Shaker
Online
Community
Conversations
Recordings Available
on City Website
Over the past year, Shaker African
American Mothers Support (S.A.M.S.)
has held a series of virtual meetings with
members of the Shaker Heights Police
Department. The goal: To create a venue
for Black residents to talk with officers
about policing in the community.
“This conversation is relevant and
building these relationships is important,”
says Kim Harris, founder of S.A.M.S. “This
has been a way to start this work.”
Recordings of the Community
Conversations are now available on the
City’s website at shakeronline.com/
conversations. You can also access them
by holding your device’s camera over the
QR code below.
Meeting topics have ranged from
racial profiling to reducing bias and
improving cultural competencies among
officers. Whereas S.A.M.S. typically
welcomes everyone to its events, Harris
felt it was important to limit participation
in Community Conversations.
“We want people who don’t normally
talk to the police unless something has
gone wrong,” she says. “These are the
relationships we want to build and it’s so
important to do that.”
4 SUMMER 2021 | WWW.SHAKER.LIFE
New Trees for Van Aken Boulevard
County Grant Program Helps City Restore Tree Canopy
The City will plant almost 150 trees in the RTA median on Van Aken Boulevard this
year, thanks to a $50,000 grant from the Cuyahoga County Healthy Urban Tree Canopy
Grant Program. The City was one of 25 communities selected for the program, which is
designed to help restore the region’s tree canopy.
The new trees are slated for the median between Parkland and Lynnfield
boulevards and South Woodland Road. The City will plant 19 different species,
including several kinds of oaks and elms, red maples and, of course, Ohio buckeyes.
The Healthy Urban Tree Canopy Program is a result of Cuyahoga County’s 2019
Climate Change Action Plan, which pledged $1 million for five years to revitalize
the County’s tree canopy. Unfortunately, due to ongoing losses, only 35 percent of
the County’s land is tree canopy. The County’s 2019 Urban Tree Canopy Assessment
showed that the Heights, in particular, has lost about 10 percent of its canopy over
the past decade.
This particular one-mile stretch of the Van Aken median was selected because it
contains significant open greenspace, so the new trees will directly contribute to the
restoration of the County’s tree canopy.
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