The Mayor’s Appointments Committee reviewed Mayor Justin Bibb’s recent appointments to the City Planning Commission, Cleveland Landmarks Commission and Community Relations Board. Candidates include former city leaders, community organizers and others.
Bibb appointed three new members to the Community Relations Board: Luz Pellot, Robert Render III and Jaw Westbrook.
“We’re excited about you being added to community relations and what you bring,” said committee chair Joseph Jones of Ward One. “We have a lot of challenges in the city of Cleveland, and we will need your dedication, your commitment and your engagement to be able to handle some of the most difficult things that are coming up within this city.”
Luz Pellot’s professional background is in the corporate world at Xerox, but she also has a background in volunteerism. She’s been a member of the Plexus LGBT & Allied Chamber of Commerce, served as chair of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign and was recently on the board of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.
Pellot also helped establish Graffiti HeArt, a nonprofit that helps create murals, commissions artists and funds art programs for underserved youth, with her partner. Pellot’s term goes through March 31, 2025.
Robert Render III is a precinct committeeman, 128th Street Club president and a community activist. He served in the Air Force, worked at Cleveland Public Libraries for 10 years, has done outreach work for Lutheran Metro Ministry, helped establish the African American Cultural Gardens and was a member of the Western Reserve Historical Society.
“I think that was where I really began to understand the importance and significance of African American history,” said Render. “That really was eye opening because I didn’t know that much about our own Black history and I just got emerged in the significance and the contributions that Black folks have done in this city, that impacted the city, the county, the state and nationally.”
Render is also the secretary of the Fair Housing Board, co-chair of the Safety and Security Committee at Shaker Square Alliance, founder and co-chair of the Buckeye Area Community Action Council and founder and co-chair of the Buckeye, Larchmere, Shaker Square Safety and Security Coalition. He will serve through March 31, 2027.
Former Cleveland City Council President Jay Westbrook is also among the new Community Relations Board appointees. During his tenure as president, Westbrook linked community relations with neighborhood safety and community development and the safety initiative worked with Community Development, Housing and Cleveland Police.
Westbrook also worked on housing legislation and the new Browns stadium to keep the team in Cleveland. Since retiring, he has moved to Shaker Square and works with housing issues and tenant justice. His term will last through March 31, 2025.
In addition to the three new appointees, Bibb re-appointed Roland Muhammad and Rev. Charles Lucas to the Community Relations Board. Both terms will be up on March 31, 2026. Muhammad is a community activist, spiritual leader and owner and founder of Shabazz Bakery.
Lucas is the chair of the Community Relations Board, president of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority board of trustees and pastor emeritus at St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church. He has also served as the president of the Cleveland Branch of the NAACP, chair of the Greater Cleveland Methodist Association and chair of the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland (now known as Step Forward), in the past.
The Cleveland Landmark Commission also received two new appointees: Michael Sanbury and Dr. Regennia Williams.
Michael Sanbury is a historic preservationist with a background in architecture. He has worked on preservation projects like the Wade Park Bridge and the Cuyahoga County Courthouse and currently serves on the Ohio City Neighborhood Board. Sanbury won the Cleveland Restoration Society Award and the Heritage Ohio Best Residential Restoration Award for the renovations he did on his long-vacant house. His term will last through June 1, 2027.
Dr. Regennia Williams is a published academic and distinguished scholar of African American history and culture. Williams’s dissertation explored Black schoolchildren in the city of Cleveland in the first half of the 20th century and she has published works about historic Clevelanders like Charles Waddell Chesnutt and Mary Brown Martin.
“What I saw growing up in Cleveland let me know that landmarks are important,” said Williams. “I hope that some of those landmarks that they are looking at now will be preserved. I hope that I can have a hand in making that happen as a member of the landmarks commission. I believe it takes brick and mortar–not as much as it takes people of good will–but it takes brick and mortar buildings and other places in the city of Cleveland to preserve our history.”
Williams has given lectures around the world and taught at Cleveland State University for 23 years and is the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Spirituality in the History of Africa and the Diaspora. She will serve through June 1, 2027.
Cleveland’s City Planning Commission got one new appointee, Andrew Sargeant. Sargeant has a background in landscape architecture and has worked on corporate campuses, small cultural institutions and gardens. He came to Cleveland as a Rose Landscape Architectural Fellow for Enterprise Community Partners, a national nonprofit dedicated to addressing the shortage of affordable rental homes.
Sargeant is the director of open space and planning at Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, is a lecturer at universities like Kent State, Cleveland State University and the Ohio State University and has served on boards and steering committees for projects like the Downtown lakefront plan. His term will be up on June 1, 2025.
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This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 11, 2023.