CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland Ward 17 Councilman Martin Keane has announced through 18-year ward 17 Democratic ward club president Greg Somerville that he will resign from his city council seat by the end of the month, Somerville saying he too will resign, and from his ward leader position.

Keane is allegedly slated  to take a city job at the Cleveland Hopkins Airport with support from the mayor and his city council colleagues, an arrangement, sources said.

Keane told club members on Thursday that he has selected Mayor Frank Jackson’s former Special Assistant for Regional Development Charles Slife as his successor, Somerville told cleveland.com.

Slife, who must be selected by city council, will serve out Keane's unexpired four-year-term, the council seat open for grabs in 2021 when elections will be held for city council and mayor.

The tradition of city council is for the outgoing council person to select his or her successor, a slap in the face to voters, activists have said.

A  12-year White councilman, most of them representing the west side and Black council persons, the east side, Keane represents the far west side of Cleveland, including the Kamm’s Corners, West Park and Puritas neighborhoods, Cleveland a racially divided largely Black major American city of some 385,000 people that is a Democratic stronghold.

Ward 17 is the largest voting bloc of the city's 17 wards, the council persons half Black, and half White, and with one Hispanic, all of them Democratic city lawmakers.

East side ward 2, which is largely Black and led by Councilman Joe Jones, is the second largest voting bloc in the city.

Neither Jackson, the city's third Black mayor, nor City Council President Kevin Kelley, a west side councilman, has commented publicly on Keane's upcoming resignation from city council and his purported new city job, though sources say something is suspect and that unless they are retiring to either come back as a council person again, or to snag a decent paying city job, city council persons rarely give up their safe $85,000 a year jobs where they primarily work at their leisure.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.