Category: General Information

SUBMITTED

Jean Polster, RN, MS, president and chief executive officer of Neighborhood Family Practice (NFP), announced the appointment of Andrea S. Lyons to the position of vice president of marketing and communications effective August 23. In this position, Lyons will provide marketing and strategic communications support for the organization. 

“We are so excited to have Andrea join our team.  Her 30 years of marketing, communications and advertising experience will help us increase visibility of our services and locations to current and prospective patients, as well as other community-based stakeholders and supporters,” Polster says. 

Prior to joining Neighborhood Family Practice, Lyons was the director of race, diversity, equity and inclusion for United Way of Greater Cleveland. In that role, she was responsible for developing and executing diversity and inclusion programs for staff and was instrumental in the launch of United Way’s Community Conversations on police reform in Cleveland. 

Lyons has held various marketing and communications roles throughout her career, including director of marketing and strategic communications at United Way of Greater Cleveland; marketing and strategic planning for nonprofit and for-profit organizations at The Impact Group; marketing director for Medina County Economic Development Corporation; and senior group marketing manager for GTE, AT&T and Verizon. 

Lyons earned her Bachelor of Arts in political science at Rutgers University and Master of Business Administration from New York University – Stern School of Business. 

“Having Andrea join Neighborhood Family Practice speaks to our continued commitment to social and racial justice and our priority to communicate the health care services we provide for the community through a lens of equity, dignity and respect,” Polster says.

(Photo of Andrea Lyons also submitted)

### 

About Neighborhood Family Practice

Founded in 1980 in response to a concern that residents of Cleveland’s near west side lacked access to primary health care, Neighborhood Family Practice focuses on providing high quality primary care in the patient’s neighborhood setting. Today, its seven public-transit friendly locations offer same-day appointments to a service area that spans twelve neighborhoods across Cleveland’s west side and Lakewood.  Neighborhood Family Practice serves a highly diverse mix of residents with a mission of partnering with the community for everyone’s best health. Accredited by The Joint Commission and designated as a Patient-Centered Medical Home, Neighborhood Family Practice provides primary care, women’s health and midwifery services, behavioral health, pharmacy, dental and case management appointments to more than 21,000 patients at its combined locations. For more information, visit .nfpmedcenter.org.

By Jerry Masek

(Photo by Dawn Tarka for the West Park Times)

About 30 persons attended a Meet and Greet Aug. 26 for Mayoral candidate Justin Bibb.

The event was arranged by two West Park supporters.

Bibb has appeared at more than 200 such events since he announced his candidacy July 12.

He spoke for 22 minutes, and answered questions for 28 minutes. He talked his background and these issues:* His first action as Mayor will be to do a “top down” audit of City departments, to see where improvements are most needed.*

He wants to play an active role in recruiting more police. His father was a policeman. Much of his presentation focused on improving public safety.* His Cabinet would be “an All-Star team.”

He said there are “many fine employees” at City Hall, and he wants to retain them.* A former Board member at RTA, he wants to meet with RTA, and city and county officials, to explore more ways to increase revenue for public transit.* Money from the balance at Cleveland Public Power should be used to make the system more reliable. Two recent outages by CPP hurt many vendors at the popular West Side Market.

Bibb is one of seven candidates in the non-partisan primary Sept. 14. Early voting has begun. The top two candidates will face off in November.

A family-friendly day to enjoy sidewalk art inspired by Italian Renaissance tradition

CONTENT SUBMITTED

The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) will host the 2021 Chalk Festival in person Saturday, Sept. 11, noon to 5 p.m., rain or shine. The festival features sidewalk paintings by professional chalk artists and local community groups, families and individuals. This year, the community is invited to take part in a featured chalk drawing by artist Bruno Casiano and make it come alive with color.

Participants will have an opportunity to showcase their own art on the museum’s south plaza and throughout the pathways that wind through the Fine Arts Garden and down to Wade Lagoon. Squares and boxes of chalk are available for $10 with on-site, day-of registration (supplies limited). The Chalk Festival is free to visitors wishing to enjoy the artists’ work and listen to live music by Outlaws I & I.

Photo: David Brichford, courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art

###

About the Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art is renowned for the quality and breadth of its collection, which includes more than 63,000 artworks and spans 6,000 years of achievement in the arts. The museum is a significant international forum for exhibitions, scholarship and performing arts and is a leader in digital innovations. One of the top comprehensive art museums in the nation, recognized for its award-winning Open Access program and free of charge to all, the Cleveland Museum of Art is located in the University Circle neighborhood.

The museum is supported in part by residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture and made possible in part by the Ohio Arts Council (OAC), which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts. The OAC is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally and economically. For more information about the museum and its holdings, programs and events, call 888-CMA-0033 or visit cma.org.

Monarch butterflies are orange in appearance with black-lined wings and white spots.

