Local Leaders Discuss "Unprecedented," Possible Nobel Peace Prize-Winning "Urban Agenda" for Cleveland at City Club

PolicyBridge, a public policy think tank, announced its Urban Agenda at the City Club on Friday. Credit: Mark Oprea

Cleveland leaders gathered with clear eyes and what City Club CEO Dan Moulthroup described as much-needed “courage” and “corny and unbridled optimism” to announce a plan to solve poverty in the city through “economic inclusiveness and mobility” while building trust through interactions with the broader community to achieve a collaborative consensus, admitting that the way the region has operated in past has kept it one of the poorest in America.

Wait, our apologies. That was Cleveland Rising back in 2019.

Let’s reset.

Assorted local leaders gathered last Friday at the City Club to discuss the Urban Agenda for Cleveland, the work from a coalition of public and private entities in Cleveland that, as announced earlier this year, promises to address economic mobility and the related racial disparities that have mired many Clevelanders in systemic poverty.

“This level of cross-sector collaboration is absolutely unique, not only in Cleveland but arguably anywhere in the country,” Randell McShepard, Chairman and Co-Founder of PolicyBridge, which has been tapped to serve as backbone organization for the Urban Agenda, announced in January.

PolicyBridge, a public policy think tank, presented the bones to a memorandum of understanding (but not the ceremonial MOU itself) that month to the watching public and a table of partners, from Cleveland City Council members to the CEO of United Way.

On Friday at the City Club, McShepard presented some broad strokes for the goals — figuring out how to best wrangle all those local leaders that are part of the coalition into pathways to improving housing, jobs and economic mobility for Black and Hispanic Clevelanders, who have long been sidelined in greater financial and health gains.

Why didn’t it happen before?

“We felt that the missing piece was a collective effort that brought all the players to the table to build a collaborative strategy,” McShepard explained to the room of 300 attendees, “where we could learn from each other and hold each other accountable.”

McShepard’s philosophy culminated in an announcement: a data tracker, the PolicyBridge Urban Agenda Dashboard, to remind Cleveland, he said, “what our grades look like.” It “will be used to keep close watch on everything paramount to bringing up poverty rates, homeownership rates to test scores.”

How that accountability will work among the group of 16 nonprofits and public entities that make up the coalition is yet to be seen, but the promises are big.

“Now, if this isn’t worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, ladies and gentlemen,” McShepard said. “I don’t know what is.”

All three commenters on Friday pushed back somewhat on the Urban Agenda’s lofty goals, worried that McShepard’s initiative may not be including the input of enough Black and Hispanic Clevelanders that the agenda’s vowing to help. Credit: Mark Oprea

McShepard’s four guests—County Executive Chris Ronayne, Greater Cleveland Partnership CEO Baiju Shah, United Way CEO Sharon Sobol Jordan and Brian Hall, chair of the Presidents’ Council—responded in the panel discussion to follow by agreeing, in different ways, that the system had to be revamped. Somehow.

Systems must change, they all agreed.

But how?

Since January, the Feds have cut school spending, arts funding, federal jobs, environmental work and food assistance.

In other words, it’s greatly changed how the local system actually works.

“The budget right now isn’t showing a glorious future for us,” Ronayne said.

For Shah, who hosted the MOU signing at the Greater Cleveland Partnership offices with his usual brand of optimism, the idea of routinely talking about Cleveland’s clear racial quality of life divide might actually work if talk is put into action. He cited the city’s community benefits agreement—giving Black contractors construction jobs—as a feasible method of carrying the Urban Agenda out.

Which somehow, in some way, means something different in 2025.

“What I see this time is, we’ve got everyone aligned around not only the dashboard,” Shah noted. “But then, the work that’s going to remove those indicators on that dashboard.”

But will actual impoverished Black and Hispanic Clevelanders buy into McShepard’s goals? Or will PolicyBridge just remain what its name suggests—a bridge to policy?

And, in a tense era of cold-shouldering from the Trump administration and a statehouse keen to follow suit, will state representatives go to bat and keep the Urban Agenda, well, alive?

“Oh yeah, absolutely,” District 20 State Rep. Terrence Upchurch told Scene after the forum. “These are the type of folks that we need to be working with to help us shape our policy. And how I legislate.”

Reception from the assembled City Club audience was mixed.

“We can all side-eye who the true leaders are. We can all side-eye fake agendas, and we know what you’re about,” Ebony Hood commented during the Q&A portion. “So, I would love to see from an accountability factor a community-based parallel of partners that would judge who’s at the table for this work.”

“Otherwise Randy, we may not have a Nobel Peace Prize,” she added, to laughs around the room.

McShepard smiled. He replied by citing all the conversations with nonprofits he’s already had—with Young Latino Network, with the ThirdSpace Action Lab.

But, he assured Hood, these just wouldn’t be one-off conversations. They would mean more. They would do something.

“Too many of our residents have seen that movie a thousand times and then they wave goodbye, you never hear anything again,” he said. “No, no, no, we’re not going to do that.”

“We’re going to have small groups where people can be heard and people have an opportunity to speak up, offer their perspectives,” McShepard added, “and come back and do it again.”