and Buddhists.

It shakes out to $66 million for council members, $6 million for each of the 11 members and then $20 million for Buddhists, which then oddly, we came to find out yesterday, some of Buddhist says money is already baked into other projects that have already been announced with other batches of stimulus funds.

So. He didn’t even have to give himself one of these slush funds to begin with, but I guess he just doesn’t like to be left out of bad ideas. So anyway, you know, you, I mean the story here, everyone knows that council [00:02:00] continues to defend this plan. They keep saying this is all above board and that council will have to approve every expenditure from these pots of money.

But what we’ve seen is that it already, hasn’t been above board just last week. Council woman, Cheryl Stevens promised $120,000 of her slush fund. The university Heights for a road resurfacing project that count that the city council was prepared to vote down without that money, that city council voted to move that project forward only because of her pledge.

And that was before these county council ARPA funds had even been officially proposed, let alone approved. So we’re talking about government business being conduct conducted way, way, way out of the sunshine.

Chris: And secret. They’re secretly making these plans without, without telling people. And now they finally have introduced it.

There they’re also abandoning the charter because the charter was created to create a county executive form of government where the county executive [00:03:00] is the one that is putting these plans together. They were supposed to be the body flying at 30,000 feet setting general policy setting, general spending priorities, not.

Cash left and right to whatever whim comes their way. And $6 million pays for a lot of Wim. The other thing I think this shows is a striking lack of creativity. I’ve covered government for 40 years. There has never been a time when governments have gotten this kind of a window. To make transformative change.

And this really calls for great thinking to sit back and say, what can we do that will forever change the fortunes of the people we serve? And they’re so lacking in creativity that they come up with. Oh, let me give out $120,000 here for some road paving. Let me, it’s just, it’s so squandering of the last time, we’ll see something like this.

I think we ought to do a thing where we ask [00:04:00] the readers, what would you do with $66 million? If you had it in a pile to transform the region? I think we’ll get a lot more creativity from the people who listen to this podcast and who read all our platforms. Then the people we’ve elected. We did Laura put their pictures on the front page of the plain dealer today because nobody knows who their county council people are.

Take a look at the pictures, take a look at their names. They are the ones squandering the one-time infusion of point

Leila: out also that, you know, Caitlin. Outlined a few other projects that were part of the spending proposals that were announced here. And, uh, but I just want to say council, president Cornell Jones said, you know, our hope is that the next group of leaders can also spark change and build on our great momentum for a long time.

And when he said that he was talking about the 53.6 million, that would be left in the tilt of the next administration to use next year. That’s less than the county council slush funds. So. [00:05:00] And they’re leaving less to the next administration than they’re using to make it rain in their districts.

Chris: Well, and that, you know, that is a point we’re talking about the candidates for the next administration should be screaming, bloody murder.

Chris Ronayne Lee Wineguard. Tariq shahbaz they should be screaming about this. They should be saying, Hey, don’t squander the future. Let’s make transformative change. You know, I threw the idea why don’t we create a nursing school and, and, and the, the shortage of nurses by, by educating people for free, how many other ideas could we come up with that?

Forever change the fortunes of resonance and fortify the economy. And instead, they’re going to walk around with their checkbooks. Go get a little bit here a little bit there elect me, elect me, I guess this is a way to get their names known by going around and giving out their handouts. It’s such, it’s such a corruption of the purpose of this.

They are violating the entire [00:06:00] intent of that charter even. And, and w where are the charter authors? They should be screaming, bloody murder about this. This is why we created a county

council,

Leila: right? I mean, look at Sherry. Cheryl Stevens gets to be the hero of this road, resurfacing project and university Heights.

I mean, for 120,000, it’s a pretty good deal right now.

Chris: Right. And the day after the road is paved, who’s going to. Who will remember that that’s the money could make a permanent change. It’s going to go into tar where you’re saying

Laura: Laura, I was going to say, I don’t think they’ll call it the Sheryl.

Steven’s like intersection with the crosswalks, but can you just see like the little plaques they could give out with their money? Like this project brought to you by. County council members don’t give them any ideas.