Each year, it takes around three to four generations of monarch butterflies to make their way from their winter home in Mexico, to where they breed in North America and Canada – a journey said to span more than 2,000 miles.

Luckily, for those of us residing in Cuyahoga County, we get to catch a glimpse of this fantastic and phenomenal migration.

According to the National Park Service, those found in our area are from the third generation of monarchs.

“As the air warms in early March, monarchs become more active and leave the protection of the oyamel fir forests to head north, mate, and seek the nearest milkweed fields to lay their eggs. These offspring are Generation 1. Monarchs follow specific routes, called flyways – one of which stretches to the Great Lakes. Generations 1 and 2 journey progressively north: mating, laying eggs, and dying along the way…” SOURCE

Local cartoonist Dean Norman illustrates such a migration with a Cleveland-twist, here.

Officials say approvals will be ‘later this summer’; reaching a customer service rep still an exhaustive process

By Emily Crebs

Maggie Rose applied for pandemic unemployment assistance in April 2020 after the restaurant she was working in shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She was quickly approved. 

Then a couple weeks ago, she received an email from the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family services telling her to pay the balance owed on her account. 

Rose was overpaid $12,000 – something she said was extremely scary “for someone who’s just gone through a move, hasn’t gotten a job yet, I’m using the little bit of money I have left to bring my car here.” 

Rose recently moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and because she can’t afford to pay back the balance, she appealed. 

In April, nearly 1 in 5 PUA recipients got an anxiety-inducing letter in the mail: the state requesting money back. For many who needed pandemic unemployment assistance to tide them over in the first place, finding the time or money to appeal has been a struggle.

Ohioans were accidentally given over $1.2 billion in accidental PUA payments between May 2020 to February 2021, ODJFS interim director Matt Damschroder said at a press conference May 17. Damschroder explained that non-fraudulent accidental payments could happen due to an accidental error by either the applicant or an ODJFS employee.

For traditional unemployment insurance, individuals who are overpaid and cannot afford to pay back the money are eligible to apply for a waiver. Congress added the ability to forgive PUA overpayments in the CARES act extension in December 2020. But ODJFS didn’t mention anything about waivers in their letters asking for back payment. 

In mid-July, ODJFS announced that individuals would soon be able to log in to the PUA website and add a waiver to their claim. ODJFS started rolling the system out July 14. Officials said this week that 700,000 individuals who were overpaid to no fault of their own have received notifications that they may begin the waiver process. They declined to name a resolution date, saying it would be “later this summer.” 

In February 2018, State Reps. Lisa Sobecki (D-Toledo) and Jeff Crossman (D-Parma) introduced a bill that would force the ODJFS to approve PUA overpayment waivers if the applicant did not commit fraud. 

Crossman said the bill has stalled in committee, and he and Sobecki have made attempts to make it heard on the house floor. 

“The urgency was there; it hasn’t gone away,” Crossman said. “I feel like there’s been a lot of time wasted.”

Sobecki and Crossman said they’ve seen both their constituents and people across the state of Ohio suffer from the pandemic overpayments and subsequent debts. 

“I really hope ODJFS can act on these cases expeditiously and get the dollars back into Ohioans pockets who are continuing to suffer through this pandemic,” Sobecki said. “It breaks my heart, the stories I’ve heard. Not just my constituents but across the state.”

Laura Wilson, a lawyer with Freking, Myers & Reul, said in the absence of a waiver system set up to handle PUA overpayments, she’s seen appeals take up to six months to be processed. 

Rose has yet to hear back about her appeal. 

Other individuals have struggled to fix mistakes in the ODJFS system, like Katie Airy. 

In April 2021, she was notified that someone had made an unemployment claim with her identity. Airy told ODJFS and they marked it as fraudulent. 

Then on May 14, 2021, Airy became unemployed. She first called ODJFS on May 10 to file a claim. 

Airy called ODJFS for a total of 22 times in ten weeks, according to her notes. She would be on the phone for hours being transferred to different individuals in ODJFS, explaining her situation every time she spoke to someone new. 

On the 21st call, Airy thought her information was finally updated and her claim filed, but she discovered that errors made on ODJFS’s end were still unresolved. Airy was scheduled for a call with the processing center of ODJFS on Aug. 2, and once again, never received a call back. 

“The pressure is insurmountable. You have people because your car payments are due, you’re trying to find a job, and you’re waiting on the phone for hours – how do you find a job? You can’t get in the right frame of mind or find the time,” Airy said. 

Airy scheduled another call for Aug. 9. This time an automated system did call her. She waited on hold for 17 minutes. The system disconnected her before a person answered the phone. 

“If any non-government employee or company worked this way, the employee would be fired and/or the company would go out of business,” Airy said. “This is mind boggling.”

“This article provided by Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism. Please join our free mailing list or text us at (216) 867-6327 as this helps us provide more public service reporting.”

