The Health, Health and Human Services Committee with the Arts met on September 21, 2026, chaired by Councilman Conwell. The committee considered multiple legislative items, including food shop license fee updates, a tobacco prevention grant, and a land swap with Cleveland Municipal School District (CMSD) involving the J. Glenn Smith Health Center. A presentation on 311 operations was also delivered.
Yeah, the uh health health and human service uh committee with the arts will now begin. I want to um talk with David Margolius about something real quick, but I want to say this before um I talked with you. I I saw you with your with your babies with your children. I like that uh that fatherhood is very, very important. Fathers and families together is really really cool. And what happened at the uh with the fatherhood walk was great too. I love that. But the and I'm gonna talk about it on the floor too. You know, you know, House Jones, the fatherhood movement started it out of huff. And went worldwide, and it was with Charles Ballard. Really, and then when Charles left, then uh I was blessed to step in and start doing some fatherhood stuff. But it it was right over there really by Lee Lee Park. It was a guy he was pushing, you weren't boring, yeah. And council for more at this table was it was called Teen Fathers. And you guys and Charles saw that the absence of fathers, and he saw that uh um the welfare workers were making sure there was no dads in the household, and um and and and especially in the African American community used to be only like around twelve percent mothers were headed of households back then in the sixties and the seventies. Well, you before your time also. Then they um uh uh fatherhood, because government intervened and then they went to a higher level, and now we are three quarters of the head of the household is headed by uh females. They didn't want the dads to be in the household when the mothers were uh on ADC because they felt that um the fathers shouldn't just shouldn't be there. And they promoted it too. What they did, um you had a daughter, and she got on um they promoted her to get on ADC instead of us starting doing jobs and development and workers therapeutic and all that kind of stuff. They pushed for and you couldn't have a father in the household. They they hired investigators to make sure there was no dad or no no uh no man cap there at all. They saw that you were in trouble, or you know, those kind of things, and they pushed it out. But here's to my point. What we're missing, it was a good great fatherhood day. But what the city is missing, and I'm gonna talk with Dr. Morgan about it also. What he's missing, is that get these fathers, you have a lot of potential energy there. Get them involved, get them engaged in their children's education. That's very important. And start programs, because I met with Glenville Fatherhood piece, and we named it a Glenville Fatherhood Initiative. And you got that potential energy there, and the children like looking up, seeing that. Seeing that, especially the little girl, when she sees her father, she feel the power of his of his heart and those kind of things. So I think we get their names, and we start in all our schools that we can, Austin. You had a great turnout also of the dads, and you um, you know, you open it up, and that way you have engaged fatherhood, because a lot of times in the schools is just the teacher and the principal, and you don't have that uh from the community outside. You need that strength, you need that support, and you need that fathers and families together. And the reason I mention that to you, I saw you with your um daughters at League Park. Yeah, yeah, you the babies and the sons and everything. It was fathers and sons together. What I need, and moving off that piece, I need you to work with me. Here's another piece. Let me switch gears that we're working on. How do you take the health and the arts and integrate them together? A lot of times what doctors want to do is give prescriptions, but with social prescriptions, then if we can, when I write this legislation, ask the Medicaid down state. Can you prescribe medicine so that people could take if they're dealing with mental issues or any some issues that they can prescribe to that you can they could take music lessons at the music school settlement, learn piano, learn violin, learn those kind of things. Because the thing about the arts, it works with your cognitive behavior. And then when you have that, you um instead of always just give, hey, take this drug, take that drug. So make the drug into the arts into music. So I met with Linda at the uh Metro Hospital last week, Thursday, and uh we talked about you, Dr. Margolius, and we're gonna round table in this legislation and try to push it anywhere and everywhere, maybe even downstate.