Cleveland regularly borrows money to fix up streets, repair recreation centers, buy new vehicles and make other brick-and-mortar upgrades to property the city owns.
This year, City Hall is doing things differently. It is paying up front in cash, a move Finance Director Paul Barrett said will launch projects faster and save on borrowing costs.
The source of that cash: the General Fund’s $91 million surplus from last year. Cleveland will borrow money at the end of the year to reimburse itself for the cash it spent on capital projects.
At the start of March, city officials gave City Council members a list of $97 million in capital work on the agenda for 2026. Council hasn’t yet signed off on the projects.
Cleveland plans to spend more than $45 million on roads and bridges, $38 million on city-owned buildings, $13 million on parks and recreation centers and $650,000 on cemeteries.
Of that, the city slated $12 million for residential street resurfacing. Council upped the number to $20 million, bringing the total on the capital list to $105 million.
Here are a few other highlights. The city is spending almost $4.7 million for road work around the new Woodhill Homes developments, $4.3 million for fire stations, $2.6 million for tree-damaged sidewalks and $1 million for brick streets.
Cleveland budgeted about $6.5 million for new ambulances and fire trucks, $1.6 million for new police SUVs and almost $1.9 million for new garbage trucks.
Also on the list are $7 million for a City Hall modernization, plus about $1.6 million in other renovations.
What does “modernization” mean? It means adding a coffee shop to the City Hall basement — now known as the “garden level” — and fixing up some of the bathrooms, according to a call-out for construction managers that the city released Monday. Cleveland also plans a new City Hall west entrance with a pedestrian ramp.
Future work at City Hall includes new light wells with skylights, a fourth-floor walking track and a freight elevator. Those projects aren’t part of this round of funding, the city said.
