Cleveland Health Committee Meeting: Air Quality Grant & Tobacco Licensing – October 6, 2025
Cleveland City Council Health and Human Services and Arts Committee Meeting – October 6, 2025
The committee met to discuss two major items: an emergency ordinance authorizing an Ohio EPA grant for air quality monitoring and enforcement, and the implementation of the new tobacco retail licensing program. Council members and department staff discussed the scope of the programs, enforcement capacity, and community outreach.
Discussion Items
- Ordinance 1167-2025 (Ohio EPA Air Quality Grant): Presented by Director of Public Health and Brian Sokolowski, Chief of Air Quality Monitoring. The ordinance authorizes acceptance of a $2,725,620 per year grant from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for two years (October 1, 2025 – September 30, 2027) to fund three programs in the Division of Air Quality: enforcement, engineering (permitting), and air monitoring. The grant supports roughly 30 personnel. Discussion included the air monitoring network (26 of 30 hyperlocal sensors deployed in Cleveland neighborhoods, data available on a public dashboard), the team's training requirements, and risk of non-attainment for the new fine particulate standard (reduced from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter). Council members asked about wind patterns, community engagement, and the importance of tree planting. The ordinance was presented for discussion; no vote was taken at this meeting.
- Tobacco Retail Licensing (TRL) Implementation: Patrice Minor, Director of Community Health Initiatives, presented the progress on implementing the comprehensive tobacco legislation passed in April 2025. The TRL program goes into effect October 13, 2025, with a deadline for retailers to obtain a license by December 31, 2025. Key points: an estimated 800 tobacco retailers in Cleveland (about 53 per ward); the city has conducted direct outreach via palm cards, billboards, social media, and a pre-registration website; enforcement will include two annual inspections per retailer and underage decoy buys (ages 18-20) to check compliance with Tobacco 21. The license fee is $500 per year, funding enforcement and education. Discussion included: the difference between the TRL and state cigarette licenses, enforcement against smoke shops selling illegal hemp-derived products, and the role of other city departments (Building & Housing, City Planning) in regulating smoke shops via occupancy permits and zoning. Council members raised concerns about retailer advertising, the impact of state preemption, and the capacity of the Department of Public Health to enforce the new program given existing workloads (6,000 nuisance complaints annually handled by six local code enforcement inspectors). Councilwoman Gray expressed frustration with a specific unresolved dumpster complaint, questioning the city's ability to enforce code violations effectively. The director acknowledged the capacity issue and noted that TRL funding would be used to hire additional staff as needed. The committee agreed to revisit the matter during operational oversight meetings.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes were taken on the ordinance or the TRL program; both were presented for discussion and information.
- The committee directed the Law Department to explore cooperative agreements (similar to liquor license conditions) as a tool to address problematic tobacco retailers.
- The director committed to follow up on the specific dumpster complaint raised by Councilwoman Gray.
- The committee will hold operational oversight meetings in the coming weeks to further examine staffing and enforcement capacity, particularly for the tobacco retail license program.
Meeting Transcript
Afternoon State University for the programming of the BCSP students. Nine thirty AM right now. Um, Director. Yes. Here, here, right? I need a pen necessity about the draft for board. Okay. Authorizing the director to enter into Mike is off. I'm going to do it again. I'll say it over again. Ordinance number eleven sixty-seven, twenty twenty-five by Council Member Cornwell and Griffin by Department of Request. It's an emergency ordinance authorizing the Director of Public Health to accept a grant from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for Financial Assistant for the Origin of the Division of Air Quality. Authorizing contracts with various agencies or entities and for professional services, determining the method of constructing, rehabilitating, renovating, replacing, or otherwise improving air air monitoring sites, and other similar structure on city-owned and city lease properties, and authorizing the director to enter to one or more contracts for improvements. Finance director, as well as the law director. Health director, sorry. Thank you. So this is our working legislation where the Ohio EPA funds our division of air quality, it funds uh three programs within our division of air quality and about 30 personnel. The programs are enforcement section for Ohio EPA violations, our engineering section for those permits for the polluters uh through Ohio EPA, and our air quality monitoring section. Uh with me to my right is Brian Sokolowski, our chief of air quality monitoring to answer any questions. So this grant and the money, when you say a grant, you should put a dollar amount. Yes. The dollar amount is 2,725,620 per year. And it's uh three-year grant. Two year, I'm sorry. This is for two years. Two years. 2025, October 1st, 2025, through September 30th, 2027. I see it. I see it in the in a in the legislation. And we've had this uh going back twenty something years. Uh since since EPA seventy came about in the 70s. Since we became a uh local EPA office. Hundreds of years. Right. And you with this equipment and services in here, um, you do you air monitor it, and can you explain the process? Uh of particularly for air monitoring or kind of as a whole. As a whole. Uh yeah, so you know, uh director mentioned we have three three sections, um, and it's very very uh circular on what we do. One section benefits another, and we we all use the information to to coexist. So the permitting section or engineering section, they write the permits for facilities. So any facility that that mints uh into the uh ambient atmosphere, you know, from anything from a gas station to the big steel yard to uh dry cleaning facility, they all require Ohio EPA air permits, permits to you know to operate. Uh so we write those permits, they're issued by Ohio EPA, but we actually have engineering staff that write the permits, and then they can authorized an issued by the director of Ohio EPA. Um, then uh we have enforcements which enforces those permits, so they go out and do inspections. So we have a required number of inspections for our grant. So you know we're receiving these these dollars, we have to do things. So we have a required number of inspections we have to perform. Uh we do complaint investigations as well from like open burning to asbestos complaints. Uh if you have an odor or dust in your neighborhood, we investigate those complaints for all of Coyote County. Um, and then if there's violations in the enforcement section would um you know issue notices of violation to get these companies into compliance or individuals. And then the monitoring section, we monitor the air uh to see if we are meeting the uh the ambient air quality standards that are set out by USCPA for the criteria pollutants.
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