Solutions Sidebar: The Impact Everyday Citizens Can Have On Neighborhood Development

Contentious debates can arise in cities around adding housing or development in neighborhoods, but what power do everyday residents have? From Dayton’s Five Oaks to Cincinnati’s Hyde Park these issues have bubbled up recently, so we want to explore solutions we all have at our fingertips to influence the trajectory of our communities. To explore this topic, we sit down with a city councilmember and the executive director of a group that empowers community councils. 

Interview Guests: Cincinnati Councilmember Mark Jeffreys and Elizabeth Bartley, executive director of Invest in Neighborhoods. 

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Transcript

Ann Thompson:

Everyone wants a say so in the place they live.

Diane Rosenberg:

Our neighborhoods can thrive when we all work together.

Ann Thompson:

But how do city leaders, developers, and residents agree on things like the creation of additional housing?

Dana Hogan:

Why do people believe their government has their best interest at heart? I don't believe that people think, I think they just hope for the best.

Ann Thompson:

Whether it's Cincinnati's Hyde Park, Dayton's Five Oaks neighborhood, or someplace else, most think inclusion is the best way to move projects forward.

Mark Jeffreys:

I do think the city has a role in that, in partnership with the community council in leading a lot of this work to make sure that it's inclusive of everybody.

Ann Thompson:

Council member Mark Jeffreys and Invest in Neighborhoods Elizabeth Bartley are working on a new How-to guide for Everyday Citizens.

Elizabeth Bartley:

Mapping out that city process, understanding what the developer process is so that we can look at where and when and what are the appropriate ways to engage with developments.

Ann Thompson:

On this episode, Jeffreys and Bartley explain their idea and discuss community engagement more broadly. Stay tuned for a solutions sidebar and my colleagues Emiko Moore and Hernz Laguerre Jr. join me at the end for some takeaways. Let's get into it. This is Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community.

Ame Clase:

Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to leading support from AES Ohio Foundation, Greater Cincinnati Foundation and George and Margaret McLane Foundation, with additional support from Laurie F. Johnston,  Murray and Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation, The Robert & Adelle Schiff Family Foundation, and more. Thank you.

Ann Thompson:

Change is bound to happen in Cincinnati. There are very public discussions about adding an apartment building and a hotel on Hyde Park Square. Blue Ash is deciding the future of Summit Park. Dayton's Five Oaks residents work through early skepticism on hundreds of workforce apartments. So how can everyday citizens come together to help neighborhoods flourish and how much power does the system allow them to have? That's the not so easy question we've brought to Cincinnati Councilmember Mark Jeffreys and invest in neighborhood's Executive Director Elizabeth Bartley to explore and answer. Welcome to both of you. Thanks for being here on Brick by Brick.

Elizabeth Bartley:

Thank you for having us. 

Mark Jeffreys:

Thank you, appreciate it.

Ann Thompson:

For those of us who don't know, Invest in Neighborhoods is a nonprofit organization that promotes civic engagement and empowers community councils and related organizations in Cincinnati. And Elizabeth, you were saying that next year will be your 25th neighborhood summit.

Elizabeth Bartley:

Yes, it will. 25 years.

Ann Thompson:

That’s a lot of work to put on, but very beneficial. So for both of you, not everybody knows you, so I thought I'd give you a chance to allow each of you briefly to talk about your background and also say how you've ended up in the position that you are now. Council member you want to start?

Mark Jeffreys:

Yeah, happy to. First of all, thank you for having both of us here. So Mark Jeffreys, I'm a second term city council member, so three and a half years into being on council and I have a different background come from 17 years at Procter and Gamble. So I ran a bunch of different businesses there, left a couple of years ago, started my own company, so I still own my own company, an entrepreneur. Kind of do that in addition to council. And gradually along the way I got more involved with the community, so built out a portion of Smale Riverfront Park, west of the Roebling Bridge. Served on a community council for a couple of years in Clifton, got that perspective. And then similarly was on the Park Foundation board and I started a nonprofit called Go Vibrant. So came to public service in a roundabout way, but really enjoying my time on council. And I chair our Equitable Growth and housing committee, which deals with all issues related to growth and housing.

