Most mornings, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb receives a “mayor’s daily brief.” In the evenings, he closes out the day talking with Bradford Davy and Ryan Puente, two top aides.
In between those two events, Bibb has been holding 45-minute sit-downs with city council members. He’s been meeting with the county executive and other local officials. And he’s been swinging out to service garages and police and fire stations as part of a city worker listening tour.
City Hall on Tuesday released Bibb’s schedules detailing his first three weeks on the job. The documents offer a look at how the new mayor is spending his early days in office.
Bibb’s office plans to release the schedules weekly, Chief Communications Officer Sarah Johnson said. In Mayor Frank Jackson’s fourth term, the city began releasing the mayor’s schedules at the end of each month.
In Bibb’s first few days in office, the mayor’s schedulers set aside time for him to walk City Hall, visit West Side Market vendors and drop by a city vaccination site. On his second day as mayor, Bibb met with Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley.
Bibb has scheduled weekly meetings with Council President Blaine Griffin, with Law Director Mark Griffin, with Chief Human Resources Officer Paul Patton and with Interim Police Chief Wayne Drummond and Safety Director Karrie Howard. He has also held several meetings and work sessions focused on drawing up his first budget.
The mayor’s schedule includes two meetings about snow removal in the days before the storm that buried the city under 15 inches of snow and paralyzed public transit service.
On Monday, Jan. 10 — a week before the snowstorm — Bibb met with Interim Public Works Director Michael Cox at the Operation Snowbird service garage on South Marginal Road. Two days later, the mayor visited a snowplow service garage on Lorain Avenue in the West Park neighborhood.
Bibb returned to the Snowbird garage from 1 to 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 17 as the city worked to get out from under the previous night’s snowfall.
Earlier in the day, his schedule included a meeting with Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon and a food bag giveaway hosted by Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Later that day, the mayor was scheduled for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day forum. He recorded a robocall about snow removal at 5 that evening.
Last week, Bibb spent three days in Washington, D.C., for the annual meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors. He flew out Tuesday evening and returned late Friday night.
In addition to the plenary breakfast and lunch events, Bibb’s schedule included a meeting with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and sessions on housing, education and reducing gun violence.
Also in the mayor’s planner were evening dinners and receptions in the nation’s capital.
On Thursday, Bibb attended a happy hour event for Ohio mayors hosted by the law firm Roetzel & Andress. Among the invited guests were Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval and Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther. There, Bibb was photographed unmasked just before he issued a mask advisory back home, as Cleveland.com reported.
Afterward, Bibb was scheduled for dinner with Adrian Perkins, the 36-year-old mayor of Shreveport, La. A reception at the St. Regis Hotel followed later that night.
The mayor’s schedule in Washington included a daily briefing by Zoom, virtual attendance at his COVID-19 task force meeting and his weekly meeting with the interim chief of police.
The mayor has made a handful of media appearances in his first three weeks. On his schedule are two interviews with Fox8 News, a call with Cleveland.com about his first week on the job and a WEWS interview about snow removal. He has also held a virtual press conference on COVID-19 and took questions at a Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition event.
Bibb’s schedules also show he met with Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, participated in a Zoom call with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver about the All-Star weekend and had a meeting with Cleveland Clinic CEO Dr. Tomislav Mihaljevic.
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