Copyright cleveland.com
BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- The first-time Beachwood City Council female majority voters elected in 2023 will be growing by one with the election Tuesday (Nov. 4) of Alexandra (Alex) Jacobs. Come January, Jacobs will make five women who will serve on the seven-member representative body. Voters also brought back Tuesday Council President Alec Isaacson, and returned Councilman Peter Smith. Isaacson has served 12 years on council and is the city’s longest continuing elected office holder. Smith, on the other hand, was appointed by council to his seat in January of this year to replace former councilman Eric Synenberg when Synenberg was elected to the Ohio House representing the 21st District. It is Smith’s first election win. Speaking of her reason for seeking office, Jacobs said, “I’m not happy with national politics. I don’t like the direction our country is going, and I feel helpless to do a lot about it on the national level. “So, everything I’ve read is, what you do when your country is going through something like this is to look to your local community. I think I have a background that is fairly well suited for a City Council position.” Jacobs applied for the January opening for which Smith was selected. During that process, she said, a couple of council members told her that they liked what she had to say during the inteview process and encouraged her to run this fall. “That helped a lot,” Jacobs said. “If other people think I can do this, I think I can do this.” Jacobs went on to join Isaacson and Smith to run as a slate. Voters were asked to select three council members from among four candidates, the fourth being second-time candidate Matthew Hildebrand. Unofficial Cuyahoga County Board of Elections totals had Isaacson topping the list of candidates with 1,904 votes (29.6 percent), followed by Jacobs at 1,785 (27.7 percent), and Smith, with 1,677 votes for 26 percent. Hildebrand finished with 1,075 votes, and 16.7 percent. When she takes office in January, Jacobs said, “I share a lot of the goals I think the current City Council is aiming for -- strong finances, and I want to look at the test (solar street)lighting program City Council has been doing (on Beachwood Boulevard). I’m in favor of that (adding streetlights). I’d like to see that continue.” If the testing doesn’t work out as hoped, Jacobs said she would still want to explore other options to add light on streets, especially where there are no sidewalks, to make walking in neighborhoods safer. Jacobs has earned a law degree, but is not now a practicing attorney. She and her mother, 12 years ago, launched a community management company that has led her to managing condominium and homeowner associations in several high-end communities. “So I have a lot of experience in kind of a scaled-down version of communities and management, a lot of experience with bidding with infrastructure, with budgeting and safeguarding funds.” Isaascson said he was impressed by the years of involvement Jacobs has had with Beachwood Schools. Jacobs now serves as PTO treasurer ,and is co-chair of the Beachwood Schools Fundraising Committee. She is a Girl Scout leader, and coaches her daughter’s fourth grade Destination Imagination Team. Councilman Joshua Mintz did not seek re-election this year. Jacobs will fill the seat Mintz is vacating. In 2023, voters elected Jillian DeLong and Ali Stern to City Council. They joined Councilwomen Danielle Shoykhett and June Taylor in bringing about the female council majority. Isaacson has served two, back-to-back two-year terms as council president. On Dec. 31, his second term will expire and council, during its first meeting in January, will select its next president. As for council’s goals during his next term, Isaacson said, “I’d like to see strategic investment in the community, including moving forward with the streetlight pilot (program), which seems to be doing very well on Beachwood Boulevard. “And, I would like for us to continue to keep an eye on our finances, make sure that our financial situation remains sustainable, as it is now.” When asked of his accomplishments during his years on council, Isaacson stated that “council is a committee that works together,” and listed the initiation and completion of a four-year plan to reduce stormwater flooding in the city’s residential neighborhoods; the launch of the solar streetlight pilot project; and the overhaul of Beachwood’s zoning, building, and short-term rental laws to ensure that the city’s “essential character as a community is welcoming to all.” Isaacson said he chose to run as a slate with Smith and Jacobs because, “The three of us felt that we had a good story to tell Beachwood about ourselves, that our skill sets interlock and support each other, and we felt that having the three of us on council, the skills the three of us brought together, would be much more popwerful -- the story we had to tell would be much more powerful -- than three individual stories.”
