Council members Roxanne Qualls and Chris Seelbach
proposed a motion
yesterday that would reduce the amount of police layoffs to 25 and eliminate all firefighter layoffs previously proposed in budget plans for fiscal year 2014. The huge layoff reduction comes despite months of warning from the city administration that the city would have to carry out big public safety layoffs without the
parking plan
stalled in court
. But it’s come with large cuts and shifted priorities in other areas of the budget, such as reduced funding to parks, health, human services, parades and outside agencies. (For example, the Health Department warned that cuts to its services could lead to
more rats and bedbugs
.) The motion from Qualls and Seelbach came just in time for
last night’s public hearing
, which mostly focused on the cuts to parks and public safety.
7.0 percent
in April, down from 7.1 percent the month before, thanks to increases in the amount of people employed and decreases in the amount of people unemployed. The gains coincided with decent job growth throughout the rest of the nation in April, which dropped nationwide unemployment from 7.6 percent to 7.5 percent. But the state gains were fairly mixed, and the amount of construction, professional and business services and federal and local government jobs actually dropped. The mixed, slow growth helps explain why conservative and liberal think tanks
seemingly disagree
with Gov. John Kasich that Ohio is undergoing an “economic miracle.”
The Hamilton County Public Health’s (HCPH) food protection program is apparently the
best in the United States and Canada
. The Conference for Food Protection awarded the program the 2013 Samuel J. Crumbine Consumer Protection Award, which “recognizes unsurpassed achievement in providing outstanding food protection services to communities,” according to a statement from HCPH.
Homophobic Boy Scouts supporters are
rallying nationwide
today to support the continuation of the Boy Scouts’ homophobic rules.
The Taste of Cincinnati and the the Cubs-Reds series may have helped downtown Cincinnati earn the No. 42 spot in
Priceline.com’s top 50 Memorial Day destinations
.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources
confirmed
Ohio has been undergoing a boom in oil and gas production in the past two years thanks to developments in a drilling process known as fracking, which
CityBeat previously covered in further detail
here
.
hired a new contractor
— Southern Cross Co. — to carry out gas and line inspections.
developed a new system
that will convert food that can’t be sold or donated into clean energy to power one of its distribution centers.
selling is downtown Cincinnati headquarters
as the company goes through big changes. So far the buyer is unknown.
Jim Kingsbury, CEO of UC Health since 2010, is
retiring
.
Using an optical illusion to make white people look darker can diminish racial biases,
according to a new study
.
weak
.
This article appears in May 15-21, 2013.