Elizabeth Bartley:

Alright, thanks for that, Elizabeth. Thank you. I've been in my role with Invest in Neighborhoods around 10 years and prior to that I have a wide variety of experience and background. The thread that sort of pulls through everything. So I have worked in architecture and design, I have done history in archeology. I have worked actually at a community development corporation. I have worked on just a myriad of things, but what I'm trying to pull the thread through, it's really always been one way or another. I've always been interested in the real people who were either going to be inhabiting in a space or using an item or working in an area. And so community has kind of been what's pulled me through. And I ended up coming to the actual community work a bit late as well. I had been in academia for a while, teaching research, things like that. And more and more of my work. I was taking the students out into the field doing, we call it community engagement now, but we weren't calling it back then. Just finding out, going out and learning about areas and neighborhoods and people. And that just sort of came more and more and more. And then I ended up working for the community development corporation and then I moved over to Invest in Neighborhoods.

Ann Thompson:

So in your role Elizabeth, you've probably noticed that some of these development proposals seem to go off the rails. We've heard recently with Hyde Park and Bond Hill and other places. What do you think is the cause of this? Do we just have a squeaky wheel or has something gone wrong?

Elizabeth Bartley:

Well, first I always like to frame it in. There are less projects that go off the rails. Those are the ones that just become very publicly visible. And I was looking this up the other day where if you just look at the city investments over the last five years, there has been, I just looked at the residential housing and mixed use and there's been like 140 projects that the city has invested in. There have been over 1700 variances in the last five years. So those are the things that trigger for going and talking to community councils. So if you add all of that up and then we can count on one hand the one that have gone off the rails recently. So most, I always like to sort of put that in perspective. When things do go off the rails, as you say, it is frequently just people do not feel like they're being heard or heard well enough. There's not an empathy there, an understanding, and that can escalate and spread rapidly.

Ann Thompson:

So that's encouraging that she said most don't go off the rails. I want to quote your words back to you Council member Jeffreys. You were talking about the Hyde Park proposed development and you said quote, what this process has uncovered is clearly that as a city we need a revamp of the community engagement process for development. So expectations are clear across the city developer community and there is a uniform process across councils. What we have now is clearly broken with a lot of missed expectations. So it seems that there is some confusion by some people about the channels that residents have. What avenues do you see for them both legally and politically?

Mark Jeffreys:

So first of all, I agree with Elizabeth that the vast majority, we just approved the Carew Tower and Macy's an amazing project. So vast majority don't have issues. And I do think there is a misalignment of expectations and objectives. So we as a city, as many city leaders, our objective is we we're in a housing affordability crisis, we need to build more housing and that means we need to approve housing of all kinds, meaning income restricted, but then also market rate. And at the community level, there's a very different expectation often. So people want the development to look like it fits in the neighborhood or whatever it is, or it's too big or the design of it may not be right. And so I think that's where some of the challenges are in terms of avenues for people to express it. The current system is through community councils, right?

So we have over 40 community councils and 52 neighborhoods here in Cincinnati. And typically there's not a structured process. So developers will just come on their own, city's not really involved and ask for input and it might go a couple of times, two or three, or it might go over two years in some cases. So very long process and they might ask for changes, et cetera. And so that often does lead to missed expectations. So politically to your question, people have the ability to attend those meetings and provide input and if it doesn't go their way, obviously we're seeing some of the implications of that where folks do pursue a legal route if they don't like it. But I do think it points to the need for being clear on aligning on expectations and a process that's consistent across neighborhoods because today it's a different process in Hyde Park versus Walnut Hills versus Mount Washington, whatever the neighborhood is. And that opens it up to confusion, people not being happy with the end result and ultimately a very inefficient process.

Ann Thompson:

So they're essentially in Hyde Park doing what you're suggesting. They have gone to the community council and now they've collected signatures and then the next step, the ballot,

Mark Jeffreys:

Correct. Yeah. I mean they went exactly as has been prescribed, which is go to the community council, they've engaged. Now the community has said they haven't engaged the right way and they haven't changed their design. There's some disagreement on that, but that aside, there has been some engagement or there has been engagement. And then now that we've voted as we will, the citizens have a right to put a referendum on the ballot and they have taken that step.

Ann Thompson:

So what do community councils think about this? I guess this is the right process to pursue if you don't agree with something?

