Cleveland City Council hopefuls swung at some fastball questions during a candidate forum at the Happy Dog in Detroit-Shoreway this week.
The two local Democratic clubs hosting the forum gave council hopefuls a chance to introduce themselves to West Side voters. Then they zeroed in on the candidates’ backgrounds.
Council redistricting means these candidates are running in the newly renumbered West Side wards of 7, which covers Ohio City, Tremont and much of the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood, and 11, which runs from Edgewater Park to Old Brooklyn. Both are open races with no incumbents.
Ward 7 candidates: Austin Davis, Mohammad Faraj and Michael Rogalski
Austin Davis: An attorney, Davis is on leave from his job as an advisor to Mayor Justin Bibb.
One of the emcees, Paula Kampf, pressed him on his relationship with the mayor. As a council member, could Davis set himself apart from Bibb?
Davis replied that he would represent the interests of his ward, for instance, pushing for better services or more speed tables. He said the city had missed his own recycling the prior week. But he didn’t throw his boss under the garbage truck. Davis called Bibb a “good mayor.”
“We’re lucky to have somebody in office who’s working on these questions,” he said, “but I want to be on council to find ways to crack the code and make sure that we can supercharge the efforts that we’ve already seen in place.”
He also touched on a hot issue on the Near West Side: development. Pointing to rising rents, he said that Cleveland isn’t building enough new housing. That includes accessible homes for people like Davis himself, who walks on prosthetics after losing his legs in a train crash years ago.
“We need more, more, more,” he said. “And I’m going to say it, too: more market rate, but more affordable housing and more public housing, too. We just need more.”
Mohammad Faraj: Faraj said elected leaders were “detached from our everyday realities.” Among his campaign planks: sustainable small businesses and stronger community benefits agreements between residents and developers.
Asked about City Council’s “unit rule” — a rule enforcing unanimous floor votes when electing the council president and filling vacant council seats — he said the rule wasn’t transparent or democratic. He criticized council as being averse to conflict.
“You could center decency and respect, but have the damn argument,” he said. “We need to figure out how to find our way out of this moment, and we need to do it together.”
Faraj works as a risk management attorney for the cryptocurrency ATM company Bitcoin Depot. Kampf asked about a consumer protection lawsuit that the Iowa attorney general brought against the company. (In an annual report, the company told investors that it “strongly rejects” the AG’s claims, which have to do with people using crypto ATMs to pay third-party scammers.)
Lately, the cryptocurrency industry has been getting involved in politics in a “problematic way,” Faraj replied. He said that his work is all about ensuring that the crypto business abides by an ethical code and follows laws against money laundering and other financial crimes.
“I’m not a Bitcoin or a cryptocurrency enthusiast. I’m not an influencer in any way,” he said. “I don’t think that this technology is going anywhere, but I do believe very firmly that we need to be adopting this technology in a socially responsible way.”
Mike Rogalski: Rogalski ran for council four years ago but lost to incumbent Kerry McCormack, who is not seeking another term.
Rogalski branded himself the “progressive Democrat” in this race. On council, he would push to end tax abatements for luxury housing, he said. He proposed setting aside money to help older residents pay their property taxes.
“Tax abatements for luxury properties are the root cause for a lot of issues in our ward,” he said. “There’s a lack of appropriate affordable housing, not just for seniors, but for everybody.”
Kampf asked Rogalski about his removal in 2021 from a job in senior and adult services with Cuyahoga County. Rogalski had appealed his removal in court but lost the case — leaving behind a public court record of his conflicts with his supervisor.
Rogalski said the agency was “hugely problematic overall” during the coronavirus pandemic. He said the county offered him a last-chance agreement to stay on the job, but he turned it down.
“I didn’t think I could function anymore,” he said, explaining his decision not to take the deal. “Generally those court cases where you’re removed from your employer, they generally favor your employer.”
Ward 11 candidates: Andrew Fontanarosa and Nikki Hudson
Andrew Fontanarosa: Fontanarosa, an attorney, works at an immigration law firm that specializes in visa cases. He is the son of public school teachers and was born in Youngstown, he said.
He said he is running for City Council to provide efficient, effective and equitable city services. Fontanarosa shared some understated criticism of City Hall, saying residents’ dealings with city government “tend to be a little bit more difficult than they ought to be.”
Although he is running in Ward 11, Fontanarosa lives in Ward 7. His home in the Gordon Square area is several streets east of the Ward 11 boundary.
Asked about that, Fontanarosa said it’s a council member’s job to represent the ward’s many residents — and that ward boundaries don’t necessarily match neighborhood lines.
“The question is, can you represent those interests adequately?” he said. “I don’t think several blocks makes the difference in that.”
Nikki Hudson: Hudson lives with her husband and kids in the Cudell neighborhood, where they’ve had a home since 2002.
“We’ve faced some very serious challenges over the years,” she said of the neighborhood. “And at one point, we had to make a decision: move away from the neighborhood we love, or stay and fight to make it a better place to raise our children.”
Hudson has gained local attention in some of those recent fights. She opposed a school expansion plan that would have taken down dozens of mature trees in Cudell park. She also led a fight against a possible new gas station near the park.
Another emcee, Matthew Thomas, asked Hudson how she would represent neighborhoods in Ward 11 beyond just Cudell. Hudson replied that the neighborhoods of Ward 11 have something in common: they’re castaways.
“We’re cast aside,” she said. “We’re not the center focus of the neighborhoods. We’re not Gordon Square, we’re not West 25th Street. We’re not the hubs of the community. We need special attention.”
