The Committee of Finance, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion met on Monday, October 13, 2025, to consider several ordinances and discuss departmental transfers. Key topics included the regulation of golf carts for business use, a medical billing contract for inmates, a local government test fund for a transfer station, a budget transfer from police to fire, salary classification amendments, and a software subscription for the council.
Good afternoon. Today is Monday, October 13th, 2025. This committee of finance, diversity, equity, and inclusion is called the order. Madam Clerk, please call the role. Here. Present. Present. All right. I don't think we have any guests. So we're just going to go ahead and do the agenda. Let's bring up uh city planning. And then after city planning, public safety. So city planning ordinance number twelve fifteen dash twenty twenty-five as amended by Council Members Harrison, Politic, and Griffin by departmental request, an emergency ordinance, the supplement, the codified ordinances of Cleveland, Ohio, nineteen seventy-six by enacting new section four oh one dot seven eleven relating to the definition of under speed vehicles and to enact sections four five zero dot oh one to four five zero dot oh eight and four five zero dot nine nine relating to underspeed vehicles. And there is an amendment. And also gives a um authority to the director of public safety to establish rules and regulations to govern the use of under speed vehicles, golf carts associated with businesses in the city of Cleveland. It also sets up an annual inspection requirement that the Bureau of Traffic will conduct where each golf cart has to be inspected and certified that it meets the requirements in this ordinance. The businesses are also required to keep information on their business and authorized drivers on record with the Bureau of Traffic. And the Bureau will take in service area maps for each business and transmit those to city council through the clerk. So this is an initial introduction of golf carts legally on city streets to support small businesses. Like I said, we are joined by two representatives here today who can talk through their business models. But the overall goal is to provide mobility opportunities and options, especially between entertainment districts or in neighborhoods where distances might be a little bit too far to walk, but don't necessarily necessarily necessitate travel by car. Good afternoon, Chair and Committee. The division of our police and more specifically Commissioner Gordon Holmes and his staff did vet this uh legislation. Um their concerns were and questions were answered. So uh we are good with this particular legislation. And also it does give me the direct public safety the ability, the uh the authority for rules and regulations and also the ability and authority to to limit the locations and areas of these uh um golf carts if that becomes an issue. Okay. Commissioner, did you want to add anything? Good. Yeah, I'm good. Okay. All right. Uh just a couple of questions. First of all, I know that this was uh debated uh vigorously in uh public safety, but just a couple of things. How would you determine zones that you would exempt or zones that you would regulate? Because I know that there's always suggestions to use golf carts in order to take people back and forth to uh parking lots and parking locations. I can speak, for example, in Little Italy. I know there's a proposal uh to try to have people monitor, I mean, uh take golf carts to try to take uh customers back and forth to lots where they park their cars. So how would you determine the need? How would you actually determine what districts you would allow this to happen, what districts you would have to the chair. Um as we were discussing this and talking with the businesses, there are currently no restrictions on service areas. We're very interested in seeing what the demand is and and not ruling out certain neighborhoods or districts from the beginning, but the ordinance does give the director of public safety the authority should issues emerge to restrict service areas. It also gives him and the authority, as with any vehicle, to restrict access around special events. And so in safety as well as with the businesses. We've talked, for example, about the Brown schemes, there are certain traffic restrictions, those would also apply to these golf carts. But at this point, as we're entering a new program, we didn't want to be overly regulatory about what could happen just to just have the uh authority in place should it be needed to preserve public safety. Thank you so much, Director. And just so that you know, I agree there's a lot of variables that can take place. I mean, you look at weather, you look at traffic patterns of traffic at the time of day. Um I mean, I could like I said, I could use little Italy, for example, if it's a day like today.