This Strikes Us …

The Top Local News Stories of 2008

Most of the news this year was on the national and international scene – the presidential election, the economy, oil prices, for example.

The presidential election was so all-encompassing that it dominated local, national and international news cycles – the drawn-out Democratic Party primaries, the selection of Sarah Palin, the debates, the reactions of the candidates to the economic crisis, Barack Obama’s trip overseas.

Even so, there were a few local items that kept us amused and horrified, often at the same time.

1. The Fall of a Golden Boy

Not strictly local, but certainly with a local impact, the self-inflicted fall from grace and power of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was the area’s number one story. Kilpatrick was elected mayor of Detroit when he was 31 years old and under normal circumstances, given his smarts and charisma, would have had a stellar career as a public official.

Text messages revealing an affair with his chief of staff would ordinarily not be enough to bring a politician to his heels.

In this case, as it usually is for public figures, it was the cover up that done him in. Kilpatrick and friends fired police officers to start the cover up and then proceeded to settle the ensuing lawsuit with those officers out of court for $8 million of Detroit’s hard-earned tax dollars.

Kilpatrick battled on stupidly for a few months trying to use his office as bait for a better deal.

Kilpatrick, the Big Three auto makers request for a bail-out, the 0-16 Detroit Lions … not a good year for the Motor City.

2. The Lima Police Shooting of an Unarmed Woman

Tarika Wilson was holding her baby son in her arms and, according to the testimony admitted during the trial of the police sergeant who killed her, was on her knees complying with the SWAT team’s orders when she was shot and killed – a bullet going through her son’s hand as well.

The tumult caused by the shooting brought state officials to town and they informed residents that the investigation would be transparent – it wasn’t. The officer was charged with two minor misdemeanors and found not guilty of both charges.

The shooting brought the national spotlight on Lima as Rev. Jesse Jackson stopped in as did candidate Obama during his campaign.

3. The Port Authority Change of Leadership

If we have learned nothing else during 2008, we know now never to use our company’s email system or the cell phone (see Kilpatrick above) to conduct affairs of the heart that should never be conducted in the first place.

Mayor Carty Finkbeiner dropped a dime on Jim Hartung, president of the Toledo Lucas County Port Authority, for conducting just such an affair. Finkbeiner went directly to the media with his charges.

The whole affair – pun intended – was played out on the front pages and the lead stories in the electronic media until the board of the Port Authority was forced to fire Hartung unceremoniously.

4. The Crystal Dixon/University of Toledo Mess

Crystal Dixon, a vice president in the human resources department of The University of Toledo, wrote a letter to a local weekly newspaper decrying the editor’s open-mindedness on matters involving homosexuality.

The letter did not please her bosses at UT who tried to slap her on the wrist and demote her. Dixon refused the demotion and ultimately gained the help of an Ann Arbor law firm in order to take the university to court.

For Dixon, the issue was a matter of free speech. The university’s position was that someone who was in the position of making hiring decisions should not be permitted to give voice to their prejudices.

5. The Multi-Purpose Arena

Not much else has been on track from the standpoint of local development except for the Multipurpose Arena. The Marina District’s future appears shaky during this credit crunch, Southwyck is stalled, the Toledo Steam Plant project has been scaled back.

The Arena, however, is rising from the ashes of downtown Toledo bringing in construction jobs and promising to turn the downtown area into a location with year-round events. That is good news for restaurants and bars in the area, good news for residential development, good news for those businesses seeking to locate in the area.

6. The Floyd Rose Return

Floyd Rose, retired church official and one of the guiding lights of Toledo’s part in the Civil Rights Movement, returned to town in the late winter of 2008 to lead the fight against the imposition of a city tax renewal. That tax, which was on the March 4 primary ballot, would continue to raise about $57 million annually.
 

“I left here in part because Carty Finkbeiner was elected mayor,” said Rose at a rally at Braden United Methodist in late January. “I was devastated. I left here for the same reason I came back. I came back for the same reason I left. I was told that things were not better but worse.”

The tax passed by a wide margin.

7. The Non-Profit Agency Financial Woes

The failing economy has made life particularly difficult for northwest Ohio. Toledo now has the highest unemployment rate of any large Ohio. But it’s not just businesses that have been impacted. The economy has taken its toll on non-profit agencies.

EOPA, the Frederick Douglass Community Association and the Connecting Point all faced revenue shortfalls this year and leadership issues as a result.

EOPA finally settled on an executive director at the end of the year with the appointment of Jim Powell to the post – not without an impressive amount of internal board squabbles however. FDCA and the Connecting Point both dismissed their executive directors as they scrambled to re-organize and get a handle on their financial situations.

8. Take Back Toledo

Silly season abounds in Toledo. A group of businessman and media types have banded together to start a recall the mayor movement. If they succeed in getting the requisite number of signatures – over 19,000 – the mayor will face a September 2009 campaign to avoid being dumped.

If he is dumped, it will be just a few months before the November general election, which means we could have three mayors in the span of four or five months, thereby ensuring that nothing will get accomplished if it has to come out of the mayor’s office.

If all of this weren’t silly enough, consider the mayor’s reaction – he held a press conference to assail his attackers and brought their movement out of obscurity and onto the front pages.

9. Ashford Loses the Presidency of City Council

Last year our top local story was the unexpected rise of City Councilman Michael Ashford to the presidency of that legislative body as his colleagues decided to move incumbent Republican Rob Ludeman out and put Ashford in.

New council members decided to reverse that move in January and Mark Sobczak walked away with the grand prize when the mayor broke the tie and cast the deciding vote against Ashford.

One would have expected the mayor to do that – he and Ashford have agreed on practically nothing over the years and take great pride in embarrassing one another as often as possible.

What was unexpected was the duplicity shown by at least one new city council member as the vote unfolded. Great start to a career!

10. Sidney Ribeau Leaves Bowling Green

Sidney Ribeau was named president of Bowling Green State University in 1995 and by all standards – length of service, programs initiated, student enrollment, minority student enrollment, fundraising – was a huge success before leaving during the summer to assume a similar position at Howard University.

Chief among his programs was the implementation of the BGeXperience that brings students to campus before the start of the fall semester for an intensive introduction to critical thinking about values.

His capital campaign that began in 2003 raised $120 million in a shorter amount of time than predicted. The minority student population at BGSU is now 19 percent, up from 6.9 percent when Ribeau arrived.

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