The City Planning Commission meets at 9 am Friday. The former Steak-N-Shake, 17325 Lorain Ave., is being renovated, and will become an Arby’s Restaurant. The Far West Design Review Committee gave conceptual approval on May 7. Representatives of the project did not return phone calls from The West Park Times. Friday’s meeting will be broadcast on YouTube. Ward 17 Councilman Charles Slife is a member of the Planning Commission. (Photo by Jerry Masek).

West Park Times

Here is a novel idea. Cleveland Public Library offers a dose of protection against COVID-19. In partnership with Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services, Inc. (NEON), the Library hosts a COVID-19 vaccination clinic from 10 am-noon Monday, Aug. 2, at Rockport Library, on W. 140th Street at Puritas Avenue.

Clevelanders who get the shot can win bus passes, gift cards, and other prizes. Managed Plan Medicaid members aged 18 and over receiving their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine will get a $100 gift card. (Photo by Jerry Masek).

STORY BY JESSIE SCHOONOVER

PHOTOS COURTESY CITY FRESH     

• 

• 

City Fresh in Kamm’s Corners is currently located at 15460 Triskett Rd., or the Bethany English Lutheran Church. 

Previously located at the West Park Library Branch, 3805 W 157th St., it has moved because the library branch is temporarily closed for renovations. 

Anna Kiss Mauser-Martinez, executive director of The New Agrarian Center of City Fresh, admits that eating veggies is difficult for many—but so good for us all! 

She says that she was introduced to the concept of City Fresh while trying to come up with healthy but affordable food options for her children, who have grown older now.  

“We aggregate from multiple small farms all located within 70 miles of the city of Cleveland,” she explains. 

In addition to providing low-cost yet quality, healthy food options to the area, City Fresh also aims to reduce the carbon footprint of the food we consume by minimizing the distance it travels to get to us. 

Continuing her involvement with the organization as her children grew to make their own food choice—her passion for bringing vegetables to residents in West Park and other locations throughout the area. Kindly making time for our interview, and always happy to answer questions and the like, Mauser-Martinez acts as an energy-filled beacon for City Fresh, guiding efforts and overseeing endeavors tirelessly.  “In practice,” says City Fresh’s website, 

“We promote sustainable farming by supporting farmers who employ organic growing techniques. We also take the prospect of our diet’s carbon footprint seriously, and we strive to ensure the mileage on your produce is as small as possible. The food in your basket in tasty because rich soils produce a restorative yield of fruits and vegetables all year long – and long into the future.”  

Making it easier to eat your veggies at any age 

West Park residents can order vegetables from City Fresh week-to-week, or all at once for 20 weeks. The 20 weeks covers the local growing season, which extends from June until October. City Fresh aims to be affordable and flexible, and it’s noted that SNAP is accepted, as are limited income price options for both shares (the single and family share). 

A family share costs $32 and feeds around 3 to 5 individuals each week. Items come prepackaged. Shares often come with 10 to 12 items. A single share costs $20 per week and feeds 1 to 2. 

Their website offers a chart showing what is provided in a typical share, based on what is in season and when. For example, kale, lettuce, and cucumbers are often available in the start of summer, while bok choy is typically available in the fall. Apples, however, are available in the full-swing of summer as well as fall. Find this information here. https://cityfresh.org/whats-in-a-share/ 

Where can sign up to receive shares of City Fresh? How does it work? 

Visit the City Fresh website and click on ORDER ONLINE. You will have to log in or register if you do not have an account yet. After that, simply choose the option that’s right for you. 

LINK: https://kalechips.cityfresh.org/shareholder/ 

PHOTO SUBMITTED 

Approximately 50-percent of the world uses social media, sources say. 

“…Photo ops are such a big thing with social media being so popular,” says Lisa Kay, proprietor and scoop specialist at Kamm’s Corners Ice Cream Co. “We thought ‘hey,’ we might be small but we can be mighty, and keep up with the Cleveland photo op scene!” 

A brand new neon sign at Kamm’s Corners Ice Cream Co. gives patrons and passersby an opportunity to have their own unique photo shoot. 

“We added the BEST neon sign–EVER!” Kay says, noting the sign is “ice cream, you scream, we all scream for Cleveland” and in their signature colors, ‘razmatazz pink,’ ‘lemon yellow,’ and ‘blue moo blue.’ 

Kay added a special thanks to her Shop Manager Tia for coming up with the design and the saying, “we just love it!” 

“We also added some Cleveland Street Art! Local Artist Kali Gibbons painted the best mural outside the shop which represents a few of our flavors. Our #1 seller Maxx’s Cookie monster sits atop the mural with our signature chocolate medallion and cookie monster eyes.” 

Two hot flavors for this summer? Kay says Lemon Square and Peach Basil Cream are current favorites.