by Errol Savage
(Plain Press, November 2023) The Comprehensive Extracurricular Activities Plan (CEAP), funded by the citizens of Cleveland for the benefit of children, is being robbed.
COMMENTARY
Back in the 1990s our football stadium was built by taxpayers; the private owners of the stadium received a lifetime exemption from paying property taxes on the stadium. To pay for maintenance, repairs and improvements, ordinances 1025-95-A was passed by Cleveland City Council. This is an 8% parking, entertainment, and vehicle leasing tax. This tax on the citizens raised 26 million dollars in 1996 and over 33 million dollars in 2020.
To make up for the stadium property taxes that were lost to the school system because of the tax exemption, Cleveland City Council agreed that 2 million dollars per year of the funds raised from 1025-95-A would be sent to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) children to pay for CEAP programming. This programming provided for before and after school programming, enrichment activities, the cost of materials, and the pay for community instructors. Schools that had CEAP programming had high retention, increased attendance, and fewer discipline problems. In short, the CEAP helped children. From 1996 until 2009 the children of Cleveland received this money. Then the politicians and Cleveland Brown’s owners got greedy. In 2009 when the stadium ran a deficit, the Mayor cut the money in half to pay the costs of the deficit. The one million dollars per year have never been returned to the children.
Mr. Gene T. Tracy discovered this in 2010. He fought to have this money restored at every opportunity. CEAP programming was cut in half, students attendance dropped, discipline issues increased, and schools were left with gaps in programming that cannot be filled. Mr. Tracy repeatedly asked the politicians a basic question, “Why are team owners more deserving of the money than the children of Cleveland?”
One of Mr. Tracys’ last questions was to the public: “When will the return of the CEAP money be demanded for the children?”
In Mr. Tracys’ last letter to the editors, he hoped he would see the public rise-up and demand the return of the money to children. He wanted to see this, but as he wrote the letter, the doctors told him he would not.
Mr. Tracy spoke of this at every Board of education meeting up through the last one he attended on August 22ND 2023. Increasingly ill, and frail from cancer, Mr. Tracy still fought for children until he could no longer speak. I had the honor of speaking for him at his last appearance at the Board of Education. Mr. Tracy died October 7, 2023.
Will you pick up this fight for children? Will you demand politicians restore this funding?
Editor’s Note: Errol Savage works in a CMSD school, he has been a teacher for 24 years, and is a friend and protégé of Gene Tracy
Plain Press 
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