Housing Planning and Development Committee Meeting - August 3, 2026
Housing Planning and Development Committee Meeting - August 3, 2026
Note: The transcript of this meeting states the date as September 8, 2026, but the instructed date for this summary is August 3, 2026. This discrepancy is noted.
The Housing Planning and Development Committee met on August 3, 2026, to receive updates on the city's traffic calming program and to resume deliberations on proposed regulations for short-term rentals. The meeting began with the approval of previous minutes.
Consent Calendar
- Approval of Minutes: The minutes of the July 13, 2026, Housing Planning and Development Committee meeting were approved by voice vote, with a motion and second.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Helen Brand (1588 Warren Road): Expressed support for responsible short-term rental (STR) operations. She owns an STR in a building with five units, reporting zero police complaints in the last 1.5 years. She argued that existing noise ordinances are sufficient and suggested that requiring proof of residency (Cuyahoga County or Lakewood) for STR permits would address neighborhood concerns. She also asked about grandfathering for existing responsible operators.
- Sierra Kravik and Jordan Kravik (1540 Warren Road): Expressed concern about multiple STRs within a half-mile of their home, citing an irresponsible absentee landlord with long-term rentals. They support proper permitting and host responsibility, including requiring local residency for operators, to ensure timely response to issues like noise complaints.
Discussion Items
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Traffic Calming Program Update: Assistant Director Boss presented an overview of the neighborhood traffic calming program. Key points:
- The program is resident-driven, data-based, and focuses on north-south residential blocks (not major collectors or commercial roads).
- Three objective thresholds to qualify a street: (1) average daily traffic >600 vehicles, (2) 85th percentile speed >30 mph, (3) 5% of vehicles exceeding 35 mph. A street must meet at least two of three.
- Process: resident nomination → data collection (at least three sets, different seasons) → threshold check → resident survey (50% support needed for intervention) → block meeting → petition (60% approval for installation).
- Metrics since 2020: 112 nominations, 68 processed, 22 qualified for intervention, only 9 completed installations (all speed tables). No block that reached the petition stage has failed to achieve 60% approval.
- Proposed improvements: double data collection capacity by using all four neighborhood police officers; better public outreach; and a context-driven adjustment to thresholds based on street width, setbacks, and right-of-way (e.g., narrower streets like Hall may need a lower speed threshold). This last recommendation came from the CASE advisory board.
Council discussion: Councilpersons Baker, Evans, Bix, and Keppel supported making the program a council-level policy with periodic review, updating standards to reflect changing public sentiment, and increasing efficiency to reduce wait times. Baker and Bullock noted the tension between purely data-driven thresholds and neighborhood perceptions of safety.
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Short-Term Rentals Update: Councilman Bullock provided an update on his meetings with city departments (fire, police, building). Key points:
- Fire Marshal Berth and Chief Fairbanks described safety concerns for transient guests: ensuring clear exits, proper smoke detectors (combination with 10-year batteries), fire extinguishers, no double deadbolts, and restrictions on open burning or grills on porches. They suggested that these requirements could be checked during the application/licensing process.
- Building Commissioner Parmale noted that current housing license regulations already apply to STRs (registration, local agent, inspections) but acknowledged that owner-occupied units renting part of a two-family might be exempt. The main challenges are behavioral/nuisance issues, not structural.
- Councilman Baker proposed a heavily regulated approach with fees to cover enforcement, using Cleveland’s model as a starting point (bed tax, saturation limits, ingress-egress maps). He moved to discharge the ordinance from committee to allow him and Bullock to draft new language.
- Councilman Bullock emphasized that the core policy question is whether STRs are a new commercial use in residential zones (which the zoning code prohibits) or a subcategory of rental housing. He noted that investors are treating them as businesses, and the city must decide whether to ban, heavily regulate, or permit them under existing bed-and-breakfast rules.
