10.17.22 MEETING MINUTES - Laserfiche WebLink

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LM Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council Monday, October 17, 2022 Page 2 I really have a lot of deep roots in Cleveland. I am a life-long Clevelander for 70 plus years. I was a Lake County Commissioner for four years. I didn't run for political office until I was 65. I was waiting, according to my wife, to really get to a high level of maturity to be able to do that. I did that for four years. Senator John Eklund was term limited and a number of people approached me and asked me to run for his seat, without knowledge of anything about redistricting at that point. So that's what I did. I understand County government. I understand working with cities, townships and villages. I have lots of those in my current District. I really am sensitive to the local government issues that you all face here. Because at the end of the day, the services that are provided to citizens really happen locally. We can help at the State level or we can get in the way sometimes but we certainly understand where the rubber hits the road here in local government. I serve on a number of important committees. I serve on five committees right now and will become Chairman of the Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee in the Senate starting in January. I serve on the Ways and Means Committee which deals with municipal tax issues that we debated very hotly last year with the stay-at-home situation. I am on the Local Government and Elections and General Government Committee and am currently just winding down a 12 -month assignment as Co -Chair with a House member on the Step Up to Quality for Early Childhood Childcare. It's really important that your representatives, whether it's in the House or in the Senate, sit on the right committees because a lot of the issues that are going to come up certainly always have to qW work their way through committees once a Bill is introduced before it ever gets to the floor for a full vote from either the House or the Senate. One thing I can pledge to you is that I make it a point to make sure I am on really meaningful committees that I believe will serve all of my constituents extremely well. I really make a habit and did this as Commissioner and will continue this in my remaining years in the Senate; I have six more years should I get re-elected; that really having close ties with a community is really what's important. I spend most of my time in the community. I'm really generally only in Columbus two days a week when we are in session. I can work remotely too and I do that a lot. But really what I like to do is get out and meet with the elected officials and with the community on issues. We have a responsibility for determining the biennial budget which I know the Mayor is quite familiar with. It's approximately a $75 billion two-year budget. $75 billion. Now in Washington that's chump change but in the State that's an awful lot of money. It has to be doled out appropriately. We have a lot of what we call fixed items that we really don't have much discretion over, prisons, law enforcement and so on, but a lot of it is discretionary and it's important that we identify the right kind of projects. I can't understand what your project needs are if I am not here talking to you all of the time. I can never guarantee that I will get your project done but I can guarantee you that I will do my very best to get it done and work my colleagues appropriately to make sure that they support my projects that are going to be good for the communities here. That's the other reason, Mayor, that I wanted to come here and talk to you early. We actually start the new budget process in February. The sooner we can start to identify things that Mayfield