Good morning all. Here are a quick few news hits to take you into the weekend. Enjoy!
As we told you about earlier this week, the Cincinnati Police Department is testing new gunshot-detection technology called Shotspotter, which picks up gunfire sounds and maps them so police can respond. But does it actually work? Research is mixed on whether the tech, which the city is spending $225,000 to install in a portion of the city around Avondale, actually reduces gun violence. Read more here about questions surrounding Shotspotter’s effectiveness.
• The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County is officially the second-most used library in the country, according to a report from the Public Library Data Service. Library patrons checked out 21.5 million items last year, according to the report — a boost of 2.5 million items from 2015 — putting it behind only the New York Public Library. The report measured activity at more than 2,800 libraries across the U.S. and Canada.
• There’s a fight over control of a Procter & Gamble board seat which hedge fund investor Nelson Peltz announced he will seek last month, and it’s shaping up a lot like a political campaign. Peltz has criticized P&G for not growing revenue fast enough for its 2.9 million shareholders, who will choose whether or not to let him on the board. A company called Trian Fund Management is backing Peltz, while P&G’s CEO and upper-level leadership oppose him. P&G brass say Peltz doesn’t have a grasp of the company’s longterm strategies and is too focused on securing short-term gain for investors at the expense of their carefully laid out plans for the company’s future growth. P&G and Trian are expected to spend a combined $60 million trying to make their respective cases to shareholders, which would make the fight the most expensive of its kind in history.
• More business news, but on the opposite end of the size scale: Local brewing pioneers Blank Slate Brewing announced they would close their doors earlier this week, and now we know why. The company simply ran out of money as it was outspent by better-funded newcomers, founder Scott LaFollette wrote in a blog post published yesterday.
“If you know anything of the history of Blank Slate you know that it was built on a shoestring budget,” LaFollette wrote. “Just me, myself and I in the beginning. Every penny I have or will probably ever be worth went into starting and growing the business one day, one customer at a time. It might surprise some people to know that the entire operation ran with 3 or less people for its entire existence.”
Blank Slate launched in the East End in 2012 after LaFollette had spent the previous decade honing his home-brewing craft. The company predated a lot of larger breweries in town, but never quite took off the same way due to lack of big-time financing, LaFollette says. Other local brewers like MadTree and Listermann gave tribute to Blank Slate following their closure announcement.
• The state of Ohio won’t issue its first medicinal marijuana licenses until November, state officials said this week, a month later than prospective growers expected. That’s raising concern from growers that they won’t have time to ramp up production of their crop in time to roll it out when Ohio’s medicinal marijuana legalization kicks in in 2018. The state is working on processing 185 applications for 24 licenses to grow the crop. The National Cannabis Industry Association of Ohio says it believed growers would find out by September of this year so they could be ready to produce their first crop by September, 2018. The state says it never made any promises about the timing of choosing applicants.