Chris: Oh, well they want to be little mayors and that’s not what it’s there for. I don’t know.

W w I, I said it before we have been better off with county commissioners. Cause then you’d only have three slush funds instead of, you know, a zillion you’re [00:07:00] listening to today in Ohio. What are the chances that votes in Ohio’s congressional primaries will be rejected as valid. We said you can’t possibly answer that question, but it poses the question that is before the court.

Lisa: Yeah, there’s a new wrinkle here in the ongoing gerrymandering issue. Uh, Percy Squire, he’s an attorney for Youngstown area, black voters, and he argued yesterday before the three judge federal panel too. He wants them to discount the winners of the congressional primary races because the maps being used the March 2nd map.

Discriminate against black voters. So he intervened in this GOP activist lawsuit that this three judge federal panel is considering. And this lawsuit is asking that they use that March 2nd map for the elections attorney, Juni, Julie Pfeiffer for, uh, the GOP members of the re-districting. Governor DeWine auditor, Keith Faber, and [00:08:00] secretary of state Keith Rose.

She says that would be unfair and it would destroy voter confidence and cause confusion. And she says that the map that they’re going to use for the elections or are using doesn’t violate the voting rights act, they’re expecting a ruling on this motion today. So we’ll see what happens. I

Chris: don’t see it.

I’ll be surprised if they do it. I think the congressional districts are set for the next two years. The people who had SU. Put their fight for the 20, 24 election. Um, and we’ll see, I mean, a judge could always do it, but then it will go straight to an appellate court. Um, and this could go all the way to the Supreme court.

It seems like, well, you don’t want to, I mean, people are voting now and you don’t want to say, yeah, throw your votes away. Um, we’ve kind of moved by consensus forward with the 2022 congressional maps. Let’s see what.

Lisa: And the attorney, a Percy Squire for the black voters, he says they don’t want to stop the election.

They just want to [00:09:00] preserve a remedy by not issuing certificates of nomination, to the winners of the congressional race until the case is decided. And he said that racial demographic should be taken into account. Although there are those who disagree with them on that

Chris: account. Yeah. It’s a tough battle.

We’ll talk about it tomorrow. If we get the ruling later today, it’s today. How many additional medical marijuana dispensary’s does Ohio want to license? And why do we have a need for more Lara? It seems like a lot of Ohioans are going to Michigan where it is all a whole lot easier for them to buy their weed related products.

Maybe we’re trying to keep some money in the state.

Laura: Well, we’d, it’s cheaper apparently in Michigan, too, even though some Ohio. Disagree with that, but yeah, there’s only 58 dispensaries throughout Ohio and the Ohio board of pharmacy is working on adding 73 new suspensory licenses. Apparently this program has been a whole lot more popular than they [00:10:00] expected when they opened the dispensaries.

In January of 2019, they projected 12,000 to 24,000 patients in the first two years. And that was after looking at a bunch of different states that had similar programs, but by February, 2021, 136,507 re registered patients. And now we’re at 252,000 and they have expanded who can, you know, the, the diseases or the, um, maladies that people have that they can get the medical marijuana.

There’s, it’s easier to get now, but I don’t think anybody expected how much this. So most counties are getting a lot more sick. Cuyahoga has six dispensaries right now under the new plan it’s going to have.

Chris: This did raise the question. When I read the story in my mind yesterday, where the effort to completely legalize marijuana in Ohio, isn’t a check with CRISPR now ski, the legislature has til May 29th to act on that before it would return for a second petition drive to put it on the ballot.

So this could all be made, moving. [00:11:00] If we end up with completely legal marijuana products, right?

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s, this is not automatic because it takes some time to get these up and running. And the Ohio lottery board actually gets to pick which one of the, you know, all these people apply for it.

And then not everybody can get, it can get the license, but once they’re picked by the lottery, then they can work towards meeting all of the requirements.