Elizabeth Bartley:

That is what we're saying in Hyde Park is the end of a process and which it rarely gets to that. So when Mark's talking about the standardizations and setting expectations, that is really, they have those same concerns as well across the community councils where it is completely different. What happens when a developer shows up at one council or another council and it creates just confusion. And we host a monthly coalition meeting where the councils talk with each other and we discuss this and we have discussed this idea of having a standardized process because yes, some neighborhoods like Oakley, like Mount Lookout, have a very formal structured process where a developer comes in and has a certain number of meetings they have to do, it has to meet with the committee. It's very structured and very formalized. Most of them don't have anything like that. And we're always concerned about equity across the city. And so how do we create a standardization where everybody has the same expectations, has the ability to do the same process, and to be able to work with the developers and get to a meaningful endpoint.

Mark Jeffreys:

What I would say, just to add on that, I think it's an advantage for the residents. They know exactly what's to expect, but also for the developer too. If you come to Cincinnati, whether you're in Cincinnati as a developer or you come here from out of town, you don't have to navigate some arcane system. You know exactly, you're going to go this time and you're going to go this time and this time, and this is what you expect. And it's a public process. There's not things happening in private. All of that I think is really important not only for the developers, but also for residents for both.

Ann Thompson:

And so what she's laid out is that what you were saying where you said that clearly as a city we need a revamp of the community engagement process. How do you see that?

Mark Jeffreys:

So that's something we're going to undertake together this summer and probably into the fall. And I do think it is everything that Elizabeth talks about standardizing it, so everyone has the same expectation of what that process looks like across different community councils. And then that'll involve some engagement with community councils. Like what's worked, what hasn't worked how many times is important? One is probably not enough, but five or 10 is probably too much. So how many times of engagement and what's the responsibility? I do think the city has a role in that in partnership with the community council in leading a lot of this work to make sure that it's inclusive of everybody. Everyone has an opportunity, not just from the community council in terms of who's a member, but members of the broader community that are impacted have the opportunity to provide their input.

Ann Thompson:

So to drill down on this, so you two are going to work together and come up with what recommendations that then would anybody vote on it or you just say, here's a playbook on how to do it?

Mark Jeffreys:

Yeah, I mean I think we'll have to figure out the mechanics of it, but I think there's broad alignment from council as well as the community councils that we need a new process. And so I do think us leading to create what that looks like when you have development come to a community, what does that mean? And then we'll have to enroll my colleagues and formalize it in whatever that looks like. I'm not sure what that looks like, but we'll figure it out.

Elizabeth Bartley:

I believe there's also a lot of educational communication pieces that go with that. Several years ago, and this was a while ago now, we had created with the city a pamphlet that was engaging with the development process at the city. And it was very simple and one of those easy to read of different processes and had public hearing marking and community council input. And we look at that now and it's so oversimplified. And part of the issues we run into is the complexity of the development process in and of itself when we are talking about variances in zone changes and having understanding of what's the difference between an urban overlay district and what a planned development. And it is actually even more complicated than it was say 10 years ago. There have been pieces put into place to benefit the communities, but that's also added more steps into the city process. So looking at mapping out that city, understanding what the developer process is so that we can look at where and when and what are the appropriate ways to engage with development. So again, it gets laid out, it's clear, and the expectations are equal on all sides because everybody has their roadmap of how this should work. Go ahead.

Mark Jeffreys:

If I can just put a finer point, because I think it's important we do have a community engagement process today, so that does exist, but I think the issue is to Elizabeth's point on development in particular, there are a lot of nuances and different types of development. There's nuances. So I think we have to get a little bit deeper and then outline specifically what that looks like.

Ann Thompson:

Yeah, I was just going to say, this is early in our conversation and you're already talking about solutions, so that's good. 

I hope you're enjoying our conversation with Invest in Neighborhoods’ Elizabeth Bartley and Cincinnati Council member Mark Jeffreys on the impact everyday citizens can have on neighborhood development. There's still more ahead following this short break. This is Brick by Brick.

Ame Clase:

Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to the generous support of so many, including Diane and Dave Moccia, P & G, The Camden Foundation,  The Stephen H. Wilder Foundation, Rosmary & Mark Schlachter, a donation in memory of Frank and Margaret Linhardt, The A. T. Folger Jr. Lowe Simpson Fund and more. Thank you. We couldn't do this work without you.

