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The new county jail campus off Transportation Boulevard sits on about 72 acres (Cuyahoga County parcel 542-22-025, 5400–5410 Transportation Blvd.) inside the Garfield Heights City School District.
You have heard the county’s number: home values up 32 percent in the 2024 reappraisal. That is the countywide average for home values. It is not a tax figure, and it is not Garfield Heights.
About 6,500 children under 18 live in Garfield Heights — the Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 estimate is 6,585, and the 2020 Census counted 7,109. Where do they go?
On November 3, Garfield Heights voters will decide Issue 40. It asks whether all seven members of City Council should serve four-year terms instead of two, starting with the November 2029 election.
A neighbor asked me a fair question about the school levy on this year’s ballot: if Issue 6 is not renewed, do our property taxes go down? The answer is yes — with a few things you should know before you vote.
Your November 3 ballot. When you open your ballot on November 3, you will find eight questions. One is statewide. One is our schools. Five are countywide. One is the City of Garfield Heights. Three ask you for money, and the word in front of the number decides what it costs: a renewal keeps what you already pay; an additional levy is new money.
Your voice matters. Real change starts with the people who live here — with you. We can’t keep putting the same people in the same positions and expect different results. If we want a Garfield Heights that works for its families, we have to speak up and show up.
When Columbus tells Cuyahoga “wait,” it should give the rest
of us a chance to ask what the county is actually paying for.
Last week, state leaders did Cuyahoga County residents a
favor. They told the county to slow down on a plan that would have
tripled — or maybe quadrupled — the so-called “sin tax” the people of
this county already pay on alcohol and tobacco. The money was supposed
to fund repairs at Progressive Field, Rocket Arena, and the Cleveland
Browns’ new stadium in Brook Park.
They were right to say wait. And the rest of us, in Garfield Heights
and across this county, should use this pause to ask a question the
county hasn’t given us a good answer to: where exactly are the
priorities?
The Cuyahoga County jail project has been stuck for nearly a year. This week, we learned at least one of the reasons a piece of it may stay stuck a while longer: the County never actually asked the sheriff if he was willing to move his office.
Cleveland.com reporter Kaitlin Durbin broke the story on April 23, 2026. Sheriff Harold Pretel told the paper this week that he has never agreed to relocate his headquarters out of downtown Cleveland to the planned Garfield Heights site — and, as far as he is concerned, he has never been formally asked.
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On April 6, I wrote a letter to Ohio Auditor of State Keith Faber. I was asking about something small in the grand scheme of things — three years of missing city audits for Garfield Heights, fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024.