Chris: But you’re right. It’s much easier just drive across the border to Michigan where you know that there are no hindrances to it. It sounds like

Laura: unless you’re in like Athens county, although that’s the, um, several rural areas, Northwestern, Western, Ohio, they don’t have any dispensary’s.

And so the more rural you’re in you’re right. The harder it is to.

Chris: Okay. It’s today in Ohio, which well-known law enforcement personality from Ohio is Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the U S bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives Laila. We [00:12:00] know him well, I love when

Leila: you tee up the question like that, because I can do the job, the drum roll.

It’s Steve Detol Bach the former us attorney for that. The Northern district of Ohio dental Bach is currently a partner at BakerHostetler in Cleveland. He was the democratic party’s nominee for Ohio attorney general in 2018. He lost that election, of course, to Dave Yost before becoming us attorney in 2009, he spent over two decades as a justice department prosecutor, Sabrina Eaton writes that in the white house rose garden, Joe Biden.

The nomination and praised at Obox history of partnering with community leaders and law enforcement to help prevent violent crime working with police to combat domestic extremism and to take violent criminals off the street. He talked about debt Detol box prosecutions of a serial arsonist, and a man who torched a mosque.

Interestingly, this is Biden’s second pick for the ATF job has his first nomination. Gun control advocate. David Chipman was eventually withdrawn because of [00:13:00] opposition from gun rights groups. Detto Bach was viewed as a really good choice that would win Senate approval because he had won their approval in the past as us attorney under Barack Obama.

Of course, we’re living in a completely different

Chris: world. Now that’s so fast, man. Look, I like Steve. Steve’s a good guy. You know, we’ve talked to him plenty over the years. He did, he was a very solid us attorney, very focused on social justice. So he did a lot of things quite well, but this has nothing to do with whether he’s qualified, it’s going to be partisan and he can be attacked easily from both the right and the left, right from the left.

He didn’t prosecute anybody in the Tamir rice case. If ever there was a case that should have had prosecution in a silver. Kind of arena. It’s that one, he, he also from the right they’re going to attack him because he pushed Cleveland police into a consent decree. Now we all know Cleveland police really [00:14:00] needed to be shoved into a consent decree.

They were terrible police by. The right will come at him and say, you’re anti-police. He has the Amish beard cutting case where they took the most serious level of legal gymnastics I’ve ever seen to make it a federal crime because the scissors were made in New York and transporting. The state lines was, was, was really kind of a, of a silly one.

So I think he’s gonna have some trouble and let’s not forget for the last couple years he’s been representing Chuck Jones, the CEO of first energy, which has admitted to bribing the legislature with $60 million. And they’ve named Chuck Jones is the guy who approved it. So. All of that will come up in a confirmation hearing.

Can he make it through?

Leila: Those are great points. I imagine that Joe Biden, as he fumbled dental box name in the rose garden, and might not have [00:15:00] been thinking about that. But dental block does seem to be surrounded by some strong support for this nomination. So maybe his is, is a resume will speak for itself.

I don’t know, man. It’s

Chris: Hey look, he’s. He is a true public, sir. He is a good person who really wants to serve. I mean, look, he’s making. Zillions of dollars with his law firm. And he’s willing to give that up to go do service and really of all the people we’ve dealt with in Northeast, Ohio. He’s, he’s one of the true upstanding public servants, but this is not normal times.

He’s going to get buffeted, I think in the confirmation hearings. Good luck Steve, for you it’s today in Ohio. How is Cleveland Hopkins international airport, trying to alleviate the parking jam and we’ll help come in time for Easter week spring breakers, Lisa, we’re going to try and do a story to see if any other airport in America doesn’t have enough parking.

[00:16:00] How can you run an airport and not have parking, but what’s the deal.

Lisa: Well Hopkins shut. It’s brown lot back in during the pandemic in spring 2020, because as we all know, air travel plummeted to near zero during the pandemic, they are reopening the brown lot in may. They’re re striping and renovating the asphalt right now that will add 500 city owned spaces to the airport.

