Experience Battles Newcomer Idealism at Thursday Night Panel of City Council Hopefuls

What’s truly known only to the current 17 in their seats, the job of a city councilperson is a lot more textured than it appears from the outside.

There are as many hats as a haberdashery. You’re the proposer or denier of laws, an avatar for your ward, a critic of tax rates, a healer of potholes and trash, a cutter of ribbons, a leader of street parades, an advocate for housing, a disperser of casino funds, a city mouthpiece in higher halls of government.

So, one might ask themselves as Cleveland heads to its first City Council race after the body approved its redistricting in January: Who’s cut out for the work, and who is not?

On September 9, Clevelanders will head to the polls to, if they decide, rework roughly 60 percent of what City Council looks like. Ten of the city’s newly-designed 15 wards have City Hall newcomers on the ballot—from doctors, to activists, to business owners, housing lawyers and rec center volunteers.

City Council incumbents coalesced with their challengers at the Pilgrim Congregational Church in Tremont on Thursday evening for three hours of pointed policy questioning—not a debate!—hosted by members of the Cleveland Owns cooperative group.

Questions that ran the practical gamut: How would you deal with cuts from President Trump? Use public funds in your ward? Ensure the flourishing of an “economic democracy”?

Three hours of policy fishing that turned into a push-and-pull between those with big ideas of how government could work versus those who know all too well how government actually works.

That is to say, how City Hall props up developers, to how it encourages new business, to how it backs tenants or protects immigrants during times of crisis.

“We’ve seen other cities actually be able to fund ways of actually providing attorneys so they can fight back in federal court,” Tanmay Shah, a lawyer and truck driver running for Ward 12, told the room, referring to the ICE raids on Cilantro Taqueria in Cleveland Heights earlier this year.

“That’s something we absolutely should be doing,” he said. “Making sure that these communities know we’re standing in solidarity with them.”

Mike Polensek, the stalwart representative of Collinwood and the soon-to-be former Ward 8, slapped back with a reality check: the ambitious are almost always colliding with legal roadblocks of some kind. A majority vote is needed to do practically anything.

“What I’d like to remind the audience is that Council does not hire. We do not fire, we do not deploy, we do not administer,” he said. “That’s the charter. That’s the law of the city of Cleveland.”

“We can propose any kind of program we want, but it’s another thing to fund it,” he added.

A huge chunk of the conversation Thursday night covered the perennial clash between Downtown and Cleveland’s 34 neighborhoods, with several newcomers espousing harsh critiques on the Bibb and Frank Jackson administrations for allowing tax breaks for billionaires and focusing too much energy on propping up the city center.

Candidates Rehan Waheed, Lesa Jones Dollar, Mohammad Faraj, Alana Belle and Nikki Hudson, along with a few others, painted themselves and their campaigns as an effort to rebalance a perceived funding favoritism that led to, in recent years, a mix of shiny stadiums and hotels downtown, while Cleveland’s outer rings lingered with potholes and broken water pipes.

For most of the newcomers, the fix rested in more so leftist ideas, from trying again at a participatory budgeting ordinance (which failed on the ballot in 2023), to kickstarting a citywide tenants union to give renters leverage against out-of-state investors.

Money that, once Huntington Bank Field goes dark in 2028, can be used to build new houses and new playgrounds and new city-backed grocery stores.

Right?

“You can’t use the funds for that; those are bond funds,” Polensek argued, referring to the $283 million borrowed to build the stadium three decades ago. (Which the city still owes $46 million on.)

“That money can’t be used for grocery stores,” he said. “It can’t be used for parks or playgrounds. That was earmarked for the stadium. That’s the law!”

A policy that ruffled Rehan Waheed, a doctor running for the new Ward 4 against Councilman Kris Harsh.

“What I keep hearing over and over is we can’t, right?” he said. “When it comes to Bedrock, it’s how much can we give you? When it comes to Sherwin Williams, it’s how much can we give you? But for the people, it’s we can’t.”

“I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I know every single limitation,” Waheed added. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t take the opportunity to be creative.”

Which of course is a possibility. In theory, a totally refreshed Council could consider—and vote yes on—a handful of new ideas for the city as brainstormed on Thursday, from Mohammad Faraj’s urge for city-backed union apprenticeships; to Austin Davis’ push to legalize triplexes to up the city’s housing stock; to Alana Belle’s desire to further link rec centers with the Greater Cleveland Food Bank.

And, maybe before any legislation is drafted for committee review, begin to rethink the language used in the first place.

“That’s how we can handle food apartheid,” Belle, an activist running for Ward 9, said about her food bank idea. “Notice I didn’t say ‘food desert.’ As ‘food desert’ is something that happens naturally. This isn’t natural. It was created.”

All concepts that could segue into legislation come January 2026, when the newly-born Council takes their seats, following the general election this November.

As long as the newbies don’t get too pumped up.

“If anybody tells you they’re going down there with the unilateral agenda and just get things done on their own,” Harsh said, “they’re misleading you.”

This article appears in Cleveland SCENE 7/30/25.