Key Outcomes
- Traffic Calming: No action taken; further updates are expected from Assistant Director Boss (on the context-driven threshold methodology) and the CASE advisory board. The committee will take up policy considerations after those inputs.
- Short-Term Rentals: A motion to discharge the short-term rental ordinance from committee (to allow Councilmen Baker and Bullock to work with the administration on revised legislation) passed unanimously. The ordinance will be re-introduced to the committee at a later date.
Note on Discrepancy: The provided meeting date is August 3, 2026, but the transcript begins with "Welcome to the September 8th, 2026 meeting." The summary above uses the specified date; the transcript date is acknowledged as conflicting.
Meeting Transcript
Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the September 8th, 2026 meeting of the Housing Planning and Development Committee. A few items under agenda this evening. First is approval of the minutes of the July 13th, 2026 meeting of the HP and D committee. So I'll move. And a second. Seconded. Motion passes. Thank you. First up on the agenda tonight communication from President, Vice President Baker, Councilpersons Bix and Stein and Evans regarding the City of Lakewood's traffic calming program. This was referred to HPD and the case advisory board on July 6th. I think both things we're going to hear tonight are updates on things that this committee has been working on over the past months. So with that, I'll believe it'll turn it over to Councilman Baker. Sure. Thank you, uh Chair Evans. And the communication speaks for itself in the sense that it's the traffic call me program was started a few years ago by this administration. A lot of but it was also kind of new, like not a lot of communities were doing this. Dangerous. And so the the intent of this communication was was both to lift up some of the accomplishments and good work of the Traffic Calling Program, but also, you know, it's any it's a good policy of any organization that every about five years to look at something, how it's doing, reflect, think about refinements, um, seek input from the public. Uh this is purely an administrative program. Uh do we want to have some loose codification of it or not? Uh what does the public think about it? Uh what are the successes? What are some of the challenges from a staff standpoint and the amount of work Mr. Boss is doing? Uh are there ways to make it more efficient? Um I am an ex officio member of the case board as well and heard uh Mr. Boss's presentation, so I'm I'm sure he will do that for us and take our input as well. Um so that's all I have to hear. Great, thanks, thanks, President Baker. Um and I'll just add um as a little background, um, Council Persons Baker, Pixenstein and myself did have a um a really good meeting with uh city officials plan department. Um the mayor um was in attendance and public works about this program. All of us in council, I think, um can agree this is something we hear quite a bit about from the community um pretty much every single day. Um so it was a great touch point. Um I think we had a lot of uh productive conversation there, but looking forward to the presentation this evening. So I'll turn it over to um Assistant Director Boss. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I've just got a couple of slides. I'll um a little bit of background, I'll walk through the process. Uh, hopefully it you're familiar with the traffic calming process, but for now I'll just hit some of the highlights and then kind of some of the numbers of uh the last couple years uh just in terms of some metrics of the program and the throughput. And then uh the last slide is is kind of a follow-up to the meeting that we had in terms of some of the things that uh uh we were planning on making changes, and I will I got one to add from the case meeting uh last week as well uh to consider. So here we go. All right, so just some background on traffic combing. Um this was a uh uh a pretty big research project when I got here, uh 2018-2019 time frame. Um not a lot of local or regional cities had traffic calming policies at the time, and so a lot of this information I I pulled it uh in terms of research and then also learned from kind of the past and then the efforts of on Woodward Avenue here in Lakewood, as well as and then uh I would I was fortunate enough to lead the Marlowe Avenue, which was our project, which became our pilot and um, where I was kind of to test and refine this whole process um over about a two-year period with the residents of Marlowe Avenue. Um so one of the biggest things driving traffic calming is obviously it's intended to address volume and speed issues on a given uh typically a re residential neighborhood street. So that's that's one of the big focuses is ours. We don't the the program does not focus on uh major east-west collectors or commercial uh dominated roads. It is a and that's why I I call it the neighborhood traffic calming program.
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