Bibb Appoints Two Transit Riders to RTA Board

After years of advocacy from transit boosters imploring local officials to put transit riders on the RTA board, Cleveland mayor Justin Bibb has done just that.

The assignment by Mayor Bibb places Calley Mersmann, the city's first senior strategist of transit and mobility, and Jeff Sleasman, a biomed tech executive, in a prime position to influence future decision making at RTA.

Bibb, a former GCRTA board member himself, said in a press release Thursday that he was grateful for service of Valarie McCall and Luz Pellot, the two members Mersmann and Sleasman will soon be replacing.

“I send my gratitude to both Valarie and Luz for their dedicated work on the GCRTA Board of Trustees,” Bibb said in the release. “I am confident that Calley and Jeffrey will continue to be valuable partners in their new roles, furthering the vision of providing equitable, accessible and efficient transit for our residents and riders.”

Bibb's come-through point—he first proposed adding Sleasman to the board in 2022—is a suitable reassurance for Chris Martin, the head of Clevelanders For Public Transit, that the mayor is listening. Sleasman, after all, has been a CPT member since 2016.

Martin hopes that having a CPT supporter with the ability to influence RTA policy could reverse what Martin calls the transit death spiral. Eighty percent of RTA's budget comes from a one-percent county sales tax, which Martin said is long overdue for a levy.

"[Our] current campaign is to restore the service that has been cut over the years by RTA," Martin said in a phone call. "All of those cuts that have occurred were approved of by the Board of Trustees. With a growing block of votes willing to challenge that status quo at RTA, we would like to see the board of trustees take necessary steps to restoring that service."

Mersmann, who served four years as the city's bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, will bring a wide-range of experience with people-focused policies to RTA's board.

A "regular" rider of transit, Mersmann also contributed to the city's Vision Zero Action Plan, a spotlight on how car-oriented policy could be bettered to curb injuries and deaths by 2032. (Cleveland sees roughly 55 deaths from vehicle accidents per year.)

Sleasman is a specialist in biomedical technology by day—he's the head of Boussole, a medical goods startup he founded in 2019 — and a longtime transit advocate.

"The Cleveland area ... hasn't done itself any favors by sprawling so much even as the population stagnates," he told a reporter in 2016. "The result is a dependence on cars, and that dependence makes even Downtown stakeholders shy away from building for people instead of cars."

Coming soon: Cleveland Scene Daily newsletter. We’ll send you a handful of interesting Cleveland stories every morning. Subscribe now to not miss a thing.

Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter