The Finance, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee convened on November 17, 2025, to review and approve a series of emergency ordinances focusing on public health initiatives, green space expansion, housing advocacy, technology upgrades, and extensive airport development projects under the Department of Port Control. The meeting featured presentations from community organizations regarding infant mortality rates and tree canopy management, alongside updates on terminal modernization, wetland mitigation, and airport debt financing. All proposed ordinances were reviewed thoroughly, with specific attention given to budget allocations, inter-organizational partnerships, and operational logistics before being approved unanimously.
Good afternoon, everyone. Today's November seventeenth, twenty twenty five. Finance diversity and inclusion committees being called to order. Madam Folk, please call the role. We're gonna start with our guests, which is ordinance number thirteen twenty-two dash twenty twenty-five. This is Public Health, Director of Public Health. Any agreements needed to implement such programming for a period of two years. This piece of legislation is more supportive program. First year Cleveland was established in 2016 as a result of a resolution from Help to establish an organization to coordinate the work that was going on in the community relative to reducing infant mortality. Push the button, thank you. Just pull up closer. All right. As infant mortality is still an issue in our community. I have brought with me Angela White. She is the director of first year Cleveland to provide an overview and update of the program. Thank you. Um Vice Chair Santana. Um, as Francis mentioned, I'm Angela Newman White Executive Director of First Year Cleveland. Um, you know, the organization, as she mentioned, was formed in 2015 in response to the high infant mortality rate. I have the privilege of participating on the original think tank to create first year Cleveland when I was in my former role at the health department. The organization's primary primary purpose is to do policy advocacy and fundraising. So, how do we make the jobs of our community-based organizations and health care providers easier? And so we do that by kind of rebranded us as a connector, protector, and activator. So we build capacity for local organizations to meet the needs of their families by providing training, capacity building, um, and direct funding. Uh between the 2022 and 24, we invested over seven million dollars into local organizations uh providing services to pregnant and parenting women. Um, that is you know comprised of different funding sources that we've raised through the Ohio Department of Medicaid through philanthropy, and also with the support of the city and county um budgets. The flexibility of the city and county funding is vital for us because it allows us to be responsive. Um, most funding coming from the federal and state government is very prescriptive with high fidelity models and not really responsive to what actually each unique community needs. And so by us being able to provide community investment dollars as well as small mini grants, we can fill the gaps and provide the overall comprehensive services that our families need. Um as we're housed at Case Western Reserve, we also um participate in applied and systems level research. So, how are we providing an immediate benefit that's going to yield um the greatest or the best outcome for communities? Doing things like newborn screenings, looking at systems um changes, but then also addressing housing through our healthy beginnings at home project with the intent to um justify or solidify pregnancy as a uh eligibility criteria to prioritize subsidies for housing. And the last piece, which I'm most excited about, is around advocacy. So we work with directly with um residents around civic engagement. So, how do you not only advocate for yourself during your medical appointments but also for your community and your community's needs? Um we lead the statewide infant vitality advocacy day effort. Uh, this year was our third, and we had you know over 75 people from across the state there, and the governor DeWine did come and have conversations with us, but it's an opportunity to highlight key legislators and legislation that prioritizes families and thank those folks and also educate those um you know that need to kind of make sure that we're prioritizing the needs of families when we are putting forth legislation, not only with how it reads, but how do we actually operationalize it? So if you have I'll stop there if you have any questions. Yeah, chief, the 500,000 is that ARPA dollars? No, that's that's from general funds, general fund dollars. Okay, is Connell here? And it's over a two-year period, it's 250 over two year period. And the money would go towards go to first year Cleveland for the purpose of everything that she's done, like okay, programming. Um, I do have a question. I'm right, she's saying I do um pull it close. We've talked about, I know it says here on the legislation that Cleveland are high and often impact high school college completions, family stability, but we're talking about pregnancy rates, um, are high in our area, and it's like I always constantly hear in articles that it's the other way around, like people are not having kids. I'm just curious to know like how are the numbers compared to like years ago where Chief, we were talking about this, right? We had high mortality rates about a couple three years ago. How are they now today? Uh preliminarily, we have 24 data.