Mark Lammers:

You. Hey, we all have a different story even if we grew up in the same neighborhood or city, especially if we're talking about housing stories. Hi, my name is Mark Lammers, executive producer for Brick by Brick. Growing up, I lived on the west side of Cincinnati in a single family home, but I've also experienced apartment life in good and bad settings in a number of different cities. I learned a lot from those times in my life and from my journey as a whole. Now we want to hear about your housing story. That's the new audience question that's live on our show pages at thinktv.org and cetconnect.org. Log in and hit the green button to share your journey and what you learned from it. We hope to share some of your experiences and lessons as we move forward on Brick by Brick, so we can all get smarter together. Thanks.

Ann Thompson:

Welcome back to Brick by Brick. I'm Ann Thompson. Let's get back into our conversation with Cincinnati Council member Mark Jeffreys and Invest in Neighborhoods’ Elizabeth Bartley and Hernz, Emiko and I will be back at the end for some reflections. We will get back to solutions, but one other maybe unpleasant thing to bring up is Cincinnati has a fraught history, and I know this does not involve you, but given multiple pay to play cases, federal cases impacting city council, sitting council members in the past, how do you feel that the development process has come since those bribery scandals?

Mark Jeffreys:

Yeah, it's a great question. I think there's a lot more transparency. So we're given a list of do not call, do not contact people. Anytime a developer brings anything forward to council, there's a period of time that you're not supposed to, for example, solicit anything from them. Obviously that has completely transformed a lot of it. And then frankly, I think just culturally, there's a lot more distance. So if somebody has a project before council, I think most council members are not. For example, I haven't even met PLK. I didn't necessarily have an interest because I knew it was going to be controversial and I didn't want any perception, perception of impropriety and still have not in fact. So I definitely think the culture has shifted and I think we need to approve or disapprove projects on their merit in accordance with what we need as a city and does it fit the city objectives and goals?

Ann Thompson:

Yeah. Are you pleased with the changes that have been made?

Elizabeth Bartley:

Yes. And following on that, sometimes I've been doing this job long enough that I start feeling strange that I have more experience than a council member sitting next to me. So I have more memory. When you mention the transparency, there has been more transparency. There is an engagement policy now that did not used to exist and planning, wasn't planning an engagement, it is now planning an engagement, and all of these pieces are working together. There's legislation, the balanced development legislation, which they're still, that has been put in place to look at here's what the city was looking at and looking for in each of these. And anyone can pull that up anytime to look and see how it's being reviewed by DCD. So we do have all of these different mechanisms in place to improve the processes and to improve engagement and definitely improve transparency.

On the other hand, sometimes it feels, I think people, it's like too much information and it seems like an overwhelming amount of knowledge and background you have to have just to be able to weigh in. I know that quite a few of the council members that don't have the backgrounds they shy away from because they don't know what these mean and they don't understand. But to me, that shouldn't be the barrier. So we have to figure out how to have that not be the barrier because outside of the community councils, if you're looking at all the residents in a neighborhood, they're not going to know either yet. We still want to know what are the needs in that neighborhood, what's going to fit there, what is going to be the most benefit for that neighborhood and for the people who already live there and work.

Ann Thompson:

Because during that five hour plus committee meeting, residents did say, council member, are you an architect? Or what are your qualifications? In talking about solutions…so we're all about solutions here at Brick by Brick, and I'm wondering what projects that you can maybe give an example about what has gone well and why it's gone well. And while you're thinking about that, I'll just mention a couple of recent relevant examples. For example, Hamilton County's assistant planning director points to Springfield Township where residents were involved in the beginning in an 80 acre development, and the process seemed to go smoother. For example, the developer worked with residents to make sure that there was enough green space and attended a number of open houses with the township administrators and residents. And then Dayton's Planning division manager Tony Kroeger points to an upcoming Hom Flats of Forest Development, 260 workforce units in the Five Oaks neighborhood, and it's set to break ground this summer. There was extensive public engagement, he says, and a project that was met with great skepticism at first to being fully supportive at the end. And he says that's thanks to the flexibility and interpersonal skills of the developer. Those were two examples that apparently went well. Yeah. What can you name or think of?

