Cleveland City Council Ward 3 sprawls southwest-to-northeast across Cleveland’s heart, from the Stockyards neighborhood, through Ohio City, then across Public Square into downtown. The ward’s eastern boundary encompasses Burke Lakefront Airport.
With some of the city’s trendiest housing and entertainment districts in the ward, and conveniently located to downtown and University Circle jobs, Ward 3 is home to a growing population of young professionals. One consequence: a retail and housing boom in parts of the ward. Another: a growing income divide in a ward that includes the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority’s landmark Lakeview Terrace complex – and will soon include the Sherwin-Williams Co.’s new $300 million world headquarters on Public Square.
For the last five years, Ward 3 has been represented on City Council by Kerry McCormack, appointed in 2016 to replace the retiring Joe Cimperman, and then elected to a full four-year term in 2017 with almost 85% of the vote.
This year, McCormack, 33, faces a primary challenge from Ayat Amin, 27, a data and marketing specialist, and Mike Rogalski, 32, a former Cuyahoga County employee. The top two finishers in the Sept. 14 primary will advance to the Nov. 2 ballot.
All three recognize the ward’s challenges -- including a growing housing squeeze for seniors as property values rise; urgent public health needs; lead poisoning risks in older, deteriorating housing; and crime and neighborhood safety issues.
But ward residents should stick with the energetic, innovative and committed leadership provided by McCormack, with his tireless advocacy for the West Side Market, for permanent supportive housing on the Near West Side for the formerly homeless and for housing justice in Cleveland, pushing for an ordinance that would prohibit source-of-income discrimination by city landlords.
His opponents, while earnest, don’t offer a persuasive case for replacing him.
Texas-born Amin, who has also lived in Michigan, Indiana and California, is marketing and customer success lead for the Opportunity Exchange, an economic development organization. Her platform is centered on environmental justice and the need for Cleveland to do more to encourage alternative energy use.
Rogalski, a graduate of Cleveland Heights High School who earned a bachelor’s degree in urban studies and a master’s degree in public administration at Cleveland State University, worked for Cuyahoga County for the last six years, most recently as a “Program Officer II” in the Division of Senior and Adult Services. He says he would do more to address crime and to help low-income seniors stay in their homes.
About 25,000 Clevelanders call Ward 3 home. Of them, about 8,800 live in poverty, according to data compiled by the Center for Community Solutions. The center also reported that Ward 3′s median household income is $35,314. While that’s 14% greater than citywide median household income ($30,907), Ward 3′s median is 38% less than Ohio’s statewide median.
Meanwhile, as Rogalski noted, property taxes are squeezing older homeowners. (Six years ago, Ohio began means-testing eligibility for Ohio’s senior citizen homestead property tax exemption.)
The candidates also joined in calling for major reforms at Cleveland Public Power, the city-owned utility that, they agree, could be doing more to keep electric rates (and outages) down and to embrace green energy use. One overriding problem: The power supply contracts CPP has, via American Municipal Power, including with the coal-fueled – in this era of environmental awareness – Prairie State Energy Campus in Southern Illinois. Those contracts “have been ‘a financial disaster’” for CPP customers, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis reported in September.
All three also back improving access to the lake by closing Burke Lakefront Airport, which now keeps a vast tract of Lake Erie’s shore off-limits to Clevelanders, although they own every square inch of it.
They also agreed on the need to do more to address the health inequities exposed by the pandemic. That includes, as Amin noted, the high rates of asthma and allergies in Cleveland tied to poor air quality and other income and environmental factors.
Still, no matter how sincere, well-informed and solid a candidate’s intentions, City Hall’s inertia means that wanting to change something, and actually changing it, are sharply separate tasks. That’s why voters should renominate Kerry McCormack for re-election as Ward 3′s council member.
McCormack’s experience and mindfulness mean he’s better-positioned than his competitors to know what’s what at City Hall, how to work with or around that – and how to defend the interests and promote the prospects of Ward 3′s residents.
Early voting in the Sept. 14 primary begins Aug. 17.
The three candidates contending in the Sept. 14 Cleveland City Council Ward 3 nonpartisan primary -- incumbent Councilmember Kerry McCormack and challengers Ayat Amin and Mike Rogalski -- were interviewed on July 7, 2021 by the editorial board of The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com as part of its endorsement process.
Listen to audio of this interview below. (Note that although the audio file is titled Ward 5 nonpartisan primary it is actually for the Ward 3 race):
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Other resources for voters:
The League of Women Voters vote411.org voters’ guide.