Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Ohio newspapers:
Metro Parks levy deserves voter support
The Akron Beacon Journal
March 9
It’s easy to love parks, especially in Summit County where we’re blessed with a strong Metro Parks system that’s grown to include 16 parks and nearly 15,000 acres of land.
It’s also true that nobody wants to pay more in taxes, although many are willing for the right reasons and causes that benefit our community,
We believe Issue 11 on the March 17 ballot meets that standard.
Summit Metro Parks is asking voters to establish a 2-mill overall property tax benefiting the parks. It’s actually two issues in one, with the parks board seeking replacement of 1.46 existing mills and the addition of 0.54 mills. If approved, Issue 11 would cost property owners an additional $19 annually per $100,000.
Supporters believe they’ve created a strong record of serving the community by expanding without seeking new funding for 14 years. During this time, they’ve opened or assumed management of five parks, including former stake parks at Nimisila Reservoir in Portage Lakes and Tinkers Creek in Streetsboro.
Metro Parks also features several conservation areas and more than 150 miles of trails, including 22 miles of the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail. Metro Parks employs 139 full-time, 29 part-time staff and about 80 seasonal employees, all of whom contribute back to our local economy.
It’s also true that Metro Parks upset some residents by stepping in to purchase the former Valley View Golf Course for $4 million in 2016. The purchase, paid for out of cash reserves, married two unattached north and south segments of Cascade Valley Park, creating a long parks corridor along the Cuyahoga River between Akron and Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
The bold but sensible move also prevented prime land from being developed in the middle of a park, likely explaining the high price.
To us, securing and conserving park land along a key river clearly falls within the scope of Metro Parks, especially with the former golf course featuring a clubhouse and parking already on site.
The Valley View purchase was possible due to strong cash reserves, which are now dwindling as property tax funds are capped by law at their original dollar value. After 20% expense cuts in 2017, Metro Parks still projects a $1 million operating deficit this year. Without cuts, which clearly would be made if necessary, Metro Parks could run out of money by 2025.
So, the financial need is real but far from dire at this point. If Issue 11 fails, we suspect Metro Parks would seek renewal of its existing levy, adjust its budget again and eventually ask voters again for additional dollars.
If approved, Issue 11 would raise about $6 million annually and provide a solid financial base for many years to come. Metro Parks would be able to maintain its current services and programs, continue maintenance projects and make further park improvements, although no major property acquisitions or park expansions are planned. We would not expect to see a new levy request for at least a decade.
We recommend voting yes on Issue 11.
Online: https://bit.ly/2vebZDS
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Key questions to settle levy in Louisville
The Canton Repository
March 4
School officials in Louisville are asking district voters to make a future-shaping decision regarding what kind of educational system they want for the families of today and tomorrow.
Traditionally, Louisville schools have been among the county’s top-performing districts academically with a history of doing more with less financially. The only district in the county that stretches a dollar further to educate students, according to a state calculation, is Canton City Schools.
This is what Louisville voters are being asked to decide:
• Do you want a district where busing next school year is cut, creating about 770 walkers out of 1,100 elementary-age students?
• Do you want a district where teachers are cut from classrooms, creating class sizes about 25% larger than they are now?
• Do you want a district where four teachers are laid off from Louisville High School, two from Louisville Middle School, one from North Nimishillen Elementary and three from Louisville Elementary? In addition to those teachers, the equivalent of 1.5 tutors would be cut, and eight bus drivers, six classroom aides, two custodians, a monitor and a building administrator would be eliminated.
• Do you want a district without any middle school sports?
• Do you want a district where high school clubs are cut, limiting students’ options for after-school enhanced educations?
• Do you want a district that no longer can fund school resource officers?
If any or all of those go against your wishes, then vote to prevent those cuts; cast your ballot, as we recommend, in favor of Issue 18, a 6.7-mill emergency levy that would provide $2.81 million annually and maintain the district’s operating resources.
This levy doesn’t add bells and whistles to the district. It is important for voters to know this emergency levy only maintains current levels of staffing and programming, at a cost of about $20 per month on a home valued at $100,000.
If this levy fails, the district’s five-year forecast shows a deficit of nearly $10 million by 2024. That’s why more than 40 positions are pegged for elimination without passage. All of the cuts would amount to about $1.9 million in expense reduction. Another $1.4 million in cuts have been identified for the 2021-22 school year.
Louisville’s emergency operating levy request reflects the nature of school funding in Ohio. In 2009, the district received about $15.2 million from the state. By 2019, revenue had been cut about $800,000, while inflation raised costs over those 10 years.
Sure, a no vote on this issue essentially would lower your mortgage payment today. It also would lower your property values tomorrow. More importantly, what message would it send children now or to families interested in coming to Louisville?
Voting yes on Issue 18 is essential to maintaining the quality we have come to expect and respect from Louisville City Schools.
Online: https://bit.ly/3cG72o6
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Time to end tolerance of hazing
The Columbus Dispatch
March 10
Will 2020 be the year that the toxic elements of Greek culture on Ohio’s college campuses start to die?