Mark Jeffreys:

I'll start. If you think about around University of Cincinnati, what's called the Uptown area, there's obviously a lot of development, a lot of student housing and several of the developers have been engaged there for many years. So Uptown Development, for example, and a couple of things that go well are they have a really strong relationship with the community council. So they go to them early in the process and say, Hey, here's what we're looking to develop. This is the type of housing. Or recently it was a Chick-fil-A there as an example, and they present initial designs and then they come back later and they get input. And so for example, in each one of those, they have taken a lot of the input on, Hey, we want the structure closer to the sidewalk. For example, the Chick-fil-A, not farther back. We want some greenery in the front, some trees, we want a pedestrian crossway so people can actually cross through and they'll come back and say, yes, this is possible. This isn't possible and here's why. And so I think a lot of it is just good relationship with the community council and listening to them and a little empathy.

Elizabeth Bartley:

I think that key is this concept of relationship building that relationship. And I think of the example I think of right now is a recent Walnut Hills development that's being planned and worked hard, not just with the Community council. And this was again, a developer that has had a relationship over there, but also worked with the Redevelopment foundation. So I think part of that is there's a coalition, I believe in Clifton. There's a coalition of people that are working on these as well. So you're getting touch points and information from the multiple aspects of the community, but the, they're all working together and that particular one they have, so they have a very strong master plan for the business district area of Walnut Hills. And so they bring that out and they're like, this is what we're looking for. We've been talking about this for years.

This has been approved. And it also makes it more straightforward when they are, it's always going to be a negotiation, a compromise. So sometimes yes, the developer says, no, we can't do that, and here's why. Sometimes, yes. And so they were able to get some additional immunities that were desired as part of this master plan, even though, and the community council was very much saying, this is what we want. Even though it did reduce the number of housing units by around a hundred, but the give and take was made by the community there because they wanted this to still be working with the master plan.

Ann Thompson:

I think that I should mention Connected Communities to allow for more transit oriented development and middle housing. What do you expect to see in terms of development over the next couple of years that folks should be taking stock of now in order to provide input along the way, and how do they engage?

Mark Jeffreys:

Yeah, so the perspective on that, it's really started with what passed here in issue seven, where we invested in metro. And we do know to have a successful bus or public transit system, you need density around it. The more people who live around it increases ridership and therefore it enables it to thrive. And so that was some of the impetus behind connected communities. And so the focus was around transit corridors. So Reading Road is a big one, Ludlow, Hamilton Avenue. And so some of the investments we're making in bus Rapid Transit as an example. And so what we've enabled is gentle density. I mean, you're not going to see high rises come up that look like Manhattan or anything, but they're row houses, a little bit more dense, a little higher along those transit routes. And so in that process, folks will engage in, as a developer comes forward, they'll engage with the community, and there'll be no doubt further opportunities for input.

Ann Thompson:

Yeah. I wanted to ask both of you, what gives you hope? Despite controversy, Elizabeth, you want to start?

Elizabeth Bartley:

We live in a representative democracy, but having the voice of the residents, having the voice of the community, having the input can lead to incredibly positive changes. I do think that change begins at the neighborhood level, and we have seen projects where they have been more driven from the neighborhood side and really worked with, what do you need here and who lives here? Who are the people like, oh no, you guys don't need a Starbucks on every corner. You need something else. And it can become very, very positive. And so that gives me hope. I have seen very good things result from working at that level and working with the people that have to live there every day and work there and understanding how that fits in with what the overall city goals are and how that is sort of being looked at in the bigger picture as well.

Mark Jeffreys:

I would say similarly, you have a lot of examples throughout the city where it's worked well and neighborhoods are thriving with thriving business districts. You look at College Hills and Walnut Hills was mentioned, Madisonville. I live in Clifton. You have a lot of really thriving areas, and a lot of the better outcome is when people provide input. If people do provide input, sometimes you don't know what you don't know. And a development comes forward and said, well, what if you had this attachment or this, then it can definitely lead to a better outcome. So I'm hopeful. I think we can get there and through partnership with folks like Investor Neighborhoods in the community, and I think you have a dedicated group of people throughout the city who are really passionate about this, and where there is that kind of passion, I think we can channel it to really good productive use and end up in a lot better place.

Ann Thompson:

Well, I know we've just scratched the surface, but we're looking forward to following your efforts and hearing how citizens can better engage. So thanks for your time and thanks for being on Brick By Brick.