Now the brown lad is a mile away. So you can’t just get off and walk into the, you have to get on a shuttle to go to your terminal, but unfortunately, Travel surged back after the pandemic. Well, it’s not over, but it kind of waned a little bit. Um, airport parking has been near or at capacity in recent weeks, all city owned lots have been full, sold out private lots on snow road have been nearly full just about every day, but.

We’re losing some spots or we don’t have some spots. The smart garage has 200 spots roped off for repair. And then there [00:17:00] was a small surface lot next door to the smart garage. That’s now employee owned.

Chris: Well, let’s remember there used to be a second garage in the city of its wisdom tore down. It’s just that there’s, I don’t think there’s much.

That can be more frustrating, but showing up at the airport and not being able to park few years ago, I got stuck and had a meeting in New York and I couldn’t find parking in time to get my plane. So I had to drive to New York. I just got on the highway. We’ve heard of other people having the same kind of thing.

You know, the normal amount of time to get there, but as they drive around looking for a spot, they can’t get it. So now the recommendation is reserve your spot ahead of time. What kind of operation?

Leila: Well, the smart garage is an Uber.

Laura: Well, the thing about COVID I think a lot of people are leery about taking Uber’s and they became less.

Give me a break.

Leila: What was you going to pack yourself in an air?

Laura: Well, that’s true. There’s a very [00:18:00] good point there all the

Leila: nonsense people and COVID times.

Laura: But I, I agree with you, but my neighbor, like she, she literally was driving around, almost missed her flight and her husband, like you got her a spot in one of the further garages, but then she had to wait for the, um, the shuttle.

And she’s like, if I had to check a bag, it wouldn’t have made it on her business lights. So, but then we did send a photographer to the airport last night. I was like, okay, let’s get pictures of it. Stop, you know, like signs that say that the lots are full. Well, they were open yesterday.

Lisa: did bring up. No ride share, no ride shares are way down.

And they say that’s part of the problem. I mean, before the pandemic, they were giving like four 44,000 rideshares, you know, coming to the airport per month. That’s down 40%, only 26,000 a month. So a lot more people are saying, I don’t want to fuss with parking. I’m going to, you know, take Uber. They’re not doing.

Chris: But the truth is the [00:19:00] city gouges. You. When you park at the airport, they could bond against the high prices they charged and build the garage in the place where they tore one down. This is not really complicated. They just have not planned well for the future. They don’t have the parking that meets the capacity that they’re trying to hit with their flights.

Laura: Maybe this is their way of getting everybody on board for their $2 billion renovation. If you like, you can have a parking

Lisa: spot.

Chris: No, it’s to get everybody to fly out of Akron, Canton, where you can park outside the front door.

Laura: And they got plenty in space because they lost a lot of plates in the last couple of

Chris: years.

All right. You listening to today in Ohio, what’s the bad news for people using cellular phones in Northeast Ohio that rely on 3g networks. Laura, it seems like just yesterday. 3g was the big thing, but it’s passive. No it’s

Laura: 5g. Now, Chris, um, only about 1% of Americans are still using 3g access for their phones and at, and T T-Mobile Verizon, all the big ones, they want to free up the [00:20:00] radio frequency for their 4g and 5g networks.

And so at and T has already shut down 3g. The other ones are doing it this year so they can provide these faster internet speeds. The thing is this. Affect things that are not cell phones like home alarms court ordered monitoring and 9 1 1 calls. Um, if people haven’t upgraded. So the federal communication commission is urging people with any kind of 3g devices to consult their providers about the shutdown and figure out what they need to do before it gets shut down.

Chris: Okay, you’re listening to today in Ohio. What do we know about the latest death in the Cuyahoga county jail on is the pace of deaths in the jail. Picking up again later, this is a red flag to have this many, this early in the year makes it feel like it’s 2018. Again, we usually have the number we have now in an entire year.

The jail continues to be a dangerous place.

Leila: The details of this particular case. Are are troubling. Here’s [00:21:00] what we know. 39 year old Shonda Moffitt fell unconscious around 12:30 PM, Monday, and an ambulance took him to Metro health medical center where he died. His cause of death is still under investigation.