We surely hope so, and a raft of enforcement actions suggests it could be.
On Jan. 10, the Sigma Pi, Zeta Beta Tau and Phi Delta Theta fraternities at Ohio State University were ordered shut down for the next three years for hazing new recruits and plying underage students with so much alcohol that at least one needed medical attention.
On Feb. 28, Ohio State announced that four more fraternities and three sororities are suspended and under investigation for much the same sort of nonsense - alcohol abuse and physically endangering pledges.
The latest OSU announcement came the day after the first guilty pleas were heard in the criminal case stemming from the hazing death of Ohio University freshman Collin Wiant in 2018. Earlier the same week, 10 former members of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity at Miami University pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of hazing.
The Dispatch told Wiant’s tragic story in the podcast “Broken Pledge” in November.
We’re glad to see colleges and universities take action against destructive, dangerous and sometimes criminal behavior that was tolerated for far too long. Still, the persistence of the culture is discouraging.
Getting in trouble doesn’t necessarily change the behavior of fraternities and sororities. Four of the seven houses whose investigations were announced last week had been punished for such behavior before; of the three that were suspended in January, two had been disciplined for similar violations in 2017.
Perhaps more criminal prosecutions, when warranted, would shake the complacency of the worst elements. We have supported Gov. Mike DeWine’s call for tougher criminal penalties and required reporting of hazing incidents to police, as well as a law to make the current misdemeanor offense a felony.
If some of these steps are taken and hazing still continues unabated, it will be time to reconsider whether the contributions of Greek organizations are worth the trouble they cause.
Online: https://bit.ly/2wOHlkE
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On March 17, Ohio Democrats can help their party unite to defeat Donald Trump
Cleveland Plain Dealer
March 8
A funny thing happened on the way to Super Tuesday. Democrats fell in line in large numbers behind former Vice President Joe Biden, helping take him from sad also-ran to jubilant front-runner. In Minnesota, Biden went from 8 percent of the Democratic vote in pre-election polls in a state where he’d barely campaigned to a surprise Tuesday win, with nearly 39 percent in unofficial returns.
What happened?
For one, popular Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar ended her presidential campaign the day before Super Tuesday, endorsing Biden. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg had done the same two days earlier. That followed Biden’s strong showing in South Carolina that also revealed southern black voters’ preference for his campaign.
On Wednesday, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg made it a trifecta by joining the Biden chorus, suspending his largely self-financed presidential quest. And by Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren also was out of the race, while declining, for now, to endorse another candidate.
But did Biden suddenly become a scintillating candidate capable of inspiring not just mainstream Democrats but also independents, disaffected young people, worried blue-collar workers and those at society’s lowest rungs in a way that could unite them all to defeat Donald Trump?
Or did what just happened in the rush to shore up Biden reflect less a popular wave of Biden enthusiasm and much more a crescendo of worry – worry propelled largely by voters’ desire to have a more centrist standard-bearer?
There are, perhaps, rational reasons for this worry. Our editorial board, after all, is more centrist than Bernie-est.
But is Joe Biden the right candidate to face off against Donald Trump? We are less sure about that. And in the sudden stampede to boost Biden, we detect desperation, not deliberation.
Biden is safe. He’s predictable. He’s unexciting. He’s a fine, likable fellow who doesn’t take overly radical or forward-looking positions, and his riskiest moments are actually when he’s talking and the wrong words come out. No one would ever mistake him for a “socialist,” and he certainly opposes Sanders’ bedrock issue of Medicare for All that alarms many Americans who worry about losing their private health insurance.
There are even some signs that President Trump — who worked so hard, and successfully to sow doubt about Biden and his family — would prefer Sanders as an opponent.
But our concern is not whether Biden is the right candidate but rather its corollary: Will the Democrats’ rush to fall in line behind Biden backfire in the same way it did in 2016, when angered and discouraged Sanders voters stayed home or cast protest votes. And, Trump won.
Democrats can’t afford to make the same mistake twice. They can’t afford to have young people, independents, veterans, workers worried about their futures sit out the Nov. 3 election. That means, for Democrats, a fair fight all the way to the nomination.
Both candidates have strengths: Joe Biden is a steady known quantity. Bernie Sanders is provocative and passionate.
The contrast of these two — change-seeker versus slow and steady — is reflected in the composition of the party overall.
The challenge will be to be able to bring those two sides of the party together behind the eventual nominee. For now, and next week in Ohio, whether Democrats feel that bold or predictable is the better strategy for defeating Trump is a question voters themselves must decide.
So we are not endorsing either Biden or Sanders today. We want voters to feel empowered to vote either way, and to feel that the process has been fair, so that the losing side will be just as energized to support the nominee in November as those voters now are about their own candidate.
It boils down to one question: Is bold but chancy, or bland but predictable, better when it comes to taking on Donald Trump in November?
In the March 17 primary, with early voting already underway, Democrats in Ohio need to decide this question for themselves.
Online: https://bit.ly/2vXolQZ
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