Elizabeth Bartley:

Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

Ann Thompson:

Remember, if you're interested in digging deeper into our conversation with Council Member Jeffreys and Elizabeth Bartley, or want to learn more about Brick by Brick in general, there are plenty of web articles and videos. Go to cetconnect.org and thinktv.org, and we'd like to hear your neighborhood development story. Click on one of the big green buttons to share your feedback time to talk about our takeaways from this episode. There certainly was a lot to digest, and we welcome Emiko Moore and Hernz Laguerre Jr.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Hello.

Emiko Moore:

Hello. 

Ann Thompson:

Hey guys. So was I felt like a very effective conversation with Elizabeth Bartley and council member Mark Jeffries. We covered a lot of ground. They say they feel good about the transparency created at City Hall, and I know people want to be confident when City council members approved development deals that they're not being influenced because it wasn't that long ago, in 2020 that three former council members were arrested for selling their votes. And then as a result, city council passed an anti-corruption law, which does a couple of things imposing limitations on when the mayor and council members can accept donations from developers. And it creates an ethics czar, an overseer, a confidential whistleblower hotline who investigates ethics violation complaints, and council members also have to sign a code of conduct. Some people question how well this is being enforced, but definitely that went some ways to getting people more confident with City council members.

Emiko Moore:

Right, you want the community to engage. And I think creating this standardized guide for citizens is a great way to give more tools for the community members to engage and troubleshoot any problems beforehand when it's easier to fix and less costly. I think it would also be helpful to have some part of this guide include and encourage members of the broader community to participate, because sometimes it's a few voices that are the loudest. You want more voices at the table?

Ann Thompson:

Yeah. You were talking about that neighborhood guide that was brought up during the conversation that they're going to be working on this summer and the fall.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

And to that point, I just realized from the conversation that there are so many expectations to juggle, whether it's the city's expectations, the public's, or even developers. There's this developing company, SCH Incorporated, they're out in Minnesota and they stress that the main way to attract residents is by creating a sense of place for them designed with the end users in mind. And I think that's along the lines of what the conversation that you guys had and having the community take a large part where they feel incorporated with the development, I think makes it easier. Is it necessarily easy all the way? No, but I think it just makes the process smoother.

Ann Thompson:

Get them involved from the beginning.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Yeah.

Emiko Moore:

Right. And you want to align expectations for this neighborhood and have really good civic engagement, both which are needed for thriving communities. And if you can get everyone at the table and talking, there's more of a chance for give and take, which is really healthy. And I really believe that people are more willing to give and take when they understand how certain things can benefit the whole community, but that means bringing them together. 

Ann Thompson:

Good points, guys. Thanks for that.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

No problem.

Emiko Moore:

Thank you. 

Ann Thompson:

Coming up on the next Brick by Brick, a look back and a look ahead, an update on some of our favorite people profiled.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Ella has found a port home that she really likes in the West Price Hill neighborhood, but there are still renovations being done, so she'll have to wait even though she's ready

Ella Carre:

Now.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

You want to move into the house now? 

Ella Carre:

I'm ready, could you tell?

Emiko Moore:

Lovett is now a proud new homeowner and her Yorkshire Terrier. Cocoa is happy to play in the backyard.

Kaneika Lovett:

I am a homeowner. I'm a homeowner. I'm not just a voucher holder. I own this. I worked hard for this and I'm going to continue to work hard for it.

Ann Thompson:

And whether programs we detailed are moving forward plus a preview of season on the next Brick by Brick, that's our show. If you like what you hear, please rate and review our podcast. It helps make it easier to find. We hope you learn something, and if you did, please share it with your friends and family. For Emiko Moore and Hernz Laguerre Jr. I'm Ann Thompson. We'll be back soon with more solutions. Take care. 

Our show is produced, hosted an edited by me, Ann Thompson with reporting and story editing from Hernz Laguerre Jr. and Emiko Moore. Our Executive producer of Mark Lammers. Our show consultant is Gloria Skurski. Gabe Wimberly is our audio engineer and mixer. Zach Kramer runs the lights and cameras. Derrick Smith is our production specialist and Jason Garrison is our production manager. Kellie May heads up our marketing and promotions, along with Mike Shea and Bridgett Dillenburger. Elyssa Stefenson handles the website and Steve Wright is our designer. Bill Dean and Andres Kruza are the engineers for the show and our Chief Content Officer is Colin Scianamblo. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community is a production of CET and ThinkTV, Southwest Ohio PBS member stations.