Adam furries reports. However that according to court records, uh, Moffitt struggled recently with several health problems, including excessively high blood pressure and kidney issues that included a possible tumor. And in fact, his attorney. Had asked the court recently to release him with a GPS monitor so that he could visit his doctor.

This, this poor guy had four kids between the ages of two and 10. He had worked his whole life in factories in the Cleveland area. He was being held on nonviolent offenses, suspected car theft was one of them. And his attorney is arguing that he should have been released so that he could seek the medical care that he needed in the community.

The second inmate death this year, the other was Adam weekly who died January 16th. The county medical examiner has not yet ruled on that death, but [00:22:00] records show that he had severe mental and physical health issues and had been down for hours before he was found unconscious of the jail. Um, yes. Very troubling facts here.

Yeah. It’s well,

Chris: remember before, before the rash of deaths, what was an eight or nine and a year in 2018, we basically had about two deaths at the jail year, which is not unexpected because people can come in in terrible condition or, or an overdose, but to have. Before mid April is a, is an alarm bell, you know, and this does come what a week after the jail mistakenly released a guy accused of aggravated murder.

It seems like the wheels are off again at the county jail. At the very time, we’re talking about the need to replace it. This is giving rise to an argument about, do we really need a new jail? What would happen if we actually operated this one? The way it should be operated, we’re running. Right,

Leila: right. Well, I mean, you know, part of the [00:23:00] planning for this new facility is, is to ensure that inmates can access medical care more easily.

Also they would, they would try to create a layout for the new facility that would require fewer officers to properly supervise inmates, you know, crowding and poor conditions at this facility that we currently have. It has been exacerbated by remember those forced lockdowns had to be put in place when the jail didn’t have the staffing to keep up.

And a lot of that has to do with the layout of the jail and the model of supervision that they have been using there. So, um, you know, a new jail they believe would, would alleviate that if it’s built correctly and they can operate at the right.

Chris: But here’s the thing yesterday. They put out a video, the county council and Buddhists, and all these people smiling and talking about how they are going to create these slush funds when they should be doing an all hands on deck meeting to figure out why do we have two deaths this year?

How did a guy go down? For a very long time before anybody noticed [00:24:00] he was down, why was this guy still in jail when he had clear medical reasons? Not to be, it just seems like the priorities are a mess. You know, they’re focused on building a jail on what is basically a toxic site, instead of thinking about caring for these folks.

And, and yesterday’s a perfect example of. Of their lack of focus, right? They want to get their slush funds. They’re all happy. They’re all on video. Who’s paying attention to what’s going wrong at the time. It’s a

Leila: completely correct. And, but their, their answer to that would probably be, well, we are elevating the jail discussion.

We are trying to get shovels in the ground and get this jail built on the toxic. Don’t worry.

Chris: Yeah. Let’s, let’s get shovels in the ground and unearth the toxins that are

Leila: buried there, taking care of it.

Chris: Okay. Moving on. You’re listening to today in Ohio, what is vitalize health and why are investors putting $50 million into the company which has offices in Cleveland?

We saw, I’d never [00:25:00] heard of vitalize health, but they have an interesting business strategy.

Lisa: And I’ve never heard of the business strategy either, but vitalize health is what they call a value based health care system. And they right now are serving 130,000 seniors. Most of them on Medicare in 16 states.

And with this model, the doctors get paid when their patients stay out of the hospital. So this model it’s called also accountable health care and it incentivizes preventive care. Devices more spending more time with their patients to know what their needs are. And, uh, vitalize. I has acquired $50 million in venture capital to help it expand this business model and get more physicians involved.

Vitalized back in 2021 acquired Cleveland based med pilot, which was a similar business. So they have offices both here in Cleveland and New Jersey. And, uh, the med pilot founder, who is now the chief marketing officer for vitalize [00:26:00] health. Matt booter Shapiro. He’s a shaker Heights native. He says, this is a huge win for Cleveland.

He says that actually med pilot. From New York to capitalize on regional talent here in Northeast, Ohio and local, philanthropic and others funding support. And he says, this proves that Cleveland startups can succeed.

Chris: Yeah, it’s it’s $50 million is a significant sum of money. What we could do with $50 million in our industry.

Check out the story on cleveland.com. It’s today in Ohio. What does Cuyahoga county, his latest investment in rebuilding the regional tree canopy, or I get a mixed message from people on this. There’s some that think it’s great. We’re trying to invest in putting more trees. We used to be called the tree city.

We deed more trees. Trees are great. Others think it’s a squandering of tax dollars and we should focus on the more serious services. What’s the deal. Okay.

Laura: I’m pro tree. Just to be totally clear. I’m in forest city, but this is 90, sorry, Cuyahoga county just [00:27:00] announced this 27 tree planting projects this year $950,000 in awards to add more than 3,400 trees.

And so the. This program has been going on since 2019. And so we’re looking at more than 7,500 trees planted so far, a bunch of different species, 30 to 40 of them, most of them, native to Ohio and the Cuyahoga soil and water conservation district will be working with these grant recipients to make sure that these grow, these trees thrive once they’re planted.

Cause there’s nothing more frustrating than, you know, seeing brand new trees, just like weather up in die. But. Yeah, this is a third year of the county’s climate change action plan. And they’re really hoping that there’s a lot of environmental benefits of trees more than just like the shade you think of when you see it,

Chris: do people call in and say, I want a tree on my yard, or is it more programmed?

They’re going through neighborhoods and choosing where to place them.

Laura: These are communities that were awarded grants and they’re all over the [00:28:00] county at plus organizations like the Western reserve land Conservancy. Servancy a cemetery foundation, the Slavic village community development Corps. So it’s not like you can just.

Fill out a website form that say, I want a tree. At least I don’t think you can do that. But, um, these, these organizations in these cities will work to figure out the best way to put them. And the reason that they’re working on this is that the urban tree canopy has really declined. 35% of land in the county is tree canopy as of 2019.

That was a decline of 6,600 acres since 2011. And when you think about like, it’s not. We’re currently building all these houses and knocking down trees for it. Most of our land has already been developed. So I don’t know why we have so many fewer trees, but there are a ton of benefits that they provide.

They help with air quality, stormwater, runoff. They lower the cooling costs and basically assist with our overall mental health. And considering mental health is a huge issue right now. Anything we can do, that’s good for the environment and good for mental [00:29:00] health. I am all for.

Chris: But where are they going? I mean, like you said, there’s not a lot of open space, so is this to make a bunch of shady streets or is it to take any plot of land and turn it into a mini farm?

Laura: I don’t know the details of that. I know the Metroparks have also been planting in their areas, but I don’t think that’s included in this. And I’m hoping that if we’re talking about community development, corporations, then we’re putting them in neighborhoods that don’t have enough trees. And that would benefit from them and not just, you know, putting another pretty tree in a.

Chris: Well, you also have some people that just don’t want them because the roots eventually get into their pipes and cost them money. And so there’s a bit of a, of a public relations battle to get people to understand. No, no, no. You do want the tree on your tree line. It’s a healthy thing for you. It’s out the thing for your neighborhood and we can protect the pipe.

We

Laura: don’t have street trees on my tr my street. And I want them because like to meet, like looking down the street, it would just be so much nicer. And [00:30:00] I would like more trees in my yard, but you have to have a certain width between the sidewalk and the road for it to be safe. And there’s an arborist in Rocky river.

I actually, I did email him and I was like, I would like a tree in my tree lot. And he’s like, yeah, we like that too. But. Feasible. So sometimes these roads were built with the sidewalks that aren’t possible for it. So I think in the future, people are doing a lot better planning to make sure that these trees can get planted and will thrive in the public.

Right. I got to spend

Chris: a bunch of money this year because the tree on our tree lawn has just destroyed our sidewalks all around it. But I love the tree it’s today in Ohio at wraps up, but Tuesday. Thanks Lisa. Thanks Layla. Thanks Laura. And thank you for listening to this